The Best New Years Resolutions for IT Departments in 2024

As we bid farewell to another year, it's the perfect time to reflect on the past and set our sights on the future. For IT departments, embracing the new year often involves reevaluating strategies, streamlining processes, and leveraging innovative solutions.

As a passionate team of IT experts that champion all the ways in which bolstering IT can benefit businesses everywhere, we're so excited to guide you through some New Year resolutions that can revitalize your IT approach and bring success in 2024.

AI Integration for IT Advancement

Resolution: Embrace the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in our IT operations to enhance efficiency and decision-making processes.

Why: AI technologies, such as machine learning and predictive analytics, can revolutionize how we manage and optimize IT resources. By leveraging AI, we can automate routine tasks, gain insights from data, and make proactive decisions that contribute to the overall success of our IT initiatives.

Automation for Streamlined Operations

Resolution: Embrace automation to streamline repetitive tasks and enhance operational efficiency.

Why: Automation can significantly reduce manual efforts, minimize errors, and accelerate processes. By identifying opportunities for automation in routine tasks, we can free up valuable time for our IT teams to focus on more strategic initiatives, leading to a more agile and responsive IT environment.

Embrace Cloud Optimization

Resolution: In 2024, commit to optimizing our cloud infrastructure for efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Why: Cloud technology is dynamic and ever evolving. Ensuring that our cloud services are optimized will enhance performance, reduce costs, and allow us to take full advantage of the latest features.

Enhance Cybersecurity Measures

Resolution: Strengthen our cybersecurity posture to safeguard against evolving threats.

Why: As cyber threats become more sophisticated, prioritizing cybersecurity is crucial. Implementing robust measures, such as regular security audits and employee training, will fortify our defenses.

Implement Proactive Monitoring

Resolution: Transition to proactive monitoring for early issue detection and swift resolution.

Why: Reactive approaches can lead to downtime and disruptions. Proactive monitoring ensures that potential issues are identified and addressed before they impact operations.

Upgrade Legacy Systems

Resolution: Develop a plan to systematically upgrade legacy systems to modern, efficient solutions.

Why: Outdated systems pose security risks and hinder performance. Upgrading to the latest technologies ensures we stay competitive, secure, and aligned with industry standards.

Optimize IT Budgets

Resolution: Conduct a thorough review of IT budgets to identify cost-saving opportunities without compromising performance.

Why: Efficient budget allocation is essential for achieving business objectives. Identifying and eliminating unnecessary expenses will optimize our IT spend.

Interested in learning more? Check out our blog on Software Sprawl.

Promote Collaboration Tools

Resolution: Implement or enhance collaboration tools to boost team productivity.

Why: Effective communication and collaboration are cornerstones of success. Integrating advanced collaboration tools will empower our teams to work seamlessly, irrespective of location.

You can learn more by reading our blog on Microsoft viva or click here to see all of the powerful collaboration tools and services we offer to amplify your team’s engagement and productivity.

Invest in Employee Training

Resolution: Prioritize ongoing training to keep our IT teams well-versed in the latest technologies.

Why: The tech landscape evolves rapidly. Investing in continuous training ensures that our teams are equipped with the skills needed to navigate emerging trends.

Here are some resources for internal training:

• LinkedIn Learning: IT Infrastructure
• Microsoft Learn: Azure Fundamentals
• Microsoft VIVA Learning
• CompTIA: IT Training Courses

You can also access our past webinars for expert walkthrough on various tools and technologies that all IT teams should know.

Explore New Microsoft Solutions

Resolution: Stay abreast of the latest Microsoft solutions and integrate them into our IT ecosystem.

Why: Microsoft offers a suite of powerful solutions. Regularly exploring and adopting new tools can enhance productivity and keep us at the forefront of technological innovation.

Learn more about Microsoft tools and services that you can access through our trusted team.

As we step into 2024, let's embark on a journey of IT excellence. These resolutions serve as a roadmap for a successful and technologically advanced year. If you're ready to turn these resolutions into reality, our team at Managed Solution is here to support you every step of the way. Here's to a year of innovation, efficiency, and IT success!

