Managing Infrastructure

Managing your technological infrastructure, whatever the size of its deployment, is a key-concern as your enterprise scales up the operations. Even if your

infrastructure is not as vast and complicated as that of say the best of global banks, it has to be looked after. Your business process may not fundamentally allow you the resources or the time or the budget to implement an in-house department

to take care of these worries. That's where of course you would normally call for AMC quotations. But is that-outsourcing

your infrastructure worries-the best solution?

Infrastructure is not necessarily all hardware. Yes, PCs, workstations, servers and network equipment like routers and switches are a part of it. But so are your data and your software applications. These days, maintenance of software is not 



limited to just installing them and applying patches. 

You need to take periodic backups, plan for disaster management and you need to worry about licenses if you use such software. With the rise and spread of your operations to other cities and countries, you have data centers. These units of your infrastructure have their own unique problems.

The solutions



So, what do you do about them? One easy answer is to deploy more software and hardware to manage them. The hardware, like sensors, help you assess and track problems and fix them faster. The software manages the hardware and other software and gives you an interface. 'Centralized manageability' is the keyword here. There is no use if you have to fly your engineers to another city to troubleshoot a problem every time. Software solutions today, come with remote-agents that are deployed on other machines. These agents both collect information and allow you to perform administrative tasks on that machine. The task can be uninstalling errant software or performing a backup of that system's data. Of course, software would not allow you to change damaged

hardware.

Solutions like IBM's Tivoli and HP's Systems Insight Manager meet the demands at server and cluster level. Vendors like APC add capabilities of managing power, environment and servers in a data center. Intel has an IT management portfolio to look after the Intel-hardware in your enterprise-blades, racks, etc. Things are slated to get a little better with the Intel-led consortium of server platform vendors on another standardization drive. IPMIv2 (Intelligent Platform Management Interface version 2) is an enhancement to the existing IPMIv1. IPMI is a structured and uniform methodology to receive alerts, perform diagnostics and send instructions to remote infrastructure.

Outsourcing=AMC ?



Yet another way of getting rid of this headache is to outsource it to an outside entity that will take care of it. IBM, Intel, Wipro, APC and HP among others promise to take care of your IT while you concentrate on your business processes. They specialize in three key areas-identifying and planning your IT deployment, smoothening bottle-necks in existing layouts and providing uptimes necessary for your business to function. 

To do this, they would have two main methodologies. One, a small staff of two to four people might be permanently on your campus to perform immediate service and replacement activities. These may range from simple printer refills to desktop replacement. Your contract with them would stipulate service levels that must be maintained, and for this a mix of their on-site and off-site teams would be employed. For instance in a warehouse-heavy business, your CEO could wait maybe a few hours for a service-fulfillment, but the network managing your warehouse and even remote dealer interfaces need to be brought up yesterday. The alternative would be losing that business while you wait for the service call to be attended to. Such personnel would typically use monitoring software to provide pre-emptive service: that is, replace a server card before it actually fails. Highly critical operations like banks, air and rail transport are able to guarantee 24x7 uptimes using a mix of in-house and external personnel. In their cases, on-site personnel with both the specific knowledge of what exactly is critical to the organization and those with in-depth expertise in the equipment stand by to attend to calls. 

Data center management



Data centers are quickly coming up everywhere and chances are you have one too-either in-house or an externally sited one. This can be as simple as a dedicated or co-located server to host your website,

or an entire center with DR and fail over capability. Data centers are specialized

environments, where it is vital to pamper your equipment as much as the personnel around them. 

Right from physical security to environmental modeling and management, everything is mission critical. It is thus, not only vital that the people in-charge of managing them know the buzzwords and technologies involved, but also how they are relevant and interact with each other. Small things, like using a rack-cabinet with a vent-less door can dictate how your equipment performs and how long

they last. 

This has even created new career options for individuals who specialize in managing data centers.Application management



We refer to applications critical to your business process. From simple vendor/partner interaction systems, to complete order/sales systems or ERPs and CRM solutions, business applications are vital to your survival. Most likely, 


the implementation agent or consultant provides support. They may even have on-site personnel to take care of 


exigencies. 

However, what about actually running them? How important is it for your business to understand or manage this application yourself? 

Can the headaches of (say) managing a Siebel CRM application be handed over to someone who understands Siebel or should you recruit more people for that purpose? Chances are that you can pass

on that task to someone willing to do it 



for you. 

SalesForce.com is an example of an 'on-demand CRM application provider' who run the entire CRM application on the Internet, providing you with simple interface that you just have to login to and start using. Like their site says, there is nothing to deploy or manage at your end.