ENTERPRISE NETWORK INTEGRATION: Add Consulting To Business Mix

Enterprises
always look for the right kind of applications, processes and resources when it
comes to making a reliable and robust infrastructure at minimal cost.

And as enterprises
grow, there is an upsurge in demand to manage network and network related issue,
and network integration plays an important role here. Though most of the
enterprises go for outsourcing their services as it helps them to concentrate on
their core competencies-selecting the right partner is still a key issue for
them.

Integration Services
offer customers several unique benefits in addition to cost savings. The suite
of services efficiently merges data, voice and video communications over Frame
Relay, and ATM/Internet Protocol networks. This provides customers a single
point of network control with fewer points of failure, a simplified network
topology, remote dial-up capabilities and Internet access. Integration Services
are expandable as the communication needs of a business changes, and customers
can rely on experts that have expertise in voice applications, LANs and WANs to
establish and support their integrated networks.The integration services
accommodate all of a business' central site, branch office, and remote access
demands in one complete suite.

Integrators try to
deliver value by planning and building infrastructure solutions, connecting
organizations, people and systems. The networking integration skills, project
management capabilities and knowledge enhance control over end-to-end business
process transformation and a multi-vendor network infrastructure while improving
productivity, reducing complexity and strengthening RoI.

Some of the verticals
where network integration has made an impact include healthcare, financial
services, retail and manufacturing. And these industries have been benefited as
vendors help companies in providing assistance to executives in making strategic
networking decisions. It also helps enterprises procuring and provisioning
networks, equipment, and applications on a rapid pace.

	EXPERTS PANEL
	Rahul Swarup, president, Enterprise Solutions, Sify Vikas Srivastava, general manager, Networking Solutions Group, Wipro Infotech Sunil Manglore, CEO, Datacraft India

The vendors provide
network engineering solutions to help clients obtain the value from their
existing information and knowledge assets while ensuring their ability to
quickly, efficiently, and securely transfer information.Â
They also help selecting, integrating, and maintaining
commercial-off-the-shelf products and developing custom solutions for
customers' needs, which help them to improve productivity and decrease costs.

The services that
vendors offer include network design and migration, systems and database
administration, proactive monitoring for network performance and availability,
enterprise backup and recovery and video and data network consolidation.Â
Therefore they help enterprise network service from concept to
completion.

The Network
Integration Services address the implementation of network elements within the
network covering multiple technologies including fixed access, optical, circuit
switched and data.

Also it brings
together disparate elements across access, transport, and core network
components for wireline and mobile voice and data networks to make a network
function as a solution.

CHALLENGES

The growing complexity of networks and their geographic dispersion pose
serious obstacles for effective system management. Meeting these challenges call
for an organization, which can offer integrated network solutions that adhere to
international standards, and is interoperable.

Security
challenges: There are numerous security challenges in integration. Therefore,
security and manageability is one of the pertinent problems in integration. It
is, therefore, required to invest in tools for wireless security monitoring and
management and also invest in Network Access Control Process. Also, clear
implementable security processes is the need of the hour.

Prominent
challenges CIOs face:

• Financial
  (managing and controlling communication costs)

• People
  related areas (building technical domain expertise and retaining them).

• Technological
  (managing the technological changes while protecting investments and
  providing continuum to existing infrastructure)

• Securing
  IT Infrastructure and applications from increasing security threats

• Reducing
  cost of operation of IT as a percentage of business costs

• Shortage
  of skilled staff to take up new projects which are important from business
  perspective

It becomes evident
that decisions involving implementation are becoming more and more strategic and
less tactile. More than ever the decision to deploy new technologies has become
far more a managerial decision.

Many enterprises are
unaware of just how much data resides outside the security of their data
centers. For some, up to 60% of corporate information sits in branch offices
that don't have the infrastructure or trained personnel to ensure it is
properly protected. Incomplete or faulty backups and missing or accidentally
over-written tapes are common branch office problems that expose the business to
significant risk and potential expense. Thus, branch office data protection is a
major challenge facing enterprises which wish to expand rapidly.

