How small business IT management can cut costs and improve security with Windows Server 2019

[ComputeExperts]

Windows Server 2019 offers new features that can save your business money, reduce the TCO of your servers, improve your organization's security posture, and help you move to the cloud.

Small business IT management is all about getting the most out of your technology and saving money. It's rare that these goals align, but when they do, it's an excellent opportunity for small and midsize businesses (SMBs).

Windows Server 2019 promises to deliver this opportunity. It offers a variety of new features that can save your business money, reduce the total cost of ownership for your servers and software, improve your security posture, and prepare you to move to the cloud on your own terms. Here's a roundup of some of the most important features Windows Server 2019 offers.

Cutting costs

It seems like everyone's being asked to do more with less. IT is no exception. Fortunately, Windows Server 2019 helps you reduce costs in a number of ways:

• Windows Server 2019 is easy to manage. Small business employees often wear multiple hats, and midsize businesses frequently have understaffed IT departments. They can both benefit from a server infrastructure that takes less time to manage and own. It can reduce staffing needs and ancillary management software, while improving operational efficiencies—all of which ultimately lowers costs. Enter Windows Server 2019 System Insights, a locally installed machine learning product that identifies event trends on your system to predict future issues more precisely or determine future needs for more capacity. HPE InfoSight for servers complements this feature. If your Windows Server 2019 instance is installed on an HPE system, such as HPE ProLiant Gen10 servers, you can leverage InfoSight to predict problems, take steps to resolve them, and prevent future issues across your entire operation. Between the two, you get more effective management and fewer crises.
• New hardware runs more efficiently with a newer server operating system. While older servers tend to need several discrete, power-hungry processors, modern servers are multicore and able to run more applications, threads, and processes at the same time. Newer servers are also more efficient. Windows Server 2019 can further power these efficiencies and improve resource usage to the point of lowering your business' utility bills. You will also need less processor capacity than before, meaning your initial hardware layout for your new servers can be smaller and cheaper.
• Containers provide server consolidation benefits to reduce your total outlay. If you are able to package your internal and external applications into containers, you may be able to achieve high availability while using less capacity, meaning you can deploy fewer servers than you might have needed previously. There is also opportunity for further server consolidation via virtualization thanks to the many improvements made to Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor platform in the past decade.

Improving your security posture

Though cybercrime tends to capture more media attention when it targets large businesses, banks, or other high-profile targets, plenty of SMBs have been cybercrime victims. Security should be everyone's concern. Unfortunately, the typical SMB does not have the requisite security budget to buy the industrial-strength tripwire systems that larger companies sometimes use to shore up their cybersecurity.

SMBs therefore have to rely more on the quality and integrity of their operating systems, and Windows Server 2019 does not fail to deliver on this front. Windows Server 2019 offers huge security advantages over Windows Server 2008, which was designed for an era of the internet that has long passed.

With Windows Server 2019, networks are no longer trusted by default, services are disabled out of the box, and different modes of operation like Nano Server and Server Core are vastly more usable. Plus, it will be supported through 2024, whereas end of life for Windows Server 2008 comes next year, which signals the end of security patching to help mitigate threats. Take a look at this video for more insights on what Windows Server 2008 end of support can mean for your business, particularly when it comes to security.

Windows Server 2019 is ready for the cloud when you are

"The cloud" has become mainstream, and, for the most modern small businesses, it has become the preferred way to consume technology services. For existing businesses, however, your current IT investments might prohibit you from just lifting and shifting everything to the cloud. Transitioning to various cloud providers and ensuring everything works just as well in the cloud as it does on premises can be difficult and require resources and a long-term strategy. In many SMB environments, those resources might simply be inaccessible.

The good news is that Windows Server 2019 is cloud-ready, built from Microsoft's experience running Windows at massive scale in its Azure infrastructure. It's replete with light-up scenarios for hybrid cloud operations, so when your business is ready to consider moving to the cloud, Windows Server 2019 will be ready for you in a number of ways:

• The Windows Admin Center is a new, fantastic administrative graphical user interface (GUI) that can handle both on-premises and Azure services in one "pane of glass," with no extra work required.
• Windows Server 2019 is full of Azure-ready services, including VPN, storage, backup, and replica services to help you take advantage of the off-site nature of Azure.
• The Storage Migration Service is ready to automatically migrate your files and data from old servers to new ones with just a couple of clicks, saving you time and money and preparing you to move to the cloud from a modern platform.

The last word

Windows Server 2019 is more secure, reduces costs for your business, and pushes you to a modern platform from which you can more easily move to the cloud.

Is the time right for your organization to move to Windows Server 2019? Discover how HPE Small Business IT Management and Gen10 servers can help you get there.

Discover affordable IT solutions for your business

Ready to take the next step? Check out the SMB Hybrid IT for Dummies Guide. Because there are no “dumb” questions!

Or are you ready to purchase? Visit the HPE Store.

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Meet Server Experts blogger Jonathan Hassell, Owner, Salt Rose Marketing LLC. Jonathan Hassell runs Salt Rose Marketing, a technical writing and consulting firm based in Charlotte, N.C. He's also an editor for O'Reilly Media, specializing in content within the data space.

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