Break IT Down

Information Technology careers go beyond troubleshooting for coworkers. Prairie Business talked to six IT experts about the most crucial aspects of their job

BY KAYLA PRASEK

Whether a company has an in-house IT department or outsources that responsibility, IT specialists do more for a company than many employees realize. Prairie Business asked some of the top IT services companies in the region to lend advice on five major areas in their industry — wireless technology, server virtualization and cloud, technology planning and strategy, business process improvement, and compliance and regulation.

Wireless Technology

Steve Knutson is chief technology officer and vice president of professional services at

Though the need to go wireless might be a no-brainer, the technology behind it is anything but. Operational and security issues require a clear and insightful plan right from the start to avoid spotty connections and gaps in security down the road.

Questions must be addressed during the design process, such as: What’s the primary use of the wireless environment? Who should be allowed access?

One of the most important aspects of creating a secure wireless network is determining who’s authorized to connect. Secure screening processes must be set to sort authorized devices from non-authorized devices.

Splash pages — a popup that precedes a website — and network access control are also crucial in allowing internal staff and approved guests access to the wireless network.

Server Virtualization And Cloud

Server virtualization takes the essence — operating system and applications — of a physical server and turns it into a virtual machine, or VM. Virtual machines are easier to back up and restore, they are not dependent on the hardware they run on, and they are quicker to deploy, saving time and money. Many virtual machines can be run on a single physical server, reducing the number of servers required to support a business.

Taking the server virtualization concept a step further, VMs can be hosted in a public cloud on the internet. Public clouds are large server farms that provide a pool of shared resources for virtual machines. The purchasing model is different for cloud services — instead of buying hardware, resources such as disk space, the central processing unit and memory are rented from the public cloud service.

Technology Planning And Strategy

Leveraged effectively, technology should help reduce operating costs and facilitate a competitive advantage. In a world of rapidly changing technology, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture, causing inefficiencies and breaks in the technology supporting a business, as well as the processes around it.

A few crucial questions need to be asked when assessing technology:

• Have we outgrown our current systems or processes?

• Do we have a proactive technology plan to ensure future business growth?

Address unique business challenges through a review of the current situation, assessment of systems, and analysis of business requirements to identify and develop the strategic technology direction of the business. As a technology plan develops and is implemented, the organization will begin to see progress in three key areas:

• Improved efficiency and transparency across operations and resources.

• Enhanced systems that deliver useful, timely information and provide true business intelligence.

• Defined technology and business initiatives unique to current and future business goals. It is important to have technology work for a business, not against it.

Business Process Improvement

The right strategy is crucial to business success. Streamlined, documented and well-communicated business processes are fundamental to every company’s performance and its ability to successfully execute a business strategy. Improved business processes equal better customer service and profitable growth.

A holistic approach to Business process improvement includes the identification and documentation of:

• As-Is: How do things function today?

• Problem: What are the pain points? What is causing them? Why do we want them gone?

• Opportunity: What can be done to improve?

• Implement: How do we make the idea happen?

• Monitor: How do we ensure the process stays in place?

Throughout this process, it is advisable to address and plan for change management as well as impact on organizational culture. This ensures the best possible match between intended results and actual results, while providing measurable return on investment.

Used correctly, BPI is a powerful tool that can empower an organization to take it to the next level and achieve strategic objectives for success.

Compliance And Regulation

Regulatory compliance is defined as the requirement to conform to a rule, standard or law usually specific to an industry. The top five regulations affecting organizations are:

• HIPAA: Makes it easier for people to keep health insurance, protects the confidentiality and security of health care information and helps the health care industry control administrative costs.

• Sarbanes-Oxley: Protects investors and the general public from accounting errors and fraudulent practices.

• Payment Card Industry: A set of requirements designed to ensure all companies that process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment.

• Can Spam Act: Standards for the sending of commercial email.

• Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act: Requires financial institutions to explain their information-sharing practices to their customers and to safeguard sensitive data.

To ensure success, it is important to apply a single, integrated IT infrastructure to monitor and enforce policies while reducing risk to acceptable levels. For IT, this might mean implementing security policies with software to automatically apply and enforce them.