With so much innovation exploding in the cloud services industry these days, it’s hard for any corporate leader to know what to look for when seeking an IT consultancy firm in New Jersey. By now, most organizations have an inkling of the high value that cloud computing offers to their enterprise; many are actively looking for the right IT cloud services provider to meet their needs. Only a few, though, understand how an IT consultant can help them make the right choices for their organization’s needs. Those that do take the time to identify and access the services of IT consultancies in New Jersey will better understand the full depth and breadth of the cloud’s potential to enhance their enterprise.
What to Expect from an IT Consultancy
One way to determine what you’re looking for in an IT consultant is to imagine where you want your company to be five years from now. Will you have added locations or employees? Are you considering changing your production metrics or facilities? Perhaps you’re considering merging with a competitor to broaden the market for both entities. No matter what you’re envisioning for the future of your company, your new IT consultant will be providing the services, insights and technology you will need to accomplish those new goals. Accordingly, be sure to keep that vision in mind as you scout out the potential services and programming that an IT consultant can offer to help you on your way.
Look for Fundamental IT Services
While the number of cloud-based, IT-computing options is seemingly endless, there are four main components that make up a fully functioning IT-based enterprise. Be sure to ask your potential IT consultants about your company’s needs for each of these vital services:
Storage
Both your data and its current data processing capacities require storage. Today, there are two primary forms of data storage: file storage and object storage. Both provide benefits and drawbacks, and one kind may be of better use than the other to your organization.
The difference between them lies in how they manage their internal data. While file storage mimics how humans manage their data in a hierarchical format, object storage drops that hierarchy in exchange for a more granular organizational premise. Each digital “object” has a unique identifier and volume of metadata about its contents. That data is not directly related to any other object so search engines can find relevant metadata in separate objects without having to peruse through a file library in the process.
Ask your IT consultant how to best store and use your corporate data so you can gain the most advantage from it.
Application management
Your company’s proprietary apps might function better for your purposes if you migrate them to the cloud, but the process of getting them there also requires strategy and planning. Transitioning apps to the cloud may require their reconfiguration to fit the parameter of the cloud environment; those changes in configuration may also mean reconfiguring other apps to ensure they all work in concert with each other. Once the app and its related data have migrated up, they’ll need monitoring, too, to keep them functioning optimally in the ever-changing cloud universe.
Talk to your New Jersey-based IT consultant about which of your apps might work better in the cloud, and how to devise a strategy to get them there.
Security
Today’s legacy security programming is taking a beating from advanced cybercriminals and their cloud-based weaponry. Failing firewalls, gaps in encryptions and lax policy enforcement all contribute to the need for a skilled IT consultancy in New Jersey to help you tighten your organization’s digital security perimeter. These IT professionals offer a variety of skills that can both enhance your existing IT security net as well as suggest new strategies to improve its defenses.
- Penetration testing is just one such skill. The third-party IT consultant will test your company’s current security practices and systems, looking for gaps and vulnerabilities. In some cases, they may conclude that upgrading your programming is necessary; in other cases, your whole system may need replacing. The IT consultant can then also help you vet potential IT security companies to help you identify which one offers the security features and assurances your company needs.
- The wisest security strategy anticipates that a breach will occur and sets the policies needed to maintain operations while recovering from the attack. Establishing redundancies, maintaining backups and containing the damage are all elements of a sound disaster recovery plan.
Ask your IT consultant to help you understand the circumstances that pose threats to your organization and the security measures you can take to reduce or eliminate them as concerns. Your IT consultant can also help you establish the plan you’ll need to recover if or when disaster strikes anyway.
Analytics
Gaining insight through the evaluation of amassed business intelligence is perhaps the best asset found in the cloud. The cloud facilitates more than just large databases; it also generates data lakes, immense reservoirs of both external and internal data pools from which analytics programs pull increasingly granular elements of wisdom. With this heightened awareness of corporate information, leadership can make decisions that more closely resemble enterprise realities, with a clearer idea of how new strategies will evolve over time.
Ask your potential IT consultant how data analytics might enhance the power of your corporate data and how it might help you make the right decisions for your five-year plan.
With so much happening in the IT universe, it only makes sense to seek out the services of an IT consultancy in New Jersey to help your enterprise make the most of its IT investments.
