Remote IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Strategy - MSP's The Real deal Breakers

IT infrastructure outsourcing is the practice wherein organizations contract services and tasks related to the organization's IT infrastructure and operations to a service provider. They may outsource one or more specific services or may simply decide to supplement the capacity of its existing IT department.

If you want your business to grow you need to focus on customers and business innovation—and IT must do its part. When it comes to the IT infrastructure businesses need to become more agile, ready to take risk and ready to spend more on innovation. In the present day scenario businesses are looking beyond cost savings and looking to IT infrastructure operations outsourcing.

According to Gartner, ”After a setback in 2009, in which the global market for IT outsourcing fell 2.8% to $231 billion, the market rebounded in 2010, growing 2.8% to $237 billion with forecast growth to $254 billion in 2011, a growth of 7.1%.”

With the advent of cloud computing there is a lot of change in the infrastructure outsourcing space. IT outsourcing service provider is responsible for some or all of an organization's hardware and software components, including firewalls, servers, computers, desktop and laptop PCs, handheld devices, printers, operating systems, and e-mail management.

IT infrastructure outsourcing can also include infrastructure facilities, system security, data storage, backup and recovery management, help desk support and maintenance. It is the responsibility of the service provider to take proactive measures to maximize the uptime and availability of an organization's IT infrastructure.

As CIOs increasingly work with remote infrastructure management tools for configuration, testing and distribution of software, more and more engineers are being empowered to remotely manage data centers, storage, networks, desktop support, help desk and security.

Remote infrastructure management outsourcing, or RIMO—is emerging to help buyers gain many of the hoped-for benefits of asset ownership transfer without the exorbitant costs and risks associated with that older model.

RIMO is becoming increasingly popular form of outsourcing in which a solution provider assumes responsibility for managing specific or all IT/network functions. The organization contracts for a solution provider to continuously monitor its systems; identify potential problems and remediate and resolve real events from a remote location.

In an RIMO scenario, a Managed Network Service Provider(MSP) commonly provides remote network, desktop and security monitoring, patch management, remote data backup and other technical services, monitoring a client’s IT infrastructure and resolving any issues that arise within it. Most MSPs charge either a per-month fee, on a time-and-materials basis, or per deployed device (e.g., per server or network device). RIMO is particularly important for the small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) market, giving businesses a relatively cost-effective way to manage their IT without having to hire on-site staff.

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End User Computing – Be More Productive at a Reduced Cost

Your network is only as secure as your end points connected to it. Securing your endpoints is vital and keeping them updated with the right security firewall and patches is important. End-user computing (EUC) is one of the most significant phenomenons to occur in the IT in the last decade.

With the increasing use of IT, end consumers are becoming more demanding, requiring anytime, anywhere access from an ever-growing selection of applications and devices. The support services for end-user form a vital part of Infrastructure Management services and there is need to provide a one point solution for complete management of the computing environment, to secure and manage the end point that people are using from desktop/laptop/Mobile devices and net books, balanced by a dedicated service desk.

Collaborate with the Right Tools

To move businesses forward each person in the organization from customer service executive to CEO need the right tools to help these end users to work efficiently and collaborate effectively.With enterprises having large footprint across the world, with much diversified end user base one will need to deliver a predictive, highly optimized and standardized end-user computing experience.The right tools empower individuals to work efficiently and teams to collaborate effectively, so they can get more done, in less time, at a lower cost.You can boost productivity while protecting the data and the systems. The end point management solutions can help IT manage the lifecycle of endpoints automatically and keep everything secure, while making sure IT can meet the high service levels that the business demands.

Thus End-user Computing Management solution allows IT teams to:

* Provision & deploy desktops rapidly

* Manage workstation images

* Deliver virtualized applications to desktop and other mobile devices

There is a synergy between End User Computing services and other IT infrastructure domains, and thus there is need for services like Enterprise Help Desk, Centralized Desktop Management, Application Support and Project Support to its customers.

Enterprise Help Desk– IT Service Desk and integrated infrastructure and application operations support team should act as one single entity instead of silos which also leads to standardization across enterprise operations. Provides support for logging, tracking, Resolution and reporting of help desk incidents and service requests.

Centralized Desktop Management- Lowers operational costs and reduces security risk. Network traffic is greatly reduced because it now only needs to provide the changes.Whatever updates are implemented on the parent server can be recreated on to any number of virtual desktops in minutes, greatly simplifying deployment and patches.Backups become efficient and non-intrusive because only the user data is backed up.

Application Support– Application roll out, software distribution, automation, customization, repository building, image building and roll out, patch management ensuring interoperability, performance and availability of the enterprise application and its ecosystem.

The major advantages attribute to end user computing include:

* Increased productivity

* Provision user friendly systems

* Overcome application implementation problems

* Overcome shortage of qualified personnel’s

* Secure Network

With End User Computing solutions you can build the strongest possible boundary around your valuable IT assets without compromising user productivity and performance. Thus end user computing delivers a powerful and secure environment that meets quality, risk mitigation and cost objectives of the enterprise.

Other Links

IT outsourcing

Information security

Cloud Computing in India - The Bubble Ready to Burst

Cloud Computing technology, is all about providing IT related resources such as computing, storage, network, system security, application, platform as a service and more, where these services are charged based on the usage. Cloud computing is proving to be a major driver for small and medium businesses as they do not need to spend large amount of money on buying hardware, software and upgrading and maintaining it.

