Remote Infrastructure Management

Remote Infrastructure Management is one of fastest growing services.

According to the latest Nasscom report, “ Global RIM industry grew at more than

80 per cent CAGR from US$2 billion in 2006 to US$6-7 billion in 2008”. Nasscom

also believes India is likely to capture $13-15 billion of the market share. For

RIM vendors, the current slowdown is the icing on the cake, as companies all

around the world are looking to consolidate their IT infrastructure and

experienced yet cheap labor. Enterprises running mission critical applications

need 24x7 monitoring, along with management, DR and other similar services. This

isn't an easy job to do with the in-house IT team. As a result RIM is becoming a

peachy option for enterprises across the globe. With their IT infrastructure

outsourced, they can concentrate on their core business and utilize their IT

team in planning, design and escalation activities.

In India companies have been taking to remote infrastructure management since

a long time. However given the fact that young talented IT workforce is not easy

to find, many enterprises choose to manage IT infrastructure on their own.

Lately with the slowdown and other issues like high attrition rate in IT

industry, CIOs have been under increased pressure to cut down their IT budgets

and at the same time continue to meet their companies' growing requirements. As

a result they are also starting to adopt RIM. In this story we will talk about

the growing trends and advantages of adopting RIM. We also talk about what you

should look for when outsourcing your infrastructure.

Current Trends



Traditionally network, server and desktop management were considered to be key
functions of RIM. But with the advent of new technologies like virtualization,

cloud computing, etc organization demands are changing; as a result vendors are

now offering new and innovative services. Let's look at some of the evolving

trends in RIM industry.

Business Continuity



Ensuring this is one of the top priorities of CIOs. As IT has become a part of
the core business, many enterprises cannot even afford downtime of a few

minutes. Just having remote backup scheduling, monitoring and recovery from

backup failures is no longer enough. Even small enterprises nowadays have some

sort of DR mechanism in place, so that in case of disaster they can quickly

shift without affecting business. However, for maintaining a DR site,

enterprises need infrastructure on other locations, skilled workforce to

maintain DR sites and carry periodic tests. This means there will be a

significant increase in IT budgets of an enterprise. As a result, enterprises

are starting to adopt Managed Business Continuity services. Here again there are

various services available for an enterprise, for eg an enterprise running

mission critical applications, would ideally like to have a “HOT” D.R site,

which will be a mirrored, dedicated replica at the service provider's location.

Similarly, concepts of managed "warm site" and "cold site" are also catching up.

Under DR services, it's no longer just about IT recovery; Work Area Recovery and

Crisis Management services are also gaining momentum.

Infrastructure as a Service



Popularly known as Cloud Computing, this is another growing trend in RIM
services especially in the global markets. As enterprises look to consolidate

their infrastructure and bandwidth, they are looking to invest in infrastructure

as a service. With this, enterprises not only save on space costs but also don't

have to worry about maintaining their infrastructure or other issues like

workforce, business continuity etc. This allows them to focus on their existing

infrastructure. We mentioned earlier that

in traditional remote infrastructure management, there are a few tasks which

cannot be performed remotely, such as if any component of your data center

fails, then it has to be replaced physically. However in this scenario, an

enterprise doesn't have to worry about these issues as everything is in the

cloud and with the kind of cloud computing technologies around, an enterprise

won't even know about it. All the company has to do is ensure connectivity to

the cloud. Another advantage that IAAS provides is that whenever an enterprise

starts a new project they can quickly get access to desired infrastructure,

rather than going through the long process of buying and implementing new

infrastructure.

G K Prasanna, Sr.Vice President, Technology Infrastructure Services, Wipro Technologies The challenges are different depending on whether the customer has already outsourced earlier or whether work is currently in-sourced. In the latter case, there will be people and base lining issues. In both scenarios, the common challenges are that of lack of proximity, cultural fit, language issues, etc. in addition, customers also take into account geo-political risk, security and compliance requirements, etc.

A similar trend is Co-Location services, where an enterprise can place its

existing IT infrastructure at a service provider's premises, to be managed by

the latter. This is also a good option for enterprises looking to consolidate

their existing infrastructure, as they do not have to worry about issues like

business continuity, skilled workforce, immediate problem resolution, etc.

Why should you outsource WAN management?



