Centralisation

Centralisation of IT services is becoming more popular as companies recognise the benefits of running applications from a single source of real-time data, for example, ordering and inventory systems and hotel and hospitality booking and property / revenue management systems.

Achieving this level of IT service is reliant on having an efficient communications and computing infrastructure. A thin client network, where the server acts as the central processing hub for business applications, is the fundamental building block for centralised IT systems. It replaces traditional PC, LAN and server networks which are difficult to manage and maintain as IT hardware may be of different ages and running different releases of the same operating system. From a practical perspective this makes maintaining systems difficult for operating system, anti-virus and application software updates.

Centralised systems, on the other hand, make IT systems management and maintenance easier by providing a single point for applying upgrades, and other software updates. From a business perspective, the benefits are both external and internal. By working from the most up-to-date data, companies are able to offer improved customer service when responding to product and venue availability requests, for example. Internally centralisation makes it easier to monitor business performance by presenting a single source for sales, procurement, stock holding and warehouse information rather than fragmented view spread over a number of different systems.

A centralised approach makes IT support more important and easier. It's more important because a centralised system has a single point of failure and so server replication / high availability backup systems and disaster recovery planning are critical.

For details of our next technical workshop on Centralisation contact us.