Computers don’t just manage themselves. As sophisticated as they’ve become, they still need a human touch to keep everything running properly. Given time, all IT processes and equipment will fail. Businesses employ managed IT services to fix broken systems and -- more importantly -- to prevent them from breaking in the first place. Proactivity is about taking action rather than waiting for something to happen. Proactive monitoring is an integral part of managed IT services.
The Benefits of Proactivity
It pays to be proactive in every area of our lives. Preventive maintenance on your car can save you lots of money in the long run. Being proactive about your health can keep you fit and strong, and even save your life. Proactively monitoring your IT infrastructure will help avoid outages and continuously deliver services.
One of the biggest benefits of proactivity is avoiding failure. If your goal is not to fail, then you’ve got to be proactive. The way that you do that in IT is to identify all the elements in your environment and assess their risks of failure. Then create clear, repeatable processes for dealing with each potential issue. Finally, enlist human or machine resources to monitor IT functions so you can deal with any problems in a timely manner.
Maintenance Modes
To put proactivity in context, it might help to understand the common modes used in maintenance. This applies to information technology, but it could apply to other production environments as well. The two primary maintenance categories are reactive and proactive. But you can also look at maintenance using three different approaches: reactive, preventive, and predictive.
A reactive mode, of course, is about taking action once things go wrong. That’s the old break/fix model. The huge ENIAC computer, built-in 1945, had some 20,000 vacuum tubes. Maintenance men prided themselves on being able to locate and replace a faulty vacuum tube in just minutes. Reaction to outages is necessary, but not the only way to manage machines.
Preventive maintenance is meant to extend the life of your equipment and reduce or eliminate unplanned downtime. If a database is running out of memory, for instance, or a connection is becoming congested, regular checks of the necessary parameters will detect that. Replacing old equipment, updating software, or tweaking machines can prevent bad things from happening to your network.
Predictive maintenance is about anticipating that something will happen so that you can do something about it. Preventive and predictive maintenance are similar in that they are both forms of proactivity. But predictive maintenance, such as what might be done through analytics, adds a bit of intelligence to your IT support Cincinnati.
Efficient IT
Proactivity brings a certain discipline to IT. In the old days, people just wanted to get a service up and running. The first transatlantic cable was a big project, and they got it to work -- only to fail a few weeks later. Proactive monitoring is how IT professionals get the best out of the hardware and software resources that they manage.
Your systems and networks need constant attention. If you’re looking for Cincinnati IT services, you can depend on Titan Tech to meet your proactive monitoring needs. Our managed IT services will make your technologies simpler, smarter, and more efficient.
You can’t find Cincinnati IT support just anywhere. Titan Tech is a trusted full-service IT solution company in the Cincinnati area. And we know the value of proactive maintenance for your IT infrastructure.
Monitoring and Maintenance Plans
Coming up with a maintenance plan for your IT is not easy. There are so many things to take into account. Part of it is managing the customer’s expectations. This is done with a Service Level Agreement (SLA). This document will define how quickly service should be restored following an outage, and how customers will be informed.
Any IT maintenance plan should include proactive monitoring. These days, much of this is done through automatic alert notifications. An IT element that goes down will generate an alarm, and this alarm may automatically cause a notification (email, text, call) to be sent to an IT professional. Proactive trouble tickets may also be created and sent to the tech’s queue.
Once an issue is identified, the IT professional will follow standardized procedures to repair the problem. He may also put a backup device or element into service. This can also be triggered automatically.
Conclusion
We can’t predict the future, but we can help customers in Cincinnati, Dayton, and surrounding areas to proactively monitor their IT environment. Like the Boy Scouts motto, it’s always good to be prepared for anything. Proactive monitoring is a way to control your IT resources in a way that merely reacting could never do. It’s how you get a handle on your IT.