Businesses are faced with unique challenges when attempting to connect and
manage an extended enterprise network. Due to the current economic environment,

businesses need to do more with less. As organizations expand and become more

global, the complexity of running applications across a global infrastructure

increase. In today's business world, companies must deploy services in disparate

locations throughout the globe, while meeting the familiar need to curb capital

expenditure and effectively distribute IT resources. At the same time, the

ever-evolving industry means that enterprises must keep pace with deploying and

managing new technologies, often with staff that are already stretched for

resources.

Ram Mohan C Sr. Vice President and Head - Infrastructure Management and Tech Support, MindTree When an enterprise chooses RIM services, the IT infrastructure will be monitored and managed by engineers sitting far away. So they need to place their infrastructure in the right hands. They need to make sure that the partner has the capability and experience of managing complex, mission critical IT infrastructure. The partner should have enough case studies and references to demonstrate successful remote management of the entire IT infrastructure. Partners who have experience of having done production support will understand all nuances of mission critical IT infrastructure management. The partner should have invested in experienced and talented leadership, state-of-the-art voice infrastructure and network operations center. RIM outsourcing is a long-term strategy. Enterprises have to make sure that their partner has a strategic interest in infrastructure management and has made the right investments to grow this practice.

Leveraging the management resources of an efficient network service provider

can help businesses cost-effectively meet their technology needs, while

relieving them of the need to self-manage their network and enabling staff to

focus on core business goals and competencies.

Going a step further, companies like Verizon Business, for instance, provide

comprehensive service capabilities that include design and implementation,

proactive monitoring, fault isolation and restoration, proactive notification,

change management, and performance reporting, besides taking care of global

compliances.

From a business perspective, Managed WAN shields the business from technology

and capital risks by taking advantage of new and evolving access to technologies

and extending security and content policies out to distributed locations in a

cost-effective manner.

D Mohanty Vice President, HCL Infinet Ltd What are the current trends in Remote Infrastructure Management in India? In the current economic environment, focusing on core competencies is the key to survival. Managing ever-increasing IT infrastructure and shrinking budgets have forced corporates to device a cost- effective and proactive approach, thus distracting them from focusing on their core business. This sets a perfect platform for outsourcing IT infrastructure services to managed services providers. With a surge in domestic services business, majority of the players in Managed Services space have acknowledged the potential and tried to exploit the business opportunity that domestic IT services market has to offer. How cost-effective is RIM? For decades, cost-effectiveness has been the driving force behind outsourcing. Today CIOs are expected to tailor IT Infrastructure Management strategies to meet increasing service levels with reduced budgets and increased complexity. Managed Services not only results in cost reduction in terms of manpower but even helps organizations achieve operational excellence in terms of meeting customer satisfaction levels. HCL Infinet provides Managed Services on an Opex model where customers are billed on annual basis for services they avail. What care should an enterprise take when going for a RIM solution? Identifying right managed services that meet your business and IT requirements is the first and important milestone for a managed service implementation. Requirement assessment should be carried out roping in all stakeholders to address business, financial and technical aspects of the organization. Once the requirement assessment is completed, identifying the right service provider is the next step towards a managed services environment. Managed Services are uniquely tailored to meet different business requirements. Therefore, it is extremely important for your managed services provider to understand the business and technical requirements of your organization.

How should an enterprise carry out WAN Management?



The first step is to understand the technical capabilities of the Managed WAN
services partner and ensure that the company can leverage in the area of design,

planning, implementation, and network management for the WAN routers and network

service of your enterprise. Going a step further from just installation and

implementation, you would also require 24x7 pro-active monitoring and

management, fault isolation and remediation, if your business is extremely

mission-critical.