Cloud computing has been there for a long time globally and has caught up in India over the last few years, but is being used by big companies only. Smaller firms and individuals are trying to catch up to the concept, which can cut down on operation costs phenomenally and help monitor businesses on the move.

Scalability is one of the major issues for organizations as they grow. Cloud computing offers a lot of ease here since expanding on the cloud is relatively quick and cheaper. There are a number of cloud service models that can be provided to the customers, each catering to different kind of need of the organizations. You may find internet hits with dozens of offering on Cloud as a Service: Desktop, Security, Data, Software, Platform, Infrastructure, IT, Testing, Hardware, Computing, Database, Storage etc.

The most accepted types of Service Models are

• SaaS (Software as a Service)
• PaaS (Platform as a Service)
• IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

Software as a Service - With every organization using different platforms, operating systems, and hardware, providing data access with a tool that works in every environment and training every new external user can be a challenge. That is where SaaS has an upper hand. It is the combination of a Business Model and a Software Delivery Model and is a way of providing the same software to different consumers via the Internet and not hosted on the customers' individual computers.

The question on how can SaaS providers adjust IT infrastructure hosting and management to compensate for budget pressures while maintaining comprehensive SLAs? This can be done by shifting the management of day-to-day IT operations of its SaaS infrastructure to a cloud hosting provider or a managed service provider. SaaS providers can focus on developing new and innovative services and efficiently scale their SaaS business and drive revenue growth.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) – is the delivery of a computing platform and solution stack as a service. It helps with deployment of applications without the added cost and complication of buying and managing the hardware and software and provisioning hosting capabilities. 

PaaS provides complete facility required to support the life cycle for application design, application development, testing, deployment and hosting as well as application services such as team collaboration, web service integration and marshalling, database integration, security, scalability, storage, persistence, etc.  PaaS aids in faster application delivery, pay-as-you-go model and provides opportunities to solve new problems.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Infrastructure as a Service is described as a model, where in devices required to assist in IT operations, such as networking, storage, servers and other hardware components are outsourced. The service provider is in charge of the equipment and is accountable for operating, maintaining and housing it. The client or the end user simply compensates on a per-use basis.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) being the primary foundation of cloud computing, execution of SaaS and Paas depends on this foundation. It allows an application to be operated and monitored on a virtual computer selected by the users i.e. users can fix up a CPU configuration and the memory storage that is required for a particular application.  Entire cloud infrastructure is offered by cloud computing providers these days, that include routers, servers, hardware based load balancing, storage, firewalls, and many other network necessities that the user requires.  

Cloud hosting services in India is still at its nascent stage and is still evolving to harness Cloud Computing technologies and services to its best advantage.  The service providers are free to innovate and offer various services and there are no hard and fast rules governing these service offerings.

Other Links

Data centers in india

Infrastructure Management Services

End User Computing – Be More Productive at a Reduced Cost

Your network is only as secure as your end points connected to it. Securing your endpoints is vital and keeping them updated with the right security firewall and patches is important. End-user computing (EUC) is one of the most significant phenomenons to occur in the IT in the last decade.

With the increasing use of IT, end consumers are becoming more demanding, requiring anytime, anywhere access from an ever-growing selection of applications and devices. The support services for end-user form a vital part of Infrastructure Management services and there is need to provide a one point solution for complete management of the computing environment, to secure and manage the end point that people are using from desktop/laptop/Mobile devices and netbooks, balanced by a dedicated service desk.  

Collaborate with the Right Tools

To move businesses forward each person in the organization from customer service executive to CEO need the right tools to help these end users to work efficiently and collaborate effectively. With enterprises having large footprint across the world, with much diversified end user base one will need to deliver a predictive, highly optimized and standardized end-user computing experience. The right tools empower individuals to work efficiently and teams to collaborate effectively, so they can get more done, in less time, at a lower cost. You can boost productivity while protecting the data and the systems. The endpoint management solutions can help IT manage the lifecycle of endpoints automatically and keep everything secure, while making sure IT can meet the high service levels that the business demands.

Thus End-user Computing Management solution allows IT teams to:

• Provision & deploy desktops rapidly
• Manage workstation images
• Deliver virtualized applications to desktop and other mobile devices

There is a synergy between End User Computing services and other IT infrastructure domains, and thus there is need for services like Enterprise Help Desk, Centralized Desktop Management, Application Support and Project Support to its customers.

Enterprise Help Desk –   IT Service Desk and integrated infrastructure and application operations support team should act as one single entity instead of silos which also leads to standardization across enterprise operations. Provides support for logging, tracking, Resolution and reporting of help desk incidents and service requests. 

Centralized Desktop Management - Lowers operational costs and reduces security risk. Network traffic is greatly reduced because it now only needs to provide the changes. Whatever updates are implemented on the parent server can be recreated on to any number of virtual desktops in minutes, greatly simplifying deployment and patches. Backups become efficient and non-intrusive because only the user data is backed up.

Application Support – Application roll out, software distribution, automation, customization, repository building, image building and roll out, patch management ensuring interoperability, performance and availability of the enterprise application and its ecosystem.

The major advantages attribute to end user computing include:

• Increased productivity
• Provision user friendly systems
• Overcome application implementation problems
• Overcome shortage of qualified personnel’s
• Secure Network

With End User Computing solutions you can build the strongest possible boundary around your valuable IT assets without compromising user productivity and performance. Thus end user computing delivers a powerful and secure environment that meets quality, risk mitigation and cost objectives of the enterprise.

Related Links: Managed network services

                           Information security