User:SameerPatel221/IT infrastructure

(Definition From PREVIOUS Article)

According to the Information Technology Infrastructure Library’s (ITIL) Foundation Course Glossary, IT Infrastructure can also be termed as “definition form previous article”]

(Enterprise IT statement from Previous article)

Overview

In IT Infrastructure, the above technological components contribute to and drive business functions. Leaders and managers within the IT field are responsible for ensuring that both the physical hardware and software networks and resources are working optimally. IT infrastructure can be looked at as the foundation of an organization’s technology systems, thereby playing an integral part in driving its success. All organizations who rely on technology to do their business can benefit from having a robust, interconnected IT Infrastructure. With the current speed that technology changes and the competitive nature of businesses, IT leaders have to ensure that their IT Infrastructure is designed such that changes can be made quickly and without impacting the business continuity. While traditionally companies used to typically rely on physical data centers or colocation facilities to support their IT Infrastructure, cloud hosting has become more popular as it is easier to manage and scale. IT Infrastructure can be managed by the company themselves or it can be outsourced to another company who has consulting expertise to develop robust infrastructures for an organization. With advances in online outreach availability, it has become easier for end users to access technology but. As a result IT infrastructures have become more complex and therefore, it is harder for managers to oversee the end to end operations. In order to mitigate this issue, strong IT Infrastructures require employees with varying skill sets. (The fields of IT management statement from previous article..) The ITRL framework assists companies with the ability to be responsive to technological market demands. Technology can often be thought of as an innovative product which can incur high production costs. However, the ITIL framework helps address these issues and allows the company to be more cost effective which helps IT managers to keep the IT Infrastructure functioning.

Background

Even though the IT infrastructure has been around for over 60 years, there have been incredible advances in technology in the past 15 years. These advances have meant that IT infrastructure has become an integral component of companies both large and small. Workers used to use desktop computers at the office and technology speed was not great. Nowadays each user connects to the network using multiple devices such as laptops, phones and tablets. Therefore, the IT infrastructure has to be available 24/7 with fast speed and have enough capacity to support a higher number of devices.

Components of IT Infrastructure

The primary components of an IT Infrastructure are the physical systems such as hardware, storage and the building itself but also networking, software and any kind of routers/switches. In addition to these components, there is the need for “IT Infrastructure Security”. Security keeps the network & it’s devices safe in order to maintain the integrity within the overall infrastructure of the organization.

The IT Infrastructure is integral to the layers of the OSI Model. Without an IT Infrastructure, IT operations would not be possible. Everything from physical devices of the end user to the network in which they work on, as well as the data they consume, are not possible without the proper infrastructure in place in all the layers of the OSI model.

Specifically, the first three layers are directly involved with IT Infrastructure. The physical layer serves as the fundamental layer for hardware. The second and third layers (Data Link & Network), are essential for communication to and from hardware devices, without this, networking is not possible, and in a sense, the internet itself would not be possible.

IT Infrastructure Types

Different types of technological tasks may require a tailored approach to the infrastructure. These can be achieved through a traditional, cloud or hyper converged IT Infrastructure.

Skills

There are many functioning parts that go into the health of an IT infrastructure. In order to contribute positively to the organization, employees can acquire abilities to benefit the company. These include key technical abilities such as cloud, network, and data administration skills and soft abilities such collaboration and communication skills. It is vital that employees keep up to date with the latest tools and technologies because of the ability to cloud hosted which creates the need for certifications. A lot of specialized skill sets often require certifications for career growth and IT Infrastructure integrity.

Future

As data storage and management becomes more digitized, IT Infrastructure is moving towards the cloud. Infrastructure-as-a-service (Iaas) provides the ability to host on a server and is a platform for cloud computing.

IaaS, PaaS (Platform-as-a-service), Saa (Software-as-a-service) are all different models of how companies can choose to go with their road map. Companies can carry this function out themselves or they can hire a firm that can do this for them via private cloud. Additionally, they can can also go with the public cloud, which would potentailly involve either Microsoft's Azure, AWS from Amazon, or the Google cloud.