Organizations typically operate multiple generations of technology ranging from network and WiFi equipment to servers to cloud infrastructure to off-the-shelf software as well as in-house systems and programs written in a variety of programming languages. It is natural that one or the other part of this complex matrix of new and aging technologies will require maintenance or upgrading at any given time.
In addition, expedient choices of technology in the past, either to save time or money, make even keeping operations running a huge challenge. With every new technology added, it will be a struggle just to ensure that your legacy systems and technologies that were never even designed to integrate with the newer ones work smoothly. This in turn introduces inefficiencies in your business operations.
This implicit cost of deferring the adoption of the right technology is known as “technical debt”. In this blog post, we explore technical debt in IT infrastructure and offer some practical advice for better managing this difficult and complex problem.
What Is Technical Debt?
Technical debt is a concept that reflects the implied cost caused by choosing an easy or cheap solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer or cost more. In other words, technical debt is the cost you have to pay for running or supporting an imperfect technology. Similar to financial debt, where you borrow money now and pay it back with interest in the future, technical debt allows you to quickly achieve a goal now but will require remediation at a higher cost in the future.
Technical debt may not necessarily be a bad thing as it allows you to move projects expeditiously and achieve critical business goals. However, just like monetary debt, technical debt also keeps accruing interest over time. The longer you take to remedy it, the higher the cost of remediation. So if you have to make the difficult decision to incur any technical debt, you shouldn’t let it linger for too long.
Technical Debt In IT Infrastructure
Technical debt is a concept that was first documented in software development but it can be related to any technical project. In IT infrastructure, technical debt refers to the implied cost of not keeping technology components such as computers, servers, network components, applications, etc. at a state where the current business and technology landscape requires them to be.
Since technical debt has to do with refurbishing or maintaining the existing technology infrastructure and not investing in new technology, business leaders may find it difficult to understand this concept. Calls for replacing old systems and technologies are usually met with rejection for being “too expensive” or “having too little Return On Investment (ROI)”.
Examples Of Infrastructure Technical Debt
Technical debt can exist in any part of your IT infrastructure. Here are a few examples:
The use of consumer-grade WiFi equipment by businesses is the most common source of technical debt. Consumer-grade network equipment isn’t designed to run in a business environment and businesses that use them tend to suffer from spotty, slow, or drops in the WiFi connection when the number of users rises. In addition, they lack the critical security and functional features that business-grade network equipment offer.
The use of very old network equipment such as routers and switches is also a source of technical debt. If organizations do not refresh their network technology, they miss out on functionality such as Network Access Control or centralized wireless access point management that are critical for security and compliance.
Outdated servers that are past their end-of-service lifecycle are another source of technical debt. Such servers have frequent failures and struggle to run the latest technology stacks such as virtualization.
What Are The Consequences Of Technical Debt?
Deferring the “payment of your technical debt” forces engineers to resort to merely patching over problems while the problems grow bigger and more complex. This is detrimental to a business because the need to keep pace with the technology is not just an IT need, it is a strategic business need.
Legacy infrastructure that falls behind current technology norms suffers from component failures, inability to integrate new technologies, and mounting security risks. IT infrastructure burdened with technical debt requires your IT team to dedicate more and more time to troubleshooting, which steals time away from more important projects, new services, and innovation.
How To Measure Technical Debt In IT Infrastructure
Direct Cost - It is the cost necessary to maintain obsolete legacy systems and to fix recurring hardware and system problems.
Indirect Cost - It is the cost incurred due to the outages and interruptions in business processes such as operations, sales, etc.
Interest - It is the buildup of the maintenance and repair costs over time. The time required for diagnosing, troubleshooting, and repairing will keep increasing year over year as obsolete equipment and systems keep deteriorating.
Opportunity Costs - The investment of money spent on operational maintenance takes away resources from strategic IT initiatives. In addition, the time spent by your highly-skilled engineers in troubleshooting is done at the cost of other tasks such as writing code, which is of higher business value to the company.
You can figure out your organization’s technical debt by making an assessment of the useful lifespan of your infrastructure components and their fitness for new applications planned over the next three years. After you complete the assessment, you can calculate the costs discussed above for each infrastructure component. Although parts of this assessment are subjective and vary from one organization to another, nevertheless, you can arrive at an approximate dollar value you can work with.
How To Manage Technical Debt In IT Infrastructure?
Here are some steps you can take to better manage technical debt in IT infrastructure:
1. Frame Infrastructure Refresh Policies
Infrastructure technical debt is incurred because of poor business decisions. This can be attributed to a lack of policies guiding investments in IT infrastructure. Every organization has policies for all its important business processes such as procurement, expense reporting, ethics, human resources, etc. but very few companies develop policies specifying technology refresh requirements.
Every business strategy requires policies that dictate how it aligns the business goals and how the organization is going to support the strategy. Therefore any strategy that you devise for managing technical debt will also require supporting policies that are accepted by all stakeholders and documented.
2. Measure Your Technical Debt
To manage the technical debt you need to monitor it and to monitor it, you need to make technical debt visible. So you will require a systematic approach to measure your organization’s technical debt and report it to business leadership. You will first need to assess existing IT infrastructure, which can be done as part of a security risk assessment. Once you complete the assessment, you can estimate support and maintenance costs and that will be the state of technical debt in your organization.
3. Define Standards For All IT Infrastructure
Organizations more often than not are stuck using legacy systems because of the faulty line of thinking- “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”. This is a dangerous narrative that is one of the biggest contributors to technical debt.
To get out of this, organizations need to establish standards for their IT infrastructure. In addition to defined end-of-life, infrastructure components such as servers, switches, storage systems, etc. need to meet technology standards not just for the present but also for the near future.
This helps ensure that you can address technical debt before it reaches a tipping point and brings operations to a crashing halt. It will also help simplify maintenance and support as well as procurement and vendor management.
4. Take A Business Point Of View Of IT Infrastructure
IT infrastructure should be viewed from a business perspective taking into consideration business needs, security risks and vulnerabilities, technology landscape, compliance requirements, and customer expectations. It’s not just end-of-life or poor choice of technology that accrue technical debt. New technology requirements can be triggered by changes in business needs or customer expectations. Therefore, business metrics should guide the leadership in plans for remediations of existing technical debt.
Conclusion
IT infrastructure technical debt can be incurred due to a number of reasons, the most important ones being expedient technology choices and failure to make incremental upgrades on legacy systems. Delay in remediation of technical debt usually leads to existing systems becoming too complex to maintain and difficult to use.
While technical debt may find occasional use in progressing projects, the negative impact of infrastructure technical debt can have a far-reaching impact on business operations. It can negatively affect operational efficiency, revenue generation, security, sales, finance, human resources, etc. Therefore, businesses need to have a system for monitoring and managing technical debt in IT infrastructure. The suggestions outlined in this blog should help you get a good start.
Do you need help managing the technical debt in your IT Infrastructure? Reach out to us by clicking the button below to find out how we can help you to better manage and reduce your technical debt.
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About The Author
Hari SubediMarketing Manager at Jones IT
Hari is an online marketing professional with a focus on content marketing. He writes on topics related to IT, Security, Small Business, and Mindfulness. He is also the founder and managing director of Girivar Kft., a business services company located in Budapest, Hungary.