Owing to the importance of technology in businesses, modern startups should consider their underlying IT solutions carefully.
The modern business climate can often be challenging for startups, which is why they need to do everything in their power to build an efficient, cost-effective operation. For example, where startups lack resources, they make up for in agility – but this agility needs to be exercised using the right tools. We spoke with TechQuarters, an it support company in London. According to them, there are several valuable IT solutions that modern startups need to be integrating.
- Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Technology is an essential part of business nowadays, as it forms the foundation of most organisation’s infrastructure. Traditionally, businesses would have an infrastructure comprised of servers, a local internet network (LAN), storage arrays, etc. The trouble with this is that it requires the business to purchase all of the equipment upfront, and outright – this could prove too costly for a startup. According to TechQuarters, whose work providing IT support for schools has seen them work a lot with IT infrastructure, a more affordable, and more future-proof alternative to this is Infrastructure-as-a-Service (or IaaS).
IaaS leverages cloud computing to allow businesses to host their workloads in a cloud environment, rather than on servers in their office. The infrastructure needed for this is provided by a cloud service provider, such as Microsoft. The benefit of IaaS is that it requires no large upfront costs, but instead requires a smaller, ongoing monthly bill. As well as this, IaaS is highly scalable, meaning it will serve businesses indefinitely.
- Unified Communication
Another area of businesses that is very important – and which has been heavily influenced by IT over the last decade – is communication. TechQuarters has provided IT support for estate agents, and found that in the last few years (most likely owing to the COVID-19 pandemic) the demand for virtual communications has seen a major boom. With the way in which businesses are working and interacting with customers changing, ensuring that an organisation – and all its workers – have access to their communications wherever they are, and whenever they need them, is very important.
Unified communications is becoming a highly demanded solution. The principle of having all the channels of communication that a business uses available from a single endpoint is revolutionary – consider the fact that email used to only be available on a desktop PC, and telephone systems had to be hard-wired into the office. Nowadays, with cloud-based apps for instant messaging, email, and video conferencing, and the development of internet-powered telephony solutions like PBX and VoIP, it is now possible for startups to have that level of flexibility and agility in the way they communicate.
- Productivity Platforms
We asked TechQuarters about the kinds of IT solutions that businesses need for their day-to-day operations – as they have a lot of experience with this; for example, as Microsoft 365 and SharePoint consultants, TechQuarters has helped many small businesses establish a strong, streamlined structure for internal information sharing and collaboration. They said that have a unified productivity platform is highly valuable. But what example does this mean?
Nowadays, the number of apps and services a business uses continues to grow. Having to source all of these apps and services from different vendors poses significant issues – such as the price of it investing in many different licenses, and the difficulties IT departments will have integrated all of those solutions.
Instead, a business can adopt a productivity ecosystem – such as Microsoft 365, or Google Workspace – to get a diverse array of solutions with a single OpEx outgoing.