Your infrastructure set up will always reflect whether your business can run efficiently. Technology is constantly evolving, so it’s wrong to assume that sooner or later your outdated IT infrastructure won’t begin to cost you.

The older your infrastructure, the more you’ll be paying to maintain and keep it running. We’re not just talking about financial costs, but from a technical and business perspective too.

The consequences of an aging IT infrastructure

Critical gaps in your cyber security 

Cyber security is a constant hot topic in the IT landscape. Particularly now, as cyber criminals grow in sophistication, and determination. They only need to find one vulnerability to gain access to your systems, which they can find in your outdated software.

Many businesses carry on with legacy software and systems purely because their staff are comfortable from using it for quite some time. What they don’t know is how vulnerable legacy IT is to malware and various cyber attacks compared to contemporary software. And in the event of a breach, not only will your business suffer financially to remediate the issue, but it’s also going to have an adverse effect on your brand reputation, as well as your relationships with customers.

Server downtime

The thing with aging hardware is that it’s not entirely reliable, so you never know when your systems could come crashing down. An alarming 40% of server hardware is more than 3 years old, which causes higher costs and increased downtime. Not only will this directly impact your business, but it will impact your service to your customers too, and the consequences of prolonged downtime can be brutal.

You also have to take employee experience into account. Constant downtimes will affect their productivity and performance – something which your business can’t afford to lose. But upgrading to modern infrastructure such as the cloud will provide greater reliability, performance, speed and scalability.

Inability to innovate

All businesses should be thinking about how they can use new software, hardware and technologies to aid in business growth. And whilst some businesses have moved forward with their digital transformation projects, some are still stuck in their old ways. The problem with outdated infrastructure is that it simply isn’t dynamic enough to scale with your business, which will prevent you from innovation, and restrict you from gaining the competitive edge you need.

High total cost of ownership (TCO)

If you’re still running your business on-premise, then there’s a good chance that you’re dealing with high cost of ownership. On-premise storage generally comes with high maintenance costs. You’re already lumbered with the initial capital investment to purchase servers and additional hardware. But then you’ve also got extra expenses like software and licenses to upgrade systems, and keep up with maintenance and repairs.

You don’t need to worry about this with the cloud, migrating away from on-premise means there won’t be any upfront hardware or software license costs, you’ll only pay for what you use, and maintenance costs will dramatically decrease. And best of all, your data will be much more secure in the cloud. In fact, a recent survey found that 40% of businesses are moving their legacy systems to the cloud to secure their data.

How will I know it’s time for an IT infrastructure upgrade?

1. Your servers are down too often
2. Your systems are running slow
3. Out of date software
4. You’re still relying on your on-premise server
5. You’re battling with limited storage space
6. You don’t have a comprehensive back up and recovery plan
7. Employees are complaining of slow and disruptive systems

Many businesses are still running on legacy systems because they have a fear of change, and their complacent mentality sticks with the old “If it isn’t broke, why fix it?. But the truth is it’s time to say goodbye to the old, and hello to digital transformation.

Businesses that haven’t reviewed their infrastructure in a long time, should be thinking about how this will impact their business in the long run. Only then can they stay competitive and streamline their businesses process.

Not sure where to start? That’s where our team can step in. They’ll analyse your business, discuss your requirements with you and provide an actionable and tailored roadmap to transform your business. Get in touch with our team today.