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Tackling the IM challenge
Organisations are increasingly dependent upon their IT infrastructure
to deliver 24/7 availability, so infrastructure management software and services
are evolving to meet these needs, says Kumar Dawada.
 “Agile,
mobile, virtual and fortified are ongoing challenges and goals that IT infrastructure
managers and executives must face and deliver upon”
—Ron Muns
Founder and CEO
HDI
Enterprise infrastructure should provide predictive
capabilities to help an enterprise identify potential problems before
they become major ones adversely affecting core business activities.
It is here that infrastructure management fits in and fulfills the
management needs faced by CIOs worldwide.
The evolution of IM
The first phase in the IM evolution of a large enterprise
started with the building of an enterprise-wide network and first-generation
software to help the business. At this stage the focus of the management was
to deploy the solution. The IM addressed business pains and problems as and
when they occurred.
The second phase occurred with the advent of the Internet and enterprise applications.
CIOs soon realised that organisations can ill-afford downtime because it affected
the market delivery of their products and solutions, so IM was brought in to
reduce downtime.
| Inside IM |
| IM is delivered either remotely
or by being onsite at the customer premises. In most cases it is a combination
of both remote and onsite services.
The first step is to ensure
that IT infrastructure remains available at all times. The technology
provider has to ensure zero downtime and provide operational excellence.
They have to take not corrective action as and when the need arises, but
preventive steps proactively.
If an organisation is providing
IT services, then IM must ensure that the organisation delivers quality
IT services in the least possible time and guarantees customer satisfaction
by implementing best practices envisioned in ITIL and other similar reference
models.
Organisations have to respond
to change in business needs. They require a virtual infrastructure environment
that can respond to change as and when the business demands. Automating
the link between business and IT means treating the IT infrastructure
as a utility that can be dynamically updated, and ensuring that critical
attributes such as security are embedded throughout a virtualised infrastructure.
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With the dotcom bust, managements focussed on reducing operational
costs. During this period, many organisations realised the importance of infrastructure
management tools because they helped to quickly isolate problems and brought
down downtime, increasing the responsiveness of the IT services provided to
end-users and contributing to operational efficiency. This helped enterprises
show improvement even during sluggish economic growth.
"Openview is based on a building-block approach, where, depending
on the end-user’s pain points, a company can plug-and-play with
multiple modules in smaller projects"
- Bithin Talukdar
Market Development
& Alliance Manager
HP Software Global
Business Unit
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"Providing IM for global as well as Indian customers provides
better cost economics for the company as well as clients"
- K Krishna
Senior Director, Marketing
HECL
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Given the current business scenario, even multinationals are
not secure. They not only have to compete locally but also globally. Their business
edge depends on their agility, ability to adapt, and dynamic alignment of business
processes with IT. The only way to remain ahead of competition is to automate
and fine-tune business activities and processes, and deliver maximum benefits
by aligning them with IT. Here, IM plays a key role because all business activities
of an organisation depend upon IT infrastructure and its effective management.
According to IDC, investments in IM have the single-largest impact on an organisation’s
revenue.
| The importance of IM |
| IT Infrastructure covers a lot
of resources. This includes the network, servers, applications, storage
devices, security and even end-user services in an enterprise. Infrastructure
Management (IM) results in the better understanding of what resources you
are starting with and ensuring that they are available as and when required.
It covers key aspects: Is the infrastructure performing well? Do the right
people have access to them at the right time? Is it compliant? IM is the
ability to monitor, adapt and manage IT resources, tasks and processes,
and provide IT services efficiently in spite of continually changing business
needs.
IM implementation is required
at all times right from the deployment of IT infrastructure and providing
IT services to giving value to business data and processes. This is because
the ultimate goal of IM is to ensure business and IT alignment.
Historically, IT has played
a supporting role in an organisation. Its goals and criteria for success
have been related to its ability to respond to the needs of the business
through reliable infrastructure capabilities, business applications and
support services.
The evolving business scenario
has helped IT to add value to the enterprise by generating new revenue
opportunities through the strategic combination of IT capabilities and
assets to form new customer-facing products and services. These business
opportunities can take the form of new markets, products and services.
