Implementing Technology that Understands your Business

This typically includes doomsday predictions from those vendors about what will happen to companies that don’t adopt said technology. Conference attendees tend to return with demands to implement platforms that, despite their claims of forthcoming ubiquity, don’t always support our long-term objectives. We need to change that perception and explain what will or will not improve productivity and increase our bottom line. Sometimes this means embracing a trend. Other times it does not.

At D&H, for example, one of our industry advantages is that we are more nimble than our competitors. We require an infrastructure that can change and adapt, accommodating new directives with greater agility than a larger organization. To that end, we’ve embraced a virtualized server infrastructure. We maintain upwards of 800 servers, and close to 98 percent of those assets are virtualized. This allows us to rapidly scale and modify our capacity as-needed, without the acquisition of additional hardware.

And although cloud-based solutions are now the rage, both in the media and in the vendor community, businesses are still wary of hosting the entirety of their systems in the cloud. Models are gaining momentum, wherein businesses choose what functionality is best delivered as an on-premises service and which can best be accommodated by a hosted service. When selecting new applications, businesses must weigh the benefits of both. CIOs need to strategically evaluate what platform is right for the company, as opposed to what current trends dictate.

D&H has opted for a hybrid cloud infrastructure that provides greater control over how and where we deploy. Through this private cloud environment, we’re deploying CRM that’s integrated with our back-office systems. These solutions allow our business leaders to make wiser and timely decisions based on detailed customer data and real-time purchasing trends. It’s then our responsibility to make sure those systems are robust and stable, so they’re available whenever the business needs them.

D&H serves a community of computer resellers and integrators that sell into the small and medium size business marketplace. As such, these resellers play a crucial role in providing the consultation and guidance necessary to help SMB companies make informed and strategic technology decisions. Resellers need to help change the dialog between themselves and the end-customer, emphasizing business needs and making sure that the technology they sell is vested in a deep understanding of those processes.

In the end, the more we understand the end-goal of our businesses, the more we can tailor our technology choices to proficiently address them. And although we should demand nothing less than best-in-class technology, we must make those final choices according to efficacy, not hype.