More Resources

• Case studies
• Managed Services Page
• Microsoft Services Page

Cloud solutions help your business save money by providing scalable storage, bandwidth, and processing power; improving your access to important files; and automates many IT tasks. The three cloud options—public, private, and hybrid clouds—each have advantages depending on your business’ needs. When compliance, flexibility, and savings are your primary requirements, a hybrid cloud solution may be for you. This is how each benefit can help your business:

1. Keeps you compliant

The hybrid cloud is a combination of public and private clouds. This means businesses in highly regulated industries (such as healthcare) with compliance requirements regarding data residency (such as HIPAA) can leverage the private cloud for those sensitive workloads, while relying on the cost-effective public cloud for nonregulated operations.

Take banking, another industry that’s strictly regulated: A&P Financial (famous as Rush N Cash), the largest loan lender in Korea, expanded its business to China and decided to implement a credit scoring system customized to local market conditions. A credit scoring system entails a great deal of data analysis and corporate risk management, which makes it an ideal workload for the cloud—but which cloud?
If your company experiences an unexpected spike in usage of an in-house server, the workload can be passed off to the public cloud.

According to Lee Seowon, Director at NICE Information Service, “The hybrid model is ideally suited to enabling the expansion of A&P Financial across Asia, including China, because in this model, only data that can be delivered across countries, like ID numbers, is stored on the public cloud.” Lee says the biggest advantage of the hybrid model is that it complies with regulations but carries no security risk. (Learn more about A&P Financial’s experience with the hybrid cloud here).

2. Keeps you flexible

The hybrid cloud lets your business be more agile. If your company experiences an unexpected spike in usage of an in-house server, the workload can be passed off to the public cloud. This way, your company avoids the additional cost of having to purchase new server hardware. In addition to being agile, the hybrid cloud is also scalable, which means it’s well suited for businesses with unpredictable peaks.

Callaway Golf, one of the world’s largest makers of premium golf products, needed a way to scale up quickly: “During and after a high-profile golf tournament, there’s a great deal of interest in our product and our websites receive a lot of hits,” said Dan Cowles, Manager of Solution Development for Callaway Golf. The company’s IT infrastructure was located in its Carlsbad, California, headquarters but couldn’t scale to meet increased traffic fast enough. “Consumers and resellers could experience slow response times and even downtime,” said Cowles.

The company sought a hybrid solution to eliminate the slowdowns and be able to scale infrastructure quickly. This way, the company could proactively improve customer experience. “It’s especially valuable in responding to requests in non-US regions, because it’s difficult to set up infrastructure in Carlsbad and provide remote access to those applications,” said Cowles. (Learn more about Callaway Golf’s experience with the hybrid cloud here.)

3. Saves you money

With the hybrid cloud you don’t have to ditch all your old systems. Instead, a hybrid solution integrates your legacy technology, so you can work between old and new systems. Because the hybrid model lets you tap into the public cloud for immediate projects and scaling, your business can carry out these tasks quickly for less than it would cost to use your local IT infrastructure.
A hybrid solution integrates your legacy technology, so you can work between old and new systems.

As Cushman & Wakefield (a global real estate group) grew, it acquired more expensive hardware than it wanted to deal with. “We are a global commercial real estate firm,” said Craig Cuyar, Global CIO for Cushman & Wakefield. “We want to make investments that support our core business, and buying and managing servers is not our core business.” It came down to where to put company dollars: “We didn’t want to invest our money in hiring more IT people; we would rather hire brokers. We had to find a smarter, more efficient way to operate,” said Cuyar.

The company wanted to do away with its own servers but it wasn’t realistic to do this, 100 percent, right away. Instead, the company gradually moved workloads to the cloud. Nonetheless, the results were impressive: Cushman and Wakefield reduced IT costs by 75 percent. According to Cuyar, “with cloud computing, we’re using our IT assets far more efficiently. We’re not investing in massive piles of hardware that sit idle most of the time. We have a compact reservoir of IT resources that we can dynamically allocate when and where needed.” (Learn more about Cushman and Wakefield’s experience with the hybrid cloud here.)

Source: http://blogs.microsoft.com/work/2014/07/14/top-3-ways-the-hybrid-cloud-improves-business/

Is your business looking for a flexible, cost-efficient, and regulation-compliant cloud solution? A hybrid cloud may be exactly what you need. For more information on cloud solutions contact Managed Solution at 800-550-3795.