3 mistakes IT makes that could be costly

It’s an understatement to say that IT departments are busy. From maintenance to troubleshooting, managing ongoing projects and overseeing resolutions on outages or system failures, there’s often little time for future project planning.

However, when details get lost in the shuffle, that’s when costly mistakes happen. These mistakes can carry a heavy price tag, affecting your personal reputation and that of your organization. What’s worse is that these aren’t your “I spilled my coffee on a server” moments. These are systematic failings that many IT organizations make—often
needlessly.

Is your growing data a growing problem?

Your data is the lifeblood of your organization. In the information economy, a growing business means an increasing amount of data is transferred between your employees, customers, business partners, and vendors. Issues start to arise when your file transfer infrastructure fails to scale with the growing needs of your business.

Maybe you have been relying on a legacy system like an FTP server to transfer data, antiquated homegrown scripts, an ineffective file sync and share solution or a combination of the three to move your data. However, you could be making the following mistakes with your file transfer infrastructure that could cost your organization millions.

Mistake #1: leaving legacy systems in place

Issues stemming from legacy applications are one of the most difficult issues IT pros face today. Digital business initiatives have increased the need to exchange critical data across widespread, disparate systems. Yet Fifty-seven percent of organizations are using gateway technology that’s more than 5 years old (Ovum Research).

Legacy systems have a number of issues associated with them, including:
• The application uses outdated or obsolete technology or best practices
• Incomplete or sometimes no documentation, and the accuracy and currency of the documentation that does exist is suspect, leaving the IT team in the dark
• Skill sets needed to work with the older technology are no longer available
• The original developers are no longer working on the IT team or with the company
• Many different developers over the years have used different approaches, making the system less than reliable

A rip-and-replace approach can be expensive and interrupt everyday business. Meanwhile, the impact of legacy software or systems can have a ripple effect across the organization, causing poor or delayed transfers of sensitive, mission-critical data. These outdated solutions can also cause a business to default on service level agreements (SLAs) that might be directly tied to work with customers or partners.

Worse yet, an old application could create unnecessary vulnerabilities for your entire network. For instance, an old application in a dark corner of your organization may not have been updated in years, leaving a glaring opportunity for malicious actors to take advantage of an IT network.

What is the cost to your organization?

The added costs that often accompany legacy systems are staggering. By some estimates, legacy systems are costing organizations 10-15 percent more per year, just for maintenance alone. (Robinson, 2015) While, some government agencies are spending 79 percent of their IT budget, or an average of $62 billion annually, just to
keep these systems running.

(Lauri, 2013) Seventy-seven percent of organizations say that data exchange failures would have a critical business impact, including missing SLAs and major loss of revenue. Yet, for something so important, a surprising number of organizations are littered with noncompliant and rogue data exchange solutions, making the environment ripe for failed data transactions.

Often, administrators that manage legacy infrastructures have limited visibility and control over how company data is being exchanged.

Remedy: replace legacy systems with quality managed file transfer platform

With the growing complexity of these file transfer systems, the do-it-yourself approach to integrating MFT systems is no longer as feasible as it once was. Seventy-five percent of IT managers feel that IT projects, such as these, are doomed to fail—and it’s not because the buyer made a bad product decision – it’s because the game has changed, albeit ever so slightly. Unclear goals within your organization,

Unclear goals within your organization, complex integration requirements, and unresponsive vendors can push your project off-course, overtime, and over-budget. No wonder IT admins are hesitant to stay with the status quo, no matter how brittle and unresponsive it is.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, however. A growing class of MFT providers has acknowledged the new reality of projects such as these, and have developed products and services accordingly. With the need
for a customized solution and increasing knowledge of a growing list of compliance requirements, and the increasing need for agility that organizations place on their IT staff, vendors have realized that the importance of service expertise is growing.

Author: Gideon E. M

Gideon Ebonde M. is the CEO and Chief Software Architect at Musato Technologies. He is experienced Software developer with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. He has a strong engineering professional skilled in Mobile Application Development, Enterprise Software, AI, Robotics, IoT, Servers, Cloud and business application. He is an accomplished DevOps software engineer and a visionary computer scientist and engineer.