Business is looking always for a robust IT environment with the lowest down time, building unbreakable IT environment is a mission for IT department, and the functional or business department should support the IT to build this environment.

Key of success for any organization is a strong work environment, metrics to measure strong work environment depends on business needs which means the strongest work environment must be compatible with business needs, IT department should analyze the business needs to know if it doable or not, and discuss the result with business departments.

IT department should document all business requirements and the analysis results and sign it from authorized person or group from business side.

Unbreakable IT environment is one of the things that will keep the functional and business departments satisfied, and will decrease down time and cost. IT people should focus on service not on technology to give the business what they expect.

Weak IT environment in some businesses will cost the business extra money, reputation will be negatively affected, decrease customer satisfaction, and maybe pay to the government penalties.

The business should support the IT people to build a strong work environment by giving them the authority, budget and human resources as needed.

To build your unbreakable IT environment there are many technologies you can use like (cloud, virtualization, mirroring …etc). You can use your facilities or you do it with outsourced company.

Good understanding of the company’s business and business needs it’s a mission for IT people, this mission will give the IT better chance to build unbreakable IT environment.

My advice to build your unbreakable IT environments is:

1-      Collect the business needs and do the business impact analysis to categories the business processes that depend on IT environment.

2-      Analyze the requirements to determine if they are applicable or not.

3-      Be honest with your business people by reporting them the result of your analysis, and say “No” when it’s needed.

4-      Choosing a good technology depends on the budget, business needs and analysis results.

5-      Don’t try to give the business extra features it is a “Gold Plating”.