A technology stack can have a significant impact on your business. It allows you to focus on your business goals while your technology runs seamlessly in the background. Maintaining a well-planned-out and up to date stack can be the difference between your business’ success or failure.
We are constantly evaluating our own technology stack and our clients' to ensure all IT environments perform at a high level. Usherwood finds it critical to choose the tools in our technology stack strategically. To help you better understand, we'll use our industry insight to share what a technology stack is and why it's essential to your business's success.
A technology stack is a collection of different technologies that work together within your IT environment. It comprises hardware, software, applications, and helpful tools that work together to make your systems run smoothly. Many different front-end and back-end technologies can go into a technology stack. All the software, hardware, and tools you choose to configure your IT environment must work in sync with each other to create a fully optimized environment.
Technology stacks will involve hardware, software, and applications in the server environment, infrastructure, security, user devices, and the cloud. Each piece of technology must be chosen carefully so your domain functions at the highest quality. Below is an example of what a typical technology stack includes:
When choosing your technology stack, it's essential to ensure the stack can support your business infrastructure. You should consider the need for your technology in your business model. Once this is determined, you'll want to investigate the best technology to fit those needs. It's safest to go with established technology and look into how many years they have been providing their technology.
This will help you determine that the tools have a good reputation and will be successful in your environment. It can also be helpful to research what type of industries use certain brands and models of particular technology.
If you find industries like yours, you typically use specific tools that may help you determine which will be helpful for your business. It's essential to evaluate what type of tools you currently have in your stack when choosing new devices, as you want to ensure they're compatible with the ones you already have in place. This will help you avoid reworking your entire existing infrastructure.
Scalability and security are also crucial to the technology stack you choose. Find tools to add more processes and hardware to improve overall performance. Security should always be a top priority. Ensure the tools you put in your stack prevent data breaches and loss from keeping your business secure.
Having a solid technology stack can help your business run more efficiently. It's essential to strategically map out your technology stack to ensure your systems aren't running slow or failing. You don't want a stack to fail on you constantly. Your technology stack can give your business a better user experience for your employees and clients. Investing in the right tools can seem daunting and expensive, but your technological choices will further benefit you if chosen strategically.
MSPs typically have a technology stack they present to their clients. For this reason, it's essential to ensure your MSP places substantial value on what they put in their stack. You want to avoid random tools put into your critical environment.
Your MSP should provide you with the reason for how and why they chose their technology stack. The technology stack they provide for your business should have been vetted and selected to ensure that the products and technology complement each other and are the best fit for your specific business.
An MSP should intricately explain their process of building the stack and how it has proven successful with their current or past clients. This ensures their credibility and will help assure your business their stack will run efficiently and work together to enhance your IT environment.
Having a reliable technology stack is critical to your business's success. If your company doesn't have a stack of equipment working well together, this can cause systems to run less efficiently than they're capable of. When you have a solid technology stack that's been tested and verified, it will complement each other, and you'll have an optimized environment.
If you're interested in learning more about MSPs and how to ensure you are choosing the right one to support your business, check out our other article, "10 Questions To Ask Before Committing to a Managed Service Provider," or reach out to Usherwood today to receive a tech evaluation to see what technology stack we can offer your business.