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IT services provider Centiq has urged UK businesses to make a pre-emptive strike on the effects of an economic downturn by revamping their IT infrastructure.

The company has suggested five ways for businesses to analyse their business processes and protect themselves against a climate of recession. Firstly, it suggests undertaking assessments of application performance to identify problems and how and when they should be seen to.

Secondly, identifying services or application support that can be reduced without affecting levels of service is advised in case budget cuts are unavoidable. Thirdly, organising data sets into three tiers – high availability, non-critical and archive – would help IT teams to find more storage capacity Centiq claimed.

Fourthly, the consolidation of applications across different departments would increase time available for IT maintenance and, finally, Centiq advises that migrating low value data from over-used servers would increase core application performance.

Centiq indicated that many companies fail to set up IT system assessments but, if action is taken now, companies can be better insulated against testing economic conditions.

Glyn Heath, chief executive of Centiq, said: “Fast growing UK businesses become locked into a cycle of increasing customer demand that triggers ad hoc IT investment in capacity or services. With IT resources focused on ‘keeping the lights on’, the real contribution of these forced, ‘short-termist’ investments is never adequately measured, particularly against core business objectives.

“Companies must put aside resources to review the performance of critical business applications against their planned targets. Only then they can make the informed IT infrastructure adjustments and secure performance gains needed in a tough economic climate.”