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Introduction and description of the problem
IT infrastructure is a very important part of business. However, despite the importance of IT infrastructure, many companies face serious problems that negatively affect their business processes and development.
In this article we would like to collect all the important points from our experience that we have encountered over the past few years.
- the marketing budget is ineffectively used due to problems with the infrastructure or some of its components;
- difficulties arise with the rapid development of the business, with the addition of functionality when introducing a new business idea;
- changes that need to be made to the IT infrastructure turn into a headache for at least months, and possibly years.
If you are experiencing the problems listed above in your business, then most likely you should read this article to roughly understand the reason for their occurrence.
Sources of problems with IT infrastructure
We will look at the most common reasons why you may have questions about your IT infrastructure.
Incorrect planning
All projects begin with planning. At the planning stage, critical mistakes are made that affect the project as a whole. Incorrect definition of requirements, incorrect selection of technology stack, underestimation of costs and resources can lead to problems in the future.
One of the mistakes is the company’s desire to keep all processes in-house, including the non-core part of the business. Roughly speaking, if a company is engaged in trading or providing certain services, then the development of internal IT infrastructure can significantly slow down the main business and will take from 5 to 10 years. This requires a lot of time and money, and ultimately the company can turn into an IT company, moving away from its core business.
Change in business scale (the business has grown, but the contractor has not)
Initially, when a business is just starting to be created, it is most often faced with the task of somehow getting started. Its scale is relatively small, and choosing an IT system such as Drupal, WordPress or Django in the beginning seems quite satisfactory for getting things done and running a business.
However, as your business grows and new challenges arise, you run into problems. Your current system does not have sufficient flexibility and stability to solve emerging problems and ensure dynamic development.
Changing the scale of the business is also associated with the choice of contractor. Based on your initial requirements and limitations, you may have hired a contractor who specializes in simple technologies. However, as your business grows, you may need to move to different technologies or scale up your system, and your current contractor may not be able to accommodate those changes. He may not have enough competencies and experience in planning and developing large-scale systems.
Thus, changing the scale of your business requires switching to a more flexible and scalable IT system, as well as choosing a contractor who is able to accommodate these changes and develop a system that meets the new requirements and volumes of your business.
Choosing the wrong technology stack
This point is closely related to the planning stage and is its derivative.
You may find that due to poor planning, technologies have been chosen that are too basic and cannot meet the requirements for solving current problems and emerging needs.
Another common mistake is choosing the wrong technologies for the current project requirements. For example, using .NET for data analysis may be a bad decision because the technology may not provide the required efficiency and functionality.
You can also encounter the “overkill” problem when a technology is chosen that is redundant for the size of the company or the required tasks. For example, using Java for a small company may not be justified, since Java's effectiveness is evident when working with large teams of developers (10 or more people).
Another poor technology stack choice may be to use a very niche technology such as Ruby on Rails. Although Ruby on Rails provides virtually identical functionality to PHP, finding a Ruby on Rails developer can be difficult.
Overall, choosing the wrong technology stack can lead to unproductivity, low efficiency, difficulty scaling the project, and problems hiring qualified developers. Therefore, it is important to carefully analyze project requirements and make informed decisions when choosing a technology stack.
Ignoring the problem of technical debt
Businesses often do not pay enough attention to the accumulation of technical debt during the development and support process. However, technical debt has serious consequences.
The main point about technical debt is that constantly running a system in a "go, go, go, go, go, go" mode can lead to an accumulation of problems and flaws in the system's code, architecture, and infrastructure. This may cause the system to experience spontaneous collapse at some point, which may affect the functionality of the entire system or its individual components.
Technical debt includes various types of problems such as poorly organized code, lack of automated tests, outdated technology, poor architecture, and other technical deficiencies. The accumulation of these problems over time can significantly complicate the development of new features, increase the time required to fix bugs, and increase system support costs.
How can we help for each reason?
Our company has extensive experience in solving IT infrastructure problems that our clients face.
Improper planning
If there are business requirements, we can help plan the most appropriate approaches for the IT infrastructure. We can also provide advice so that the customer can think about and weigh the pros and cons, as well as correct possible planning errors.
Change in business scale
When a business grows but the contractor cannot keep up with its needs, this can become a serious problem. We are ready to replace the current contractor and take responsibility for the successful completion of the project.
Our approach is based on an audit of the contractor's activities. As a result of the audit, we will provide information about the project and its current status. As a rule, the audit ends with the transfer of the project, but we do not take on every project.
We evaluate the business's capabilities and willingness to change, as well as the scale of change, since our goal is to maintain the operating state of the business and ensure its normal functioning as a whole. We act as a technology partner that integrates into our clients' processes.
Selecting the wrong technology stack
We offer our business development expertise to help you select the optimal technology stack for a fairly long period of time, from 3 to 5 years, and sometimes up to 10 years. We also focus on operating modes to ensure your business can operate successfully in a variety of environments. We can choose a technology stack with these challenges in mind, as some technology solutions require too much attention just to support. We can work with these points and select the appropriate technology stack.
Ignoring the problem of technical debt
If a technical debt problem has been ignored for a long period of time, we can conduct a technical audit and provide solutions. We can also develop a plan to gradually reduce technical debt to reduce overall risk to the business.
When we can't help
We have a lot of experience, but there are circumstances with which we cannot help you:
- We have a narrow tech stack that includes Python for backend development and React.js for frontend. We also have experience creating native mobile applications and PWAs. However, our specialization is limited to these technologies, and we cannot develop projects beyond our technical stack;
- We fundamentally do not work with the Windows stack. This is due to the fact that insufficiently specialized solutions are obtained based on the Windows stack. They are unreliable, unstable and often require a high level of maintenance. Also, such systems have low potential for automation.
In other cases, if you have a clear idea of your business plan and requirements, a clear understanding of what you want, we are ready to help you at all stages of the project, including checking the compliance of your desires and capabilities, assessing risks and security requirements.
Ecosystem54 as a platform for further growth of your project
One of the outstanding technologies developed by 54origins is the Ecosystem54 microservices framework. This is a set of open source technologies for software development based on microservice architecture.
Benefits of using Ecosystem54:
- service independence: each service can be developed and launched independently of others, which speeds up the development process and increases productivity;
- high level of security: Ecosystem54 uses best practices in the field of security to ensure protection against any possible threats;
- scalability: thanks to the microservice architecture, each service can be scaled individually, allowing companies to meet growing needs without sacrificing performance or security;
- reasonable price: We strive to make our technology accessible to all companies, which is why we offer reasonable prices for using Ecosystem54.
Our system is based on the widely used Python Flask framework. Ecosystem54 is not a proprietary system, since its main components are open source. Ecosystem54 is easy to maintain and can be modified by other companies and developers.
You can find out more about Ecosystem54 on the website:https://ecosystem54.org/
Is your IT infrastructure ready for a new stage of development?
If you cannot confidently answer “Yes,” then we suggest asking our specialists this question and assessing the situation together. Get a consultation!
