Remote Infrastructure Management

Sunday, February 01, 2009

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Remote Infrastructure Management is one of fastest growing services. According to the latest Nasscom report, “ Global RIM industry grew at more than 80 per cent CAGR from US$2 billion in 2006 to US$6-7 billion in 2008”. Nasscom also believes India is likely to capture $13-15 billion of the market share. For RIM vendors, the current slowdown is the icing on the cake, as companies all around the world are looking to consolidate their IT infrastructure and experienced yet cheap labor. Enterprises running mission critical applications need 24x7 monitoring, along with management, DR and other similar services. This isn't an easy job to do with the in-house IT team. As a result RIM is becoming a peachy option for enterprises across the globe. With their IT infrastructure outsourced, they can concentrate on their core business and utilize their IT team in planning, design and escalation activities.

In India companies have been taking to remote infrastructure management since a long time. However given the fact that young talented IT workforce is not easy to find, many enterprises choose to manage IT infrastructure on their own. Lately with the slowdown and other issues like high attrition rate in IT industry, CIOs have been under increased pressure to cut down their IT budgets and at the same time continue to meet their companies' growing requirements. As a result they are also starting to adopt RIM. In this story we will talk about the growing trends and advantages of adopting RIM. We also talk about what you should look for when outsourcing your infrastructure.

Current Trends
Traditionally network, server and desktop management were considered to be key functions of RIM. But with the advent of new technologies like virtualization, cloud computing, etc organization demands are changing; as a result vendors are now offering new and innovative services. Let's look at some of the evolving trends in RIM industry.

Business Continuity
Ensuring this is one of the top priorities of CIOs. As IT has become a part of the core business, many enterprises cannot even afford downtime of a few minutes. Just having remote backup scheduling, monitoring and recovery from backup failures is no longer enough. Even small enterprises nowadays have some sort of DR mechanism in place, so that in case of disaster they can quickly shift without affecting business. However, for maintaining a DR site, enterprises need infrastructure on other locations, skilled workforce to maintain DR sites and carry periodic tests. This means there will be a significant increase in IT budgets of an enterprise. As a result, enterprises are starting to adopt Managed Business Continuity services. Here again there are various services available for an enterprise, for eg an enterprise running mission critical applications, would ideally like to have a “HOT” D.R site, which will be a mirrored, dedicated replica at the service provider's location. Similarly, concepts of managed "warm site" and "cold site" are also catching up. Under DR services, it's no longer just about IT recovery; Work Area Recovery and Crisis Management services are also gaining momentum.

Infrastructure as a Service
Popularly known as Cloud Computing, this is another growing trend in RIM services especially in the global markets. As enterprises look to consolidate their infrastructure and bandwidth, they are looking to invest in infrastructure as a service. With this, enterprises not only save on space costs but also don't have to worry about maintaining their infrastructure or other issues like workforce, business continuity etc. This allows them to focus on their existing infrastructure. We mentioned earlier that

in traditional remote infrastructure management, there are a few tasks which cannot be performed remotely, such as if any component of your data center fails, then it has to be replaced physically. However in this scenario, an enterprise doesn't have to worry about these issues as everything is in the cloud and with the kind of cloud computing technologies around, an enterprise won't even know about it. All the company has to do is ensure connectivity to the cloud. Another advantage that IAAS provides is that whenever an enterprise starts a new project they can quickly get access to desired infrastructure, rather than going through the long process of buying and implementing new infrastructure.

G K Prasanna, Sr.Vice President, Technology Infrastructure Services, Wipro Technologies The challenges are different depending on whether the customer has already outsourced earlier or whether work is currently in-sourced. In the latter case, there will be people and base lining issues. In both scenarios, the common challenges are that of lack of proximity, cultural fit, language issues, etc. in addition, customers also take into account geo-political risk, security and compliance requirements, etc.

A similar trend is Co-Location services, where an enterprise can place its existing IT infrastructure at a service provider's premises, to be managed by the latter. This is also a good option for enterprises looking to consolidate their existing infrastructure, as they do not have to worry about issues like business continuity, skilled workforce, immediate problem resolution, etc.

Why should you outsource WAN management?
Businesses are faced with unique challenges when attempting to connect and manage an extended enterprise network. Due to the current economic environment, businesses need to do more with less. As organizations expand and become more global, the complexity of running applications across a global infrastructure increase. In today's business world, companies must deploy services in disparate locations throughout the globe, while meeting the familiar need to curb capital expenditure and effectively distribute IT resources. At the same time, the ever-evolving industry means that enterprises must keep pace with deploying and managing new technologies, often with staff that are already stretched for resources.

Ram Mohan C Sr. Vice President and Head - Infrastructure Management and Tech Support, MindTree When an enterprise chooses RIM services, the IT infrastructure will be monitored and managed by engineers sitting far away. So they need to place their infrastructure in the right hands. They need to make sure that the partner has the capability and experience of managing complex, mission critical IT infrastructure. The partner should have enough case studies and references to demonstrate successful remote management of the entire IT infrastructure. Partners who have experience of having done production support will understand all nuances of mission critical IT infrastructure management. The partner should have invested in experienced and talented leadership, state-of-the-art voice infrastructure and network operations center. RIM outsourcing is a long-term strategy. Enterprises have to make sure that their partner has a strategic interest in infrastructure management and has made the right investments to grow this practice.

Leveraging the management resources of an efficient network service provider can help businesses cost-effectively meet their technology needs, while relieving them of the need to self-manage their network and enabling staff to focus on core business goals and competencies.

Going a step further, companies like Verizon Business, for instance, provide comprehensive service capabilities that include design and implementation, proactive monitoring, fault isolation and restoration, proactive notification, change management, and performance reporting, besides taking care of global compliances.

From a business perspective, Managed WAN shields the business from technology and capital risks by taking advantage of new and evolving access to technologies and extending security and content policies out to distributed locations in a cost-effective manner.

D Mohanty Vice President, HCL Infinet Ltd What are the current trends in Remote Infrastructure Management in India? In the current economic environment, focusing on core competencies is the key to survival. Managing ever-increasing IT infrastructure and shrinking budgets have forced corporates to device a cost- effective and proactive approach, thus distracting them from focusing on their core business. This sets a perfect platform for outsourcing IT infrastructure services to managed services providers. With a surge in domestic services business, majority of the players in Managed Services space have acknowledged the potential and tried to exploit the business opportunity that domestic IT services market has to offer. How cost-effective is RIM? For decades, cost-effectiveness has been the driving force behind outsourcing. Today CIOs are expected to tailor IT Infrastructure Management strategies to meet increasing service levels with reduced budgets and increased complexity. Managed Services not only results in cost reduction in terms of manpower but even helps organizations achieve operational excellence in terms of meeting customer satisfaction levels. HCL Infinet provides Managed Services on an Opex model where customers are billed on annual basis for services they avail. What care should an enterprise take when going for a RIM solution? Identifying right managed services that meet your business and IT requirements is the first and important milestone for a managed service implementation. Requirement assessment should be carried out roping in all stakeholders to address business, financial and technical aspects of the organization. Once the requirement assessment is completed, identifying the right service provider is the next step towards a managed services environment. Managed Services are uniquely tailored to meet different business requirements. Therefore, it is extremely important for your managed services provider to understand the business and technical requirements of your organization.

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