Aditya Singhal Country Manager Infrastructure Services, IBM India/S Asia What are the current trends in Remote Infrastructure Management? RIM has evolved significantly over the last decade in India from both the Demand Side (customer driven priorities and requirements) as well as from the Supply Side (Vendors & Service Providers). The spectrum and gamut of the services has increased significantly ranging from physical layers across Desktops, Servers, Storage / Backup, Network & Security to logical stack of DB/Middleware and Application / Groupware. Today RIM is viewed as a service which can start from simple out-tasking to large scale outsourcing. From the demand side perspective, clients are increasingly adopting the hybrid model (a combination of remote / offsite and onsite delivery models). The mix varies based on the actual requirements and priorities. In the past, businesses seeking a full suite of services often had to engage multiple service providers / vendors, thereby increasing complexity instead of reducing it. Discerning clients are now looking at service providers who can replace the multi-vendor ecosystem and can take ownership of end-to-end service delivery and the associated SLAs. Services subscribed go through extensive evaluation to identify if these are going to be isolated islands or can be part of a logical continuum.General business and mid-sized customers who need management of their existing infrastructure with minimum transformation, while keeping their assets at their premises are relying on RIM solutions. From the supply side standpoint, there are multitude of service providers / vendors which have emerged, who are from both IT as well as telecom domains. There are some who are in between the two (Pure-play ISPs & Datacenters). Due to the diverse nature of players, virtually all kinds of possible access connectivity options are now available (Internet, MPLS, Frame Relay etc.) which can be used to deliver RIMS optimizing costs, increasing flexibility and enhancing efficiency. Why should an Enterprise go for RIMS? Desparate server environments create serious business challenges. Lack of adequately skilled in-house IT resources can limit a company's responsiveness to new business initiatives. Organizations need to take effective measures to tackle high costs, operational inefficiency, and vulnerability to IT related risk, slow time to market and poor customer service. When you lack time to plan the growth of your IT infrastructure, the end result can be a cumbersome, difficult-to-manage environment. Clients need to increase flexibility and responsiveness to business changes for optimal operational efficiency. RIMS help to Leverage expert IT skills and staffing to enhance operational efficiency and improve customer loyalty and retention by keeping business-critical systems running. There are several strategic benefits that RIM offers. It reduces IT costs and improves shareholder value. At the same time, it also provides the flexibility to transition and transform to the next generation of infrastructure and applications.

Businesses with multiple locations that utilize internal management tools

must ensure that there is consistent support in order to maintain a high level

of network efficiency - especially in the event of an outage. Notifying and

monitoring should be given preference since skilled technical staff onsite might

not be ready to move to a fully out-tasked solution. However, they must be able

to support their network services internally, without overrunning their costs.

Managed WAN services allow businesses to take advantage of services like

Verizon's 24x7 monitoring solution. This allows them to leverage their existing

technical staff without needing to invest into expensive monitoring or reporting

solutions.

Managed WAN Services allow for additional products to be sold in conjunction

with the service in order to provide an additional level of customer support.

Network Engineering, Network Analysis, and Enhanced Reporting are products that

can be combined with Managed WAN Services and are created to improve the overall

customer experience.

Kaseya

We first spoke about Kaseya a couple of years ago. It has changed quite a bit since then. Just in case you don't know already, Kaseya is a web based IT automation solution, which allows you manage all machines on your network remotely. Kaseya is available in two versions -Professional Edition and Managed Services Edition. Managed Services Edition is largely meant for IT service providers while Professional Edition is for enterprises who want to manage their IT infrastructure in-house. Kaseya now calls in a web management interface as Virtual System Administrator Console(VSA), through which all infrastructure management tasks can be performed. It has features like helpdesk, remote desktop management, patch management, software deployment, network monitoring and alerts. We tried Kaseya on a Windows 2003 enterprise machine. Installing Kaseya was simple. Its minimum requirements include IIS 5, MS SQL server 2005 and or SQL server 2005 Express Edition. We tested the software on SQL server 2005 Express Edition. During installation itself, it asks to create a Kaseya administrator account. Once the Kaseya server component is installed, next step is to deploy its agent on the machines which need to be monitored. Kaseya gives quite a few options for deploying agents.They can be installed through logon scripts, push agents through its LAN watch feature, email and manually install its agents. Kaseya automatically configures the agents. All that's required is to run the agent executable file. Its agent supports Windows 9x, XP, Vista, Windows 2008 and also Apple Mac OS X 10.3.9 above. Through Kaseya's dashboard, CIOs can get a one shot view of the entire infrastrucuture, like helpdesk tickets status, Inventory information, etc. Once the agent is installed, managed machines will automatically be visible in its VSA console. From the console audits, scans for missing updates and patches can be run or scheduled. It also has the option of automatically running the scans after a particular period of time. It supports three types of audits: baseline, latest and system info. After audit is finished, it shows all machine's data such as installed apps, software licenses, system summary, etc. It keeps all audited data on the server, and this data is available even if the node is online or off line. Kaseya also allows users to easily build scripts for a particular patch. Initially it asked for bulletin ID or MS knowledge Base article number and selected the OS type on which the patch has to be deployed. We found its ticketing component  easy to use and feature rich. Once a user logs a ticket, it autom- atically appears in kaseya's ticket queue. From here, it can be assigned to helpdesk personnel. Kaseya also allows administrator to define parameter like ticket priority, SLA type etc. Under ticketing, it also allows admin to define user profiles and access, notify policy, due date policy and assignee policy. It also comes with a remote control component which runs 'WinVNC' for remote troubleshooting.  Also users can view their previous tickets, send email to administrator or directly chat with an administrator. By default, it has 13 report templates which includes reports for inventory, ticketing, monitor etc. It also gives provision of saving reports in HTML, Word or Excel format.   Another interesting thing we found in Kaseya is, if somebody provides wrong password for its administrator account at repetitive times, it automatically disables that administrator account. We could not find any option available to enable this account. However it allows you to go to a URL and create a new Admin account with password. Overall, its ability to automate almost all processes, and ease of use through its intuitive interface makes Kaseya a pretty good solution to manage an IT infrastructure from a single location.

