IT infrastructure has expanded rapidly over the last decade and has positioned IT as an active business partner. This drastic expansion means IT teams need to look for effective and scalable mechanisms to manage the IT infrastructure at optimal costs and efforts. Here we discuss how User Interface (UI) can play a significant role in effectively executing IT infrastructure management.
The IT department has a broad view of business services and infrastructure. To manage and serve dynamic IT infrastructure needs with ease, businesses are adopting various automation solutions to scale up efficiencies by improving visibility into infrastructure services while avoiding service outages and maximizing operational agility. Automation can save a lot of manual efforts and provide data to drive business decisions but, without proper UI and visualizations, IT teams cannot completely understand the data and service flows provided by automation.
Data visualization is the presentation of abstract information in graphical form. Data visualization allows us to spot patterns, trends, and correlations that otherwise might go unnoticed in traditional reports, tables, or spreadsheets."
- Oracle
Data visualization isn’t as simple as it appears, having the right information at the right time is the key. Without this, the entire processes can slow down which decreases overall efficiency. This can greatly affect IT system administration and troubleshooting activities. For example, discovering and analyzing an issue is a time sensitive task without proper data visualization and UI, it can compromise SLAs.
Binding complex functionalities under a well-defined UI enables IT teams to get results immediately. So, having a strong UI can simplify the process of IT administration and troubleshooting.
The UI and User Experience (UX) design process is completely agile. For IT teams to achieve better results, striking the right balance among the UI design requirements and UX is important. There a few things to consider to get this right.
Expanding IT Infrastructure with new capabilities and resources is common. Initiating new deployments through UI requires following a structured process to guarantee all modules are installed properly. UI design patterns keep the process simple and provide transparency throughout the installation process. Generalization can simplify the process to prevent errors and speed up the entire process. Typically, in the deployment process, mostly wizards are used.
The type of UI that goes into IT infrastructure monitoring isn’t the same as in the deployment process. The goal is to optimize IT operations management. This process involves checking the utilization and performance status and extract deeper insights of performance. IT teams need better data visualization and dashboards that enhance understanding of efficiency in IT infrastructure with a report specific to each business case.
UI and UX reporting should vary based on the hierarchy of access. For example, IT admins need an IT infrastructure map and access to data about each deployment. The UI deployed should provide visualizations with appropriate information in dashboards that are easy to understand. If you consider roles like users, the UI should be simple interfaces, so if there is an incident, users can troubleshoot without getting into technicalities.
UI is a critical part of the IT infrastructure management process, to have a successful adoption of UI it is mandatory to have a well-defined UI/UX roadmap and strategy.