Small businesses rely on technology to market their business, enable employees and teams to communicate, analyze data, and a host of other operational activities. But as your small business grows, your technology needs to keep up. In this article, we’re going to cover the basics of IT infrastructure for small businesses.
According to a recent study by Verizon, more than 50% of small to mid-sized businesses upgraded their internet connection bandwidth in 2023. However, the same study points out that a good portion of small and midsize businesses are failing to invest in cybersecurity proportionately to their investment in internet bandwidth and other technology upgrades.
Five elements of IT infrastructure for small businesses
1. Scalability
Scalability refers to the flexibility of IT infrastructure to scale up—or down—depending on the needs of the business. Scalability allows for easy expansion of resources, such as adding new users, applications, and data storage, without significant disruptions or costly upgrades.
There are two ways IT infrastructure can scale:
- Vertical Scaling: Adding more power to your current hardware
- Horizontal Scaling: Adding more nodes to your network
Horizontal scaling helps coordinate tasks and shares data between distributed machines. This is made possible based on expanded network communication. Vertical scaling primarily involves interprocess communication within a single machine. Vertical scaling also can improve closely-coupled processes, minimizing the need for network communications.
2. Security
Prioritizing cybersecurity is essential for small businesses to protect sensitive data, prevent cyber attacks, and comply with regulations. Implementing robust security measures, such as firewalls, antivirus software, encryption, access controls, and employee training, helps safeguard business assets and maintain customer trust.
This handy visual from Visartech outlines the steps to develop a cybersecurity strategy to support IT infrastructure for small businesses:
3. Backup and Disaster Recovery
Having a backup and disaster recovery plan is critical for small businesses to ensure data protection and business continuity in case of emergencies, such as hardware failures, natural disasters, or cyber incidents. Regular backups, offsite storage, data encryption, and recovery procedures are essential components of a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery strategy.
Djamal Saba recently wrote a LinkedIn article that went in-depth about IT storage, backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity, illustrated in the image below. In the article, he recommends backing up data at least once per day.
4. Cloud Services
Leveraging cloud services offers small businesses flexibility, scalability, cost savings, and accessibility to advanced technologies without heavy upfront investments in infrastructure. Cloud solutions, such as software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and platform as a service (PaaS), enable businesses to streamline operations, collaborate remotely, and scale IT resources as needed.
This Medium article by IDM goes more in depth about these three cloud services:
- Software as a Service (SaaS): In this service model, the cloud-based applications are offered to the customer as a service on request. It is a single instance of the service running on cloud computers.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS): This model provides hardware, network and operating system so customers can design their own application and software. All these facilities can be used by both individual and business customers, by subscribing to a single package with all the features offered.
- Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): This standardized service offers basic computing and storage space over the network. This model consolidates and provides data center space, storage systems, network devices, servers, and so on, making a dedicated space affordable to small, growing businesses. In addition, customers can develop and install their own operating systems, software and applications.
5. Regular Maintenance and Updates
Small businesses should prioritize regular maintenance, updates, and patches for their IT infrastructure components, including hardware, software, and security systems. Keeping systems up to date with the latest software versions, security patches, and firmware updates helps mitigate vulnerabilities, improve performance, and minimize downtime due to system failures or security breaches.
This maintenance checklist from TechTarget shares common troubleshooting tips to help small businesses keep their IT infrastructure healthy.
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