Transforming a disruptive 2020 into a sustainable 2021 for your business

What a year!

As I was gathering my thoughts to reflect on 2020, I didn’t want to simply wish you a happy and prosperous new year (although I do) but go deeper and tell you how to achieve that.

At Men&Mice we’ve seen first hand how hard 2020 was on businesses, whether for networking or business continuity overall. Many had to postpone IT infrastructure upgrades, expansions, or just simply maintenance in order to survive. What can be the one lesson to learn from the past year that would make this next one not only better but fortified against the disruption we’ve just lived through?

Word of the new year: sustainability

Hard decisions marked the past year, the implications of which are far-reaching and often obscured. We spoke to many, both customers and sales leads, who had to postpone crucial network upgrades because of do-or-die budget cuts, an understandable consequence of a global economic shutdown. 2021 hopefully will give all of us a moment to regroup and rethink our priorities. At that time, it’s important to consider the sustainability of your IT infrastructure, and consequently your business.

Men&Mice has been championing sustainable networks for a long time. In our business, sustainability means escaping expensive procurement cycles that lock down your core network infrastructure. It means making more with what you already have, and expanding when you need to and not when your vendors say so. It means more options available for your network teams, for less money and less hardware to maintain.

Whatever sustainability means to your company, it’s core definition will still apply: progress without depleting the resources available to fuel further growth. You need to make sure your business is capable of growth beyond the next quarter or fiscal year.

Sustainability is critical, for networks and businesses alike.

Disruption is not sustainable

Change itself is natural for any business, from new products to new locations, from shifting market trends to shifting business priorities. Growth is change.

Disruption means losing control over change. No matter what kind, uncontrolled change is unsustainable, whether it’s a force majeure like a worldwide pandemic or a competitor leaping ahead with an innovation. And if 2020 has shown us anything, it was how vulnerable our businesses are to disruption.

Much of the world wasn’t prepared for the disruption 2020 brought. But even without a global pandemic to force change in how (and where) we work and do business, accelerating technology left unchecked will always come to head in a disruptive fashion. Disruption is always a danger unless you prepare for it.

But how can you prepare for disruption?

Transformation is disruption under control

The best way to deal with disruption, to regain control over change, is to make that change happen through you.

Transformation is the sustainable way of managing change. On your terms, under your control, by your rules. When you adopt a sustainable approach, both your networks and your business will handle change, not as a disruption wreaking havoc but an opportunity empowering it instead.

In our particular business, we’re helping customers transform their static, centralized management approach to networks into an agile, distributed one. Sustainability is key to the transformation we use to enhance the value of both existing and future network resources.

Make 2021 the year of (sustainable) transformation

2020 showed us the unpredictability of life. Solving one problem at a time is an expensive and slow response, offering only a temporary relief. We need long-term solutions. You need long-term solutions. And thinking long-term means thinking in sustainable terms, for strategy and processes just as much as network infrastructure.

And that’s where I find hope and motivation for 2021.

If 2020 was a year of disruption happening to us, we can make 2021 a year of transformation that happens through us. In a way, the relentless and exhausting pace of change brought by the past year may just be the biggest asset for the new one.

In this new year, perhaps more so than ever before, businesses have a decision to make. Will you take the reins and transform yourself, or are you content with being a spectator to your own future?

With you in 2021 and beyond

Men&Mice has been in the sustainability and digital transformation business for decades. We didn’t call it that back then, but our mission hasn’t changed. (It did get refined, though.) Our aim has always been to liberate the tools businesses use to control change. We do this in particular technologies, namely DNS, DHCP, and IP address management. And just as sustainability must be at the core of a business’ networks, so it should be at the core of its longevity. Engraving sustainability into the foundations, if you will.

Men&Mice weathered the changes of 2020 well because we’ve had sustainability built into our DNA. I’m proud to say we practice what we preach. When we say we deliver sustainability to enterprise core network management, I can be confident we can deliver. It’s our way.

Talk to us! We’re happy to answer, demonstrate, and help your business get underway for a better future. I, along with all of my team at Men&Mice, wish you a transformative new year!