Remote Infrastructure Management

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.

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