23/06/2022, 07:34 What Is an IT Infrastructure?

Types and Components

Cleveroad Blog Client Guides Define it infrastructure

What Is an IT Infrastructure? [A
Beginner’s Guide]
Updated 25 Apr 2022 8 Min 5566 Views

Katherine Orekhova
Copywriter

Modern business is impossible to run without a convenient and flexible IT infrastructure.

Properly set and networked, technologies can improve back-office operations, increase
productivity, and make communication easier.

Information technology infrastructure or IT infrastructure refers to components required to

operate and manage business IT environments. IT infrastructure can be used to deliver services
or resources within an organization, or externally to organization's customers. Carefully
implemented IT infrastructure helps businesses meet goals and even increase profit.

IT infrastructure offers:

The good user experience by providing smooth access to the company’s product
Real-time data exchange
Increase in employees’ productivity
Established cross-functional and interpersonal communication
Customer satisfaction and better overall performance

What Are the IT Infrastructure Components?

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IT infrastructure components stand for a combination of hardware, software, and networks. The
system is designed to improve communication between components, linking devices to
printers, desktops to networks, and servers to the cloud.

What is an IT infrastructure?

There are a lot of ways to deploy, organize, and integrate components of information technology
infrastructure. Below you can find the components of typical IT infrastructure.

Hardware H

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Types of IT Infrastructure: Traditional vs. Cloud

All the components mentioned above are associated with the traditional infrastructure. This
model is commonly used by enterprise companies and managed within their facilities. Put
simply, those companies have data centers where they store and process information.

There is also a cloud IT infrastructure. It’s similar to the traditional model, but cloud IT
infrastructure tends to be more scalable.

Want to build an IT infrastructure?

Discuss your options with our tech experts

Contact us

Traditional IT Infrastructure

The traditional IT infrastructure usually consists of hardware and software components like
servers, desktop computers, enterprise software solutions, and more. Servers are typically run
and installed on-premises to provide employees access to the required information and
applications.

The development team requires more power and space to integrate traditional infrastructure. In
most cases, traditional IT infrastructure is more expensive to set up and support. You need to buy
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costly equipment and allocate resources for maintenance. The system has to be upgraded
regularly to scale up data storage or other services to support more users.

Traditional IT infrastructure tends to be the most secure data hosting solution. It offers full
control over your company’s apps and data.

What is traditional IT infrastructure?

When to choose traditional IT infrastructure?

You have an in-house IT department to install and maintain hardware.

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Your company works with software development and needs to update various software
solutions regularly.
Your team runs different types of applications.

Cloud IT Infrastructure

Cloud computing gains popularity due to its convenience. What does cloud IT infrastructure
mean? Instead of having physical hardware, all servers, software, and networks are hosted in the
cloud.

So rather than spending money on buying physical servers in-house, you can rent the data
storage from cloud computing providers like Amazon paying for it on a pay-per-use basis.

Cloud-based apps have the following characteristics:

The app’s data is stored in a cloud infrastructure. So, there are minimum requirements for
devices to run the application.
It’s possible to store the data on the device. It allows the app to work offline. However, once
the device is online again, the app will be updated automatically. As a result, all the
information will be uploaded to the cloud.
Customers can use the app from any device. All the information is stored in the cloud, so
users can continue working on any device.

I’ve already touched upon cloud-based app development, covering tech-challenges and
steps to take.

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What is cloud IT infrastructure?

There are several differences between traditional and cloud IT infrastructure.

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A lot of cloud providers (like AWS, Microsoft Azure, DigitalOcean) are ready to give you
hardware, networking, hard drives, storage, and servers.

The more data centers the provider has, the better your app performance will be. For example,
global providers locate their servers to offer users the same page loading speed despite their
location. It’s also a common practice to use content delivery networks (CDN) to speed up
delivery. They’re often a part of cloud app infrastructure.

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At Cleveroad, we help our customers to create and implement cloud IT infrastructure.

Take a look at how we created and configured AWS server architecture for Occaz, a
French service for buying used cars safely.

IT Infrastructure Management
IT organizations have already developed methodologies and frameworks for managing IT
infrastructure. There are three primary practices to discuss — ITOM, ITSM, and ITAM.

IT Operational Management or ITOM

ITOM refers to the set of tools and processes that help maintain IT infrastructure. This practice
also ensures that the chosen IT infrastructure is available, reliable, and effective on behalf of the
business.

ITOM has various functions like network asset discovery, operational intelligence and data
collection, network event management, orchestration, and cloud management.

IT Service Management or ITSM

ITSM refers to all the activities involved in designing, creating, delivering, supporting, and
managing the lifecycle of IT services.

IT service management is intended to enable and maintain optimal deployment, operation, and
management of every single IT resource for every user in the extended enterprise.

IT Asset Management or ITAM

ITAM is responsible for lifecycle management for IT infrastructure, both hardware and software.
It usually consists of three parts:

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Financial. The primary goal of ITAM is to optimize IT expenses. It means implementing cost-
effective IT infrastructure, ensuring that new investments are required and cost-justified.
Inventory. It means that managers control and oversight IT infrastructure. As a result, it’s
possible to make thoughtful decisions when investing in IT infrastructure.
Contractual. Managers oversee software license agreements, cloud service agreements, and
other contracts related to IT infrastructure.

What Is Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS?

IaaS means that a service provider manages your business's infrastructure — servers, network,
visualization, and storage via a public or private cloud.

As a business owner, you can access the infrastructure using an API or admin panel. You can also
manage operating systems and apps while providers (like AWS or Microsoft Azure) give you
hardware, networking, hard drives, storage, and servers.

IaaS has various advantages:

Usage-based price. You pay only for necessary and used services.
Reduced capital expenditures. IaaS usually requires a monthly payment.
Increased security. IaaS providers invest in security to offer better services.
Simple access. you can access the server only by having an Internet connection.

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What is Infrastructure as a Service?

How Cleveroad Can Help You

Cleveroad is a professional software development company from Central Europe. Since 2011,
we've been helping businesses of all kinds implement cloud IT infrastructure.

We offer full-cycle DevOps services and help you:

Create, adjust, support, and optimize integration and code delivery tools (Jenkins, Bamboo)
Interact with Version Control Systems (Gitlab, Github, Bitbucket)
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Automate processes by creating scripts or using specific technologies like Ansible

Administrate cloud platforms (AWS)
Optimize a cloud IT infrastructure
Integrate a required technology into a company’s IT processes

Got questions?
Schedule a consultation with our team to get consulted about your
IT infrastructure.

Schedule now

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an IT infrastructure?

What are IT infrastructure components?

What are the different types of IT infrastructure?

How to manage IT infrastructure?

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