As newer technologies
emerge and branches are added at a rapid pace, the task of maintaining such
networks becomes even more difficult. Confronted with the complexity of networks
on one hand and shortage of staff on the other, in addition to the threat of
ever increasing competition, Indian corporates are faced with a dilemma of 'To
outsource Network Management or not.'

In the post 9/11
environment, enterprises are faced with different security threats-in the form
of unauthorised access to restricted areas and criminal activities. Such
security threats increase commercial risks to companies and security risks to
government agencies. The need of the hour for enterprises now is to implement
flexible and intelligent productivity tools that can help them to cost
effectively monitor and secure physical premises.

SOLUTIONS

Wireless is a low-cost investment with high RoI. It's better to migrate
high speed links to Metro Ethernet and go for WAN optimizers after understanding
traffic applications of your network.

The primary challenges
are to do with network coverage and capacity planning. These can be tackled by
deploying multiple base station sites in each city and also by deploying
advanced modulation techniques.

Amongst many
solutions, the proven ones are building enterprise Intranets over the public
Internet using secure technologies. Also while planning your network
infrastructure, there are some important things that should be taken into
consideration:

• Detailed
  planning for network migration or expansion since networks are now the
  lifeline of the company.

• Take
  consulting services by paying small amount of money so that you get quality
  advice from people who have gone through this experience

• Don't
  revamp unless you have a clear RoI for network enhancement

• Identifying
  “what is old” is the first step the IT department should carry out, as
  this is primarily a business-driven exercise for eventual cost
  justification.

Network Integration
helps reduce overall TCO of enterprises. Enterprise IT Infrastructure has three
pillars that include computing, networking, and storage. Networking cost is
closer to 30% of the overall IT spend of enterprises including bandwidth.
Therefore, networking is key to enterprises. It reduces their business
operations cost and improves customer satisfaction.

Today, banks are
completely dependent on networking for all their applications that include ATM
transactions, branch banking, Internet or telebanking. Same is the case for
auto, manufacturing, consumer electronics, FMCG and other sectors.

In the networking
domain, the bandwidth prices have come down heavily. But still Indian prices are
at least three times higher than Australia, China or US. Therefore, it is
imperative to reduce Internet bandwidth prices further for widespread coverage.

Also, prices of branch
networking equipment (routers and switch cost is still too high and is one of
the inhibiting factors for even more branch connectivity. It is also important
to have lower duties or local manufacturing to get India the required pricing
for networking equipment.

Also, outsourcing IT
Infrastructure management to qualified service providers can shower enormous
benefits and reduce the total cost of ownership.

IT departments
evaluating a wired-wireless integration should carefully consider what is
already deployed on the network and develop a clear evolutionary path so that
legacy and future products integrate seamlessly. Clear thinking is even more
important if the wireless network was handled separately, since an integrated
wired/wireless network puts more of the organization's communications needs in
one basic.

Outsourcing network
management needs offer companies a key tool not only to save costs but also to
give them a strategic and competitive advantage. Also, because a network
management services player has access to the latest software and applications,
it can bear upgradation costs by letting clients use its resources on a shared
basis. Outsourcing networking management combines with the benefit of expertise
along with the added advantage of costs.

Building value-added
services around products would be the key to growth and rapid RoI.

IP Telephony is often
seen as the first phase of a converged infrastructure solution and offers quick
return on the organization's networking investment.

A few other solutions
that can offer quick return on investments in networking and infrastructure are:

• Conferencing
  and collaboration

• Messaging

• Centralized
  Data Storage & Management

MARKET DEMAND

The SME market is big for vendors since the networking technology has now
become affordable-routers, switches, and wireless security products are
available at affordable prices. The products designed for SME are easy to use
and don't need too much technical expertise. No doubt, the SME segment would
be the key focus area for us in the coming times.

The concept of
end-to-end or one-stop solution providers is gaining momentum. It saves the
frustration of working with multiple partners and the NI is able to offer a
total suite of related solutions.

