Breaking Down the Anatomy of the Enterprise

The core departments within an enterprise have one thing in common: technology. Here’s a look at the different types of technologies each department uses.

The legal department within an enterprise organization may be the most paper-intensive. Managing risk and being accountable for any legal implications within a company used to require cold, hard copy evidence. But today, with the security capabilities of Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing (EFSS) solutions, documents can be digitized and remain legally binding and ready for court. Features that allow for electronic signatures and information rights management allow legal staff to digitally share and finalize documents digitally, while ensuring they’ll remain protected even after the recipient downloads them through robust tracking and reporting features.

Sales is a full time job that never stops. Executives are expected to always be upselling existing customers and finding new customers from anywhere, and now, on any device. Therefore, members of the sales team need to have business-grade mobile and tablet applications not only while they’re at work, but while they’re on the go. Some enterprise mobility management tools enable enterprise organizations to provide a complete suite of secure apps, including email, calendar, contacts, note-taking, document editing and more. Not to mention, those apps have remote access, which means they can be centrally managed across different platforms.

A marketing department within the enterprise often encompasses a wide variety of roles. There are social media managers, PR managers, advertising executives, event coordinators and more. With such a wide variety, organizations should be able to offer customized desktops for employees, rather than attempting to provide them with a “one size fits all” solution. Virtualized desktop and application technologies give employees flexibility to use Windows, Linux, web and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications on any device, without sacrificing security. And even better, it can also cut IT costs.

Engineers and software developers may be the group of employees within the enterprise that rely the most on technology. They are familiar with technologies such as JavaScript, GitHub, Hadoop and containers, as they provide engineers with tools they need to create apps. Yet, there can be a lack of communication between both teams, as developers sometimes use tools and technology that help them do their job quickly, yet leave IT operations out of the loop. These teams need technology that meets the demands for creating enterprise, production-grade apps efficiently. To fix this issue, IT operations can offer application developers a consistent set of services unified through a single API, management console and policies. This allows developers to test load balancing configs in a laptop and deploy Docker load balancers at scale with auto-configuration and reconfiguration based on changes and updates to the microservices infrastructure.

When it comes to the creative department, it’s paramount that they’re able to collaborate on projects and share visuals across the team, regardless of location. Much of the creative department’s work happens in real time. Therefore, collaboration tools, video conferencing and chat services are critical to its success.

What do each of these departments have in common? The IT department serves as the thread that holds them all together. Any department that needs to utilize enterprise technologies to better do its job has the IT operations department to thank for smooth and seamless deployments and, of course, user experience. Without IT acting as the veins, the entire anatomy of the enterprise would die.