New trends in technology are helping small and midsized businesses (SMBs) to become more effective, productive, and competitive than ever before. Learn how IT modernization can help drive business flexibility and grow your business.

As technology evolves, it is important to step back and reevaluate the health of your IT infrastructure. While advances in technology can help businesses streamline operations, they can also change users’ expectations. With today’s advances in cloud computing, mobility, and data intensive applications, do you have what you need to meet expectations and ensure the fitness of your business? Can you:

• Connect easily with new and existing customers no matter where they are?
• Provide your salesforce with the knowledge and productivity tools they need to quickly close a deal?
• Maximize your resource utilization to reduce costs?
• Keep your business up and running 24/7?

To meet these challenges, take a close look at your computing infrastructure. Is it heavy with underutilized servers and storage space?  Maybe it’s unwieldy, with network equipment from a variety of vendors. Just like an exercise regimen that tones your body, a plan to modernize your technology can help you improve the performance of your organization, gain competitive muscle, and grow.

Step 1: Remove bottlenecks to performance
Older servers and networking products weren’t designed to handle the amount of data that is transmitted today. When you replace them with low-latency servers and high-bandwidth networks, your customers can reliably and easily connect with you, view your products, and access your services. And upgrading your IT infrastructure will do more than improve your users’ experience. It will also give you the bandwidth and performance required to use tools that can take advantage of this data. High bandwidth applications, such as analytics, require the lower latency and performance of today’s servers. Use them to gain insights into customer buying behaviors to serve your customers even better.

Step 2: Distribute your workloads to scale and improve uptime
One of the best ways to get your IT into shape is to virtualize where you can. Many servers, storage, and networks today feature virtualization capabilities. Virtualization allows you to make the most of the resources you have by partitioning CPU and storage space and applying it to specific applications when needed. It also allows you to run multiple instances of applications, providing for backup in case of an unexpected failure. These benefits can even now be extended to networks through SDN (software defined networking).

Step 3: Focus on unifying your management
The ability to manage everything from a centralized point can save a lot of time and money. A holistic view of your IT can help you to identify issues before they become real problems. When choosing your management platform, look for several key features, such as support for a converged infrastructure and industry standards. It should be able manage resources that may not be in the same physical location (such as a branch office or cloud resources) and handle products from multiple vendors. A unified management scheme keeps costs down by minimizing the number of licenses, as well as the amount of personnel, required.

Step 4: Stretch your capabilities and your budget
While it may seem counter-intuitive, investing in newer technology can help you to reduce costs.  Purchasing a smaller number of today’s higher-performing, more energy-efficient servers cuts back on the real-estate required to house them and drives down energy costs. When you take advantage of cloud resources, you not only “rent out space” but also gain the expertise of IT specialists, essentially extending your staff. A converged management scheme saves you time and money by automating processes, simplifying operations, and minimizing opportunities for manual error.

UI’s Technology Services gives you what you need to remain flexible

When you exercise your body, it’s important that you don’t sacrifice form by struggling to lift heavier weights. The same concept applies to your IT infrastructure. Trying to make do without having the proper tools, can put your business at risk. Focus on products and solutions that are right sized for your business, providing enough power and performance to support your business applications without the complexity of an unwieldy infrastructure.

United Imaging has been helping businesses of all sizes increase their agility by offering servers, storage, and networking equipment that have the bandwidth and reliability needed to support business applications today. Its Technology Services portfolio of products and solutions are designed specifically to help SMBs reduce complexity and improve business flexibility. Affordably priced, simple to install and use, these products feature the performance and manageability you need to get your business into shape, providing you with an agile IT foundation that can help you grow your business.

To learn more about United Imaging Technology Services products and solutions, visit United Imaging Technology Services Page .

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