The Indian offshoring success story is a phenomenon that has changed the way
business is done globally. And India has constantly innovated to push the
outsourcing envelope. After having created Application Development and
Maintenance (ADM) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), we now have another
addition to the outsourcing saga: Remote Infrastructure Management Services
(RIMS).
RIMS comprise of day to day management of IT infrastructure needs of an
organization from a remote location (although services are available that
combine remote with on-site). RIMS constitutes management of networks, security,
servers, storage devices, applications, desktops and a 24x7 help desk.
Increasingly, enterprises worldwide have been waking up to the challenges
involved in ensuring the availability and the predictability of their networks
and devices -- and have stumbled across this RIMS solution.
Traditionally this need has been fulfilled by in-house teams or outsourced to
local as well as large traditional IT services players.
Driving the outsourcing of IT infra is the fact that, technology is changing
rapidly and today even SMBs are deploying servers and network storage devices
(their 180 GB desktop hard drives are not good enough!). As price of devices
fall and technological changes become more rapid, it is labor which maintains
the IT infra that has become the single largest contributory factor to costs.
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You can see the developing picture: lowered device prices, higher technology
quotient, wide usage of technology across industry, compliance requirements,
growing shortage of qualified talent, increasing cost of IT infrastructure
management, retention issues with IT talent...The answer? Offshore IT
infrastructure management to markets where talent is easily available and where
tools and processes have been developed to manage your infrastructure remotely.
The good news is that newer trends in technology, such as virtualization and
cloud computing are creating win-win situations for the customers as well as for
the vendors. These technologies are paving the way to consolidation and
standardization of IT infrastructure for global players. The reduction in
complexity makes it less risky for the clients to outsource to RIMS vendors.
On their part, vendors have enhanced their capabilities in managing diverse
technologies by creating training, to rapidly improve the skill sets of their
employees, and are placing a growing emphasis on rigorous quality processes.
Additionally, as the industry is maturing, IT infrastructure management tools
available in the market have simplified. These tools are integrated with
governance features which address the management of multiple vendors.
Beyond the technology and delivery aspect, one significant change these
technologies are bringing is that of mindset. CIOs are now more comfortable with
the thought of having the IT operations hosted and delivered out of locations
outside the enterprise premises and Global Delivery Models are strongly gaining
acceptance in the IT infrastructure management domain.
The good news for RIMS adopters is that Indian vendors have been innovating
not just on the service front, but on the pricing front as well. Today there are
several pricing models to choose from — device based, outcome based, input based
and a combination of all.
Not surprisingly, the mid-sized deals segment of the market has become an
important source of growth for RIMS providers.
RIMS is clearly a specialist play. The rigorous processes and operations
combined with the critical nature of business makes it imperative for the
vendors to specialize. A RIMS vendor focused in this area would be able to
provide enhanced quality of service as a result of aligning tools, processes and
skill sets to the industry needs.
And to us, the biggest trend is the choice that RIMS adopters are making — by
carefully choosing specialist players over others to manage their
infrastructure.
Anindo Sengupta, Microland