2020 New Year’s Resolutions for IT Professionals

Many of us make New Year's resolutions each year with the hope of making long-lasting, positive changes. Mark Zuckerberg is renowned for making tough resolutions such as learning Mandarin, running 365 miles or building an artificially intelligent assistant for his home, but what if your IT infrastructure could make New Year's resolutions? Here are some New Year’s resolutions for IT professionals.

1. Review your security

You should never stop considering that there could be a better security product for your needs. You should perform a security audit every year and New Year’s is a perfect time to get it done – you can then go into 2020 confident that your business and end users are safe from hackers, ransomware and viruses. Sophos offers perimeterless defence, ideal for the modern business that is not just operating within the office walls, but through mobile, tablet and laptop around the world.

2. Fail to plan, plan to fail - capacity planning

It’s a good idea to at least annually look at data usage trends among your organisation. Look out for high data usage to low user ratios and if something looks a bit askew, look into it. You also need to keep an eye on server capacities. It depends on your business but generally, it should raise your attention if your file server is running at over 80% capacity or if your physical platform is running at over 60% capacity.

3. 48% of disaster recovery tests fail - demonstrate your backups

All too often, companies spend considerable time and money backing up their data, only to find when something goes wrong with their data storage, that the backups didn’t work. “The Symantec Disaster Recovery Research 2007" report found that, 48% of the time, companies testing disaster recovery plans fail. Make your 2020 New Year’s resolution to test simple backups at least once a quarter or whenever there is a hardware, software or firmware change to your back up system.

4. Save money and enjoy system performance

We all want to save money this new year, but do you know how to save some serious pounds on your IT hardware? If it comes to the point where you need to change your back up hardware or you’re reaching max capacity – it may be time for an upgrade. Upgrading your system’s memory and storage is significantly more affordable than buying a whole new system. Upgrading can also increase performance and make systems run smoother whilst extending your server’s life.

5. Appreciate your end users

The internet is rife with IT professionals slating end users for their lack of comprehension and complaints but remember, you wouldn’t have a job without end users, so learn to appreciate and work with them. For New Year’s, try to understand the business from the end users point of view (not the IT), form alliances with key end users in the business, listen and be service orientated by following up with end users after you have helped to solve their problem.

Happy New Year and good luck with your resolutions!


Techbuyer offers a range of IT hardware including servers, storage, memory and networking and also supply security solutions including Sophos and Veeam.