The NI has become the
single point of contact and customizes the right and related technologies to
offer an entire solution kit that addresses the business requirement and the
full networking life-cycle. The demand has been for vendors who can provide
equipment as well as the applications to run on them.

Today, most of the
network integrators have been offering managed services as well. The fact
remains that the NI understands design better and can offer better
post-deployment services. The market has also moved towards remote management
services and outsourcing companies have been a major attraction for most
integrators.

Manufacturing followed
by the financial sector has been driving complete outsourcing of infrastructure
integration and management market. But government buying, telecom service
providers and the IT companies have also been pitching in with their
contributions.

In the government
sector today, there is a wave of development, which is introducing exponential
jumps in the CIO's ability to deliver better performance, react more quickly,
and lower costs. Current e-government efforts are focused on simplifying,
standardising, and increasing the value of the IT infrastructure already in
place.

To a government IT
head, the challenge still continues in the form of digitizing information,
collecting and storing data, improving office productivity, offering citizen and
business services, enabling real-time transactions, and offering wireless
solutions. These challenges have now been coupled with current IT activities
wherein establishing links between all IT departments, creating interoperability
between services, and realizing network integration is of prime concern.

Though the Indian
market has witnessed steady growth, there are many irritants that need to be
removed. In the current scenario, equipment vendors and connectivity service
providers have greater clout in the market than the integrators.

Often the stringent
SLA clauses become difficult to be followed, as it is dependent on the third
party rather than the NI. Also, dependency on the third party, particularly in
the connectivity side acts as a deterrent to end-to-end solution offerings.

So why cannot an
equipment vendor or an operator become a network integrator? The core business
of these companies is not designing network or managing them. Though vendors
like Ericsson and Nokia have ventured into this segment, they would like to
focus in supplying the equipment rather than putting up the infrastructure.

The customer wants the
best available technology or equipment for himself. The involvement of an
equipment vendor tilts the contract in his favor and the customer is forced to
buy even if that vendor does not have best equipment in every category.

INTEGRATOR CHAOS

How can an integrator help understanding and aligning technology solutions
to meet business needs?

The vendor should
understand business requirements and design and integrate the network with
business so that the business continuity should not suffer and disruption does
not occur.

Most of the time,
vendors don't take a serious approach towards integrating technologies, due to
which flaws occur in the network which eventually result in major business
problems. Customer references are an important tool in measuring the
integrator's viability, experience, and capabilities.

Also, since
enterprises outsource their networks to third party, vendors often take a
middleman approach and subcontract their job. This really creates lot of
complications in business processes and also in network. Vendors take this
approach only when they don't have the expertise to manage networks or when
they want to make quick bucks.

Therefore, a CIO
should read the vendor properly and as per the business requirement, assign the
job to the right vendor.

The rapid advancement
in technology and the ever-increasing demand for a robust, secure,
always-available network with the 24X7 support system requires a high level of
expertise. A certified and well-qualified team of experts from the NI would
ensure good returns on investment made in technology.

Therefore, a CIO
should settle for nothing less than best-in-class customer service and insist on
an established measurement and evaluation system to ensure the service class.

Also, it's important
that partnership with the integrator is the right technology partnership. A
vendor should be able to understand the technology and customize it for his
customers. This enables him to keep the customers ahead in technology and assist
them in making right decisions.

Location is another
important issue in integration. If an enterprise has multi location presence,
it's better to go with one vendor that has pan India presence. Different
integration partners in different locations only complicate the network
processes. Also, for ease of operation, uniformity, and low cost of ownership,
the integrator should have single point of contact across all phases of the
networking life cycle.

If the network goes
down, business takes a hit. An integrator should understand the company's
long-term goals and his role should go beyond merely incorporating latest
technology to your network. He should be a partner in your business and should
align himself to grow with the enterprise. Choose an integrator with a good
financial backing.

Projects are often
delayed and add to the overall cost. So terms should be clearly laid down and
deadlines should be drawn. And in the case of a delay, a backup plan should also
be in place, also, proper delay notification procedures should be in place.

Rahul Gupta

rahulg@cybermedia.co.in