Soft Skills

Remote management experts

J Kalyanaraman explains how remote infrastructure management is a happening new career choice in the IT industry.

Remote infrastructure management (RIM) is being called the next “mega” IT trend by industry analysts and gurus. However, what is not being talked about enough is the exciting career opportunities offered by this industry which are unique not only in its growth opportunities, but also in the challenging mission-critical work environment that it offers.

To define remote infrastructure management in the simplest terms, let us take a typical corporate that invests in computing infrastructure starting from desktops, storage, networks, desktop applications, security infrastructure, etc. The activity of managing and keeping these systems running with appropriate uptimes and in line with benchmarked quality processes, aligned to the business objective of the firm, is called infrastructure management services. The word “remote” simply shows that these services are delivered from a remote location. In comparison to the operations of a BPO which handles business processes related to finance, HR, transactions, etc, remote IT infrastructure management services is a highly technical activity carried out by people with a technical diploma or a graduate engineering education as a basic qualification.

One of the important drivers that make RIM an attractive career is the exciting and challenging environment it offers to employees. The turf is mission critical environment of some of the world biggest and most complex IT infrastructures. For instance, if you are running the system of a bank, every second of downtime can mean loss of millions of dollars, thereby making the operations mission critical.

And of course, the area is technically more challenging than software development or any other IT track, because of the scale and size of the learning environment it offers due to its focus on Fortune/Global 500 firms which companies like HCL have as their clients. If you look at large scale Indian corporates, for example, the largest technical environment here would be 300-500 servers, which is equable to what a global mid-size bank would have. But if you are talking about a top-notch bank in the world, there are 10,000-20,000 servers making the scale and complexity so much different and magnified. Managing such a scale, can be a huge learning experience for IT professionals. Further, it gives a graduate engineer or a technical diploma holder the opportunity to earn well and grow to the level of a manager or consultant in a very short span of five years through focussed growth programmes. For experienced professionals the pay scales are of course even more attractive and the growth opportunities include leading worldwide projects and technology practices.

While hiring people in the IMS space, service providers like HCL who provide Remote IMS services to Fortune/Global 500 clients, look for two qualifications in their prospective employees. Firstly, a basic technical knowledge in terms of engineering at the graduate level, a technical diploma or certifications like NIIT’s GNIIT, which means that they have done anything between two years to four years of pure technical training in terms of academics. Secondly, specialised certifications like MCSE (Microsoft Certified Software Engineering) or CCNP or CCIE, which are Cisco certifications for networks and similar specialised certifications provided in various technical fields. These specialisations, which may be done by full-time engineers or any other graduate, are instrumental in helping decide the tracks one could specialise in.

The growth opportunities in RIM are fast and rewarding. It offers a complete career that traces the path from a fresh engineer to a global practice director. In HCL Comnet, this entire path is mapped on a nine-grade programme with a T0-T9 kind of a rating for technical skills. An engineer can go from T0-T5 within a span of three-five years and build up from there and then from T5, move into a further track to consulting and management. In his initial stages, a fresh recruit works on basic operations, monitoring, first level of work, basic escalations and account management. Starting as an engineer trainee, he can go on to be an analyst within 24 months depending on his capability. The next stage is where he specialises in a particular technology track like Unix, Windows, Messaging or Storage Apps where he spends the next three-four years of his career. At this stage, he also has an option to become a team lead, where he starts managing a team and look after operations. Further ahead, he can become a consultant in about five years.

A career in the remote infrastructure industry is also exciting because it offers a continuous learning curve to its practitioners. Being responsible for 24X7X365 monitoring and management of IT infrastructures of global enterprises service providers have to consistently upgrade their knowledge and grasp of new technologies entering the IT infrastructure space. So as manufacturers launch new products and software every other day, we have to ensure we have capabilities to handle the current as well as build people skill sets for taking care of the new technologies that keep getting inducted into the IT environment. Unlike the software development industry where old technology/language is virtually discarded as soon as a new one hits the marquee, in RIM, we cannot forget the old technologies/protocols, because you never know when you will have to manage old databases for a client. So, our employees have to keep themselves abreast of the new as well as legacy technologies, thus ensuring a continuous process of learning and growth inside the system.

There are many such unique aspects of this industry which translates into a ‘hot’ career aspect for IT professionals. So if you think a career in IT had to be fit within the spectrum of software on one side and BPO on the other, you are in for a sweet surprise in the form of RIM which is soon slated to become the largest employer of hardware professionals in India.

The Nasscom-McKinsey India Report 2006 also vouches: “Going forward, the more traditional IT outsourcing service lines such as hardware and software maintenance, network administration and help desk services will account for 45 percent of the total addressable market for offshoring and are likely to drive the next wave of growth.”

J Kalyanaraman is Senior VP-Human Capital Management, HCL Infrastructure Services Division (HCL ISD)