Hence, IT can deliver value to the business through IT-driven and IT-enabled
business innovations.
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The Indian scenario
According to Aldrin D’Souza, Country Manager, Tivoli, being a major offshore
outsourcing destination, India faces the compelling need for IT standardisation
and upgrades. This has made Infrastructure Management Software (IMS) a key focus
area. Among the companies which invested in packaged software, on an average,
almost a third (29 percent) of the IT budget was spent on IMS in 2003. In 2004-2005,
these enterprises have invested 25 percent of their IT budget in IMS.
“In the past, 74 percent of the respondents invested in IMS, and most of
the companies investing in package software were from the auto, auto components,
chemical or pharma verticals,” informs D’Souza.
As per Robert McNeill, a Senior Analyst from Forrester, IM services promise
to be a significant growth engine for top-tier Indian software companies in
2005. Many high-profile deals signed in the IM space over the past two years
by frontline companies have created considerable interest and attention in this
segment.
| The ITIL concept |
| ITIL stands for IT Infrastructure
Library. ITIL is a framework which outlines the best practices for IT Service
Management. It covers areas such as incident management, problem management,
change management, release management and the service desk.
It was first developed in
the late 1980s by the CCTA (Central Communications and Telecom Agency)
of the British government. ITIL addresses the organisational structure
and skill requirements of an IT organisation by laying down a comprehensive
set of management procedures based on which an organisation can manage
its IT operations. These procedures are supplier-independent and can apply
to all aspects of IT infrastructure.
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Trends
The trend in IM is self-managing applications. The industry focus is on building
intelligent automation into applications to simplify their deployment, configuration,
discovery, analysis and repair.
Intelligent automation will help IT personnel gain a total and comprehensive
view of complex applications and their surrounding operating environment. It
will reduce the time taken to identify and resolve application problems, and
increase application availability and performance by automating a range of management
responses. It will streamline application deployment, and smoothen policy compliance
issues that affect business productivity and obstruct service delivery to end-users.
| IM players in India |
| Among the big names in IM in India
are HP, IBM, Microsoft, Symantec and EDS. Outsourcing of IM services is
provided by Sify, Wipro and Patni. Network specialists include companies
like HECL.
Bithin Talukdar, Market
Development and Alliance Manager, HP Software Global Business Unit, elaborates
on HP Openview’s features. “It is based on a building-block
approach, where, depending on the end-user’s pain-points, a company
can plug-and-play with multiple modules in smaller projects, prioritising
them or deploy the entire solution. This is a tested approach that brings
faster ROI and most often results in successful deployments.” Other
features include management of a heterogeneous environment.
Aldrin D’Souza, Country
Manager, Tivoli, says that IBM Tivoli software delivers IT automation
technologies and services. “It provides solutions for repeatable,
optimised resources and processes for sensing and responding to any situation
before it becomes a problem. Solutions range from handling security vulnerabilities,
unplanned downtime, performance bottlenecks, unbalanced workloads, regulatory
compliance, deployment of composite applications, changes in resource
configuration, and provisioning of new resources.” Its features include
a centralised view that lets the enterprise user view, monitor and manage
linkages between IT systems and business processes. It also includes vertical
integration to verify that the data is valid and the resulting metrics
are consistent. Other features include out-of-the-box best practices,
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes or other
customised processes. Look for best practices that facilitate auto-discovery,
root-cause determination, bottleneck
analysis, network impact determination and impact management for applications.
According to Sify’s
C R Srinivasan, Vice-president, Technology, “Sify offers infrastructure
management services in data centre operations, network management, security
& information assurance, end-user services and facility management.”
K Krishna, Senior Director,
Marketing, HECL, feels that providing IM for global as well as Indian
customers provides better cost economics for the company as well as clients.
Their services include providing bandwidth, Internet services, hosting
customer sites, and providing servers for customer host applications and
databases. They have also started providing security services. However,
their main focus is on network services.
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kumard@networkmagazineindia.com
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