Network assessments satisfy an important function. They involve performing thorough scans of your IT infrastructure to ensure everything is performing optimally and suggest improvements. Even a one-time network assessment can help you save money, reduce risks, expand capabilities, and improve your customer relationships. There are continuing benefits with a regular program of network assessments.
What Network Assessment Involves
An assessment is a review and analysis of your entire IT infrastructure, including IT management, security, digital processes, hardware, software, and overall performance. This gives you a comprehensive picture to identify where and what improvements may be needed. It allows you to discover new opportunities and gauge the overall effectiveness and value of the state of your company’s IT. You then have the information you need to make better business decisions.
This is where fast and accurate network assessment tools are invaluable.
What Will a Network Assessment Identify?
While a network assessment can provide insights into all your IT operations, there are a few main objectives:
Use of Resources: Some business functions may require greater IT resources than others, with the result that these resources may be under or overused from one department to the next. Network assessments will help to define real needs so that resources can be allocated correctly.
Bottlenecks: Bandwidth use can be restricted and slowed by demanding applications, large data files, or streaming video. This slows down other programs trying to use a share of your network bandwidth. Adding more bandwidth may not solve the problem. A network assessment will help to identify areas where bottlenecks occur and suggest ways to resolve them.
Security: Data breaches, denial-of-service attacks, and malware are constant threats. They can lead to lost productivity and a loss of customer confidence. A network assessment can test your infrastructure to see where potential cyber threats are likely to occur and allow you to design solutions to eliminate these vulnerabilities.
Risk Assessment: Network assessments will allow you to identify the potential benefits vs disadvantages of adopting new technologies, such as file conflicts or ease of implementation along legacy systems. With exact knowledge of your existing network, you’ll be better able to plan for the smooth integration of new systems without the need for major network overhauls or upgrades.
Best Time for a Network Assessment
The ideal time for a network assessment is when you’re planning a roll-out of a major new application or IT service that might change the demands and structure of your organization’s network. For instance, adding a new VoIP telephone solution or connecting your internal network with various online websites and functions are expected to increase traffic. A network assessment performed well ahead of actual implementation will help you to identify what improvements or changes must be made for the easiest and most effective roll-out.
You don’t want to wind up struggling with unexpected issues that only result in downtime and lost revenue. In general, however, anytime you aren’t happy with network performance and are uncertain of the solution, a network assessment is in order.
What Solutions are Available?
Although there are various tools that come with certain vendor products, your best option is to work with an experienced network solutions team. At My Computing RX computer repair, we have the equipment and expertise already in place to perform a quick and thorough assessment of your company’s IT infrastructure. This has enabled us to solve network issues for our many clients and can help you to make informed decisions in your IT strategy.