Remote Control your Infrastructure

Infrastructure management is a crucial part of any
enterprise, but the truth is, managing infrastructure 'efficiently' may not
be everybody's forte. Gradually, a discovery has come to
light-infrastructure can be managed from a remote location and that too from
another part of the globe! You may ask, 'why would we want to do that?' Let
us analyze this situation a little further.                                  

The CIO is often under tremendous pressures to find a
solution through which he will be able to best leverage existing resources and
use his infrastructure. A Gartner study suggests that 32% of a CIO's IT budget
goes into internal resources to service infrastructure operations and management
and this, most often than not, becomes the first target for cost trimmings.

The challenge that lies before him is to evolve an IT
infrastructure management strategy that simultaneously leverages existing
investments with increased service levels for end-users, improved end-user
response time through proactive management, lowered costs, and increase in
flexibility. With a remote controlled infrastructure or outsourcing IT
infrastructure, he has found the ideal answer. Globally, outsourcing
infrastructure management has found a wide acceptance due to the constant need
of reaching higher service levels and lowering costs. Security, which is another
key concern for any CIO, is also addressed when we talk of remotely managed IT
infrastructure.

The Bouquet

Infrastructure management includes all services such as monitoring,
managing, and enhancing performance of a client's IT infrastructure backbone.
These could be helpdesk services, server management, data center management,
network management, asset management, desk-side support, and IT security. Today,
the need for outsourcing infrastructure is being felt across several verticals
such as financial services organizations, retail banking, insurance, financial
companies, travel and hospitality, logistics, manufacturing, energy, and
healthcare among others. This brings us to the next question, which is, 'what
are the business benefits of outsourcing infrastructure?'

You win in terms of quality as the infrastructure service
provider is a specialist and infrastructure management is his core business. You
will also experience best practice, expertise, and visibility. Scalability is
another valuable advantage as by outsourcing, the supplier absorbs the problem
of understanding, acquiring, and implementing manpower needs. There is no
disruption of processes as the entire process is streamlined through stringent
service—level agreements (SLAs), clearly outlined in black and white with
penalty clauses for downtime. Businesses, therefore, do not have to worry about
hiring, training, retaining, retraining ERP, UNIX, database, Web, and other
factors as specialists tap 24x7.

The Benefit Trail

An interesting point to note is that small and medium sized businesses (SMBs)
will benefit immensely from outsourcing infrastructure. SMBs accounted for 23%
of overall services spending in 2004-05. As the costs of IT and associated
services become affordable and accessible to the SMB, their share of the market
will escalate to 27 % by 2009 as indicated by IDC. Gradually, there has been a
greater acceptance of outsourcing both IT and business process within mid-sized
companies.

Several global organizations are already outsourcing
infrastructure management to specialists. These are often offshore vendors with
the relevant expertise and experience backed by mature processes and powerful
visibility tools.

Remote controlling i.e. outsourcing your infrastructure
enables preemptive problem resolution, visibility and control, and access to
domain expertise. Thereby, companies who have outsourced their infrastructure
also gain a quality edge over rivals in a fiercely competitive environment. The
need of the hour is a complete outsourcing solution in an expertly managed
environment.

Verticals such as publishing, media, entertainment,
financial services, the software industry as well as the public sector
(government, non-profit, higher education) stand to benefit from outsourcing
infrastructure. All fingers point towards the next best solution for
infrastructure management, which is 'outsourcing infrastructure'. Perhaps
the time has arrived when remote controlling your infrastructure has become a
necessity and not an option.

Sumeet Sabharwal,
MD, NaviSite India 

vadmail@cybermedia.co.in Â