Building a business from scratch is difficult, but what’s more challenging is adapting yourself and your enterprise to new technologies. Suppose you already have a business that started ten years ago. How much has changed until now? Nothing is the same anymore, from the customer approach to the online systems that help you provide products and services. But nothing could be possible without data.
Data needs to be collected and put into a relevant context for your business. Given that you couldn’t do that yourself because it’s too much information, you need storage systems to keep it. If you want to grow your business, you need to analyse data and make it valuable. How do you do that? With the help of hardware and software systems. You’ve surely used traditional and modern ones, but let’s talk about what has changed in the business industry regarding storage systems.
Traditional storage
Traditional storage consists of storing data on a computer’s disk. While it’s a limited method to keep data, you can add additional backup services. With the development of software technologies, traditional storage began to have certain limitations for businesses, regarding:
- Managing multiple systems, therefore compromising efficiency
- Data redundancy
- Lack of restriction toward unauthorised access
- Inflexibility
Nowadays, computer storage is not enough to provide the right tools for a business to scale and manage its data. Traditional storage is linked more to hardware systems than software. The difference between these two systems is that hardware consists of physical devices (HDD, SSD, DVD), while the software is more flexible, future-proof, and automated, and it provides tools for adjusting your business (scaling).
Scaling your business is growth, which means analysing if your business can support further development. This process requires evaluating your resources and a forecast plan regarding sales, customers, and revenues that you want to generate.
Modern cloud storage
With the continuous development of software technologies, businesses could handle repetitive tasks better and be more productive. As a company, being efficient means finding the best solutions to analyse and use your data in a valuable way. But for that to go smoothly, you need to store and protect it in cloud-based applications. These applications are embedded in servers through a hyperconverged infrastructure to deliver higher performance. This modern cloud storage makes it easier for the IT department to manage data drivers’ resources and lower the total cost of ownership.
Why is this software better? Because sometimes, manual configuration and patching can take too much time, which might be why it’s hard to grow as a business. If you choose modern software to help you focus on innovation and digital transformation, you’re able to expand your capabilities and insights for the future. For example, HCI solutions provide virtualisation and highly-automated processes for greater flexibility, lower operational costs and less downtime for easier monitoring and configuring data resiliency.
Converged vs. hyperconverged software
Virtualizing your workload increases the storage capacity requirements, resulting in redundant data that consumes time and effort. Therefore, software infrastructures aim to connect physical servers and storage with further virtual machines and single-storage controller development. There are two types of these systems that you can use for that:
- Converged infrastructure (CI) works by building blocks through hardware systems which combine storage and processes to reduce overall costs and compatibility issues.
- Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) has a similar goal. Still, it’s a software approach for deploying commodity components through virtual machine translation technologies and API (a communication tool that connects one service to another).
As an organisation, you’re likely to use these infrastructures to:
- Manage remote or branch office infrastructure (to reduce the risk of downtime with optimum recovery objective)
- Manage remote disaster recovery sites (with protection policies and recovery plans)
- Consolidate your data centre for more efficient IT architectures
- Implement VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) that lets a desktop operating system run and be managed in a data centre.
- Perform data migration within or across sites (transferring the existing historical data to new storage systems.
What has modern software added to business productivity?
In the age of technology, it’s important to be fast and efficient. Meaning that you need updated tools to change how you’re doing business. Therefore, the software has changed the modern business through:
- Helping with mobility applications. Since the rise of remote work, it’s crucial to keep operating on the go and keep everyone in your business connected to the daily tasks.
- Cloud-based application. Important documents and files need to be kept in a secure place.
- Improved communication systems. Now communication between you and your clients or customers can be more facile through online software packages.
- Progress tracking. Micromanaging is out of date. Therefore, project reports offered by online software provide insights into your team’s activities and productivity.
How can software programs help your business?
The meaning of being a successful company has drastically changed through the years. It was enough to start a business and become known in your local zone with a few products before, but now you need to adapt to constant trend changes. When it comes to customers’ expectations, you need to change and adjust almost everything from products to customer approach. Therefore, software systems can help you in:
- Managing your inventory. To cut unnecessary costs and make a profit, you need to organise and track your inventory records.
- Managing payroll and accounting systems. Your business needs to be quick and efficient regarding employee income and expenses. Therefore you need an accurate financial tracking system.
- Customer relationship management (CRM). This type of software solution helps you improve sales and maintain healthy customer relationships.
- Courier management. To efficiently organise and structure shipment schedules, you need a courier and delivery software.
- Security. Your brand’s integrity can be affected if your customers’ information is not protected against cyber-attacks; therefore, security software is crucial to implement.
Final thoughts
Implementation of modern software is the future of successful companies. Of course, without the traditional methods of storing data, technology couldn’t improve at such a fast pace. But to keep up with trends and be efficient and quick, you need to take your business to another level. Let software systems work for you and focus on your future objectives.