The Mighty Fortress Has an Achilles Heel: It Takes More Than a Building

Many IT service providers focus on building massive, physically secure data centers to impress clients with their redundant infrastructure and elaborate security measures. However, despite these fortresses of infrastructure, a significant vulnerability remains—people and process issues account for nearly 80% of all IT outages.

At IP Services, we recognize that true IT reliability hinges on more than just redundant power and cooling systems. High availability is achieved through rigorous process management and the effective use of preventive, detective, and corrective controls. Our approach ensures that the people and processes managing infrastructure are just as reliable as the physical environment in which that infrastructure resides.

Process and Controls: The Key to Reliability

High-performing IT organizations understand that people and process failures are the most common causes of outages. By implementing strong change management, incident response, and configuration management processes, these organizations can prevent and quickly resolve issues that might otherwise lead to downtime.

At IP Services, we leverage the principles outlined in the VisibleOps Handbook to help businesses manage infrastructure more effectively. Our preventive controls ensure that changes are thoroughly reviewed and approved before being implemented. Detective controls continuously monitor systems for unauthorized changes, and corrective controls ensure that incidents are resolved quickly and effectively.

Conclusion

Building a physically secure data center is important, but it is not enough to guarantee high availability. The real key to IT reliability lies in the processes and controls that manage infrastructure. At IP Services, we help businesses implement these controls to ensure that their IT systems remain stable and secure, no matter what challenges arise.