New challenges for Managed WAN Services



Prioritization of network traffic has become the biggest challenge for
workplaces and enterprises across the globe. With Web 2.0 applications being

used increasingly by employees, bandwidth allocation ranks high in the priority

list of IT managers. Managed services allow bandwidth distribution and jitter

sensitive applications such as voice to have the highest priority, and then

other applications with decreasing sensitivity or decreasing business priority

to be prioritized in different queues. Customer business traffic can therefore

be prioritized above non-business traffic, allowing users to utilize Web 2.0

apps or other non-business traffic without interfering with business related

applications.

Detailed reporting in order to understand the impact of non-business

applications and then define the best approach to ensure optimum performance

over time should be carried out as network utilization trends change. In simpler

words, it gives an indication of whether WAN access is being limited by their

business or non-business traffic performance.

Key drivers



The biggest advantage of remote infrastructure management is that once an
enterprise outsources its IT infrastructure, it will be managed by IT experts

and enterprises can focus on its core businesses without worrying about IT

related issues.

Increased up and response times



One of the biggest challenges for every enterprise is to ensure that its
business runs smoothly without any IT related issues. To maintain your uptime,

RIMS can help you by providing better and centralized monitoring. There are

quite a few independent network devices and monitoring applications in both the

commercial and Open Source world that are available for the job. When we asked

vendors about what tools they use for this purpose, most of them named standard

tools, which include HP's OpenView, IBM's Tivoli, and CA's Unicenter. Many of

them claimed to use open source tools such as PRTG, Nagios, OpenNMS, etc Many

companies use customized software for the job. In such a setup, there is likely

to be a RIM core, which is basically a database that captures and stores all

your events and alerts. All alerts are fetched and sent to this RIM core using

either hardware polling devices, which have been developed by vendors or by some

common fetching mechanism such as rsync or FTP. The software should be

installed/configured on each client's location. After these events are captured

by the RIM core, they are forwarded to a monitoring agent, which has pre-defined

thresholds configured for various types of services like database, mail, system

performance (RAM, CPU, etc), Web servers, etc. Here, all events are checked

against their preset thresholds and forwarded to a help desk/trouble ticketing

application. This application, in most cases also has in-built SLA details that

have been set between the vendor and the service provider. For instance, if some

organization wants that a set of its servers in a data center should be treated

on a priority basis, then alerts generated from those devices will automatically

get priority on helpdesk tickets. The applications' front end can then be

monitored by the IT team for diagnostics and repairs. For repairing, they again

can use standard techniques such as IP KVMs, Remote Desktop or VNC.

Another advantage that RIM provides is faster response time. In scenarios

where everything is located centrally, this can be substantial as problems can

be spotted and rectified instantly. This cuts down the response time drastically

and ensures higher uptime for servers and nodes. There are multiple ways to

achieve this. Most network devices and applications today provide a web-based

management interface, meaning they can be accessed from anywhere. All you need

is to access the network where these devices are located. You can either go for

a VPN setup to access the network and then manage (test, configure, and even

reboot if needed), or do a one-to-one NATing with the local IP address of the

device to a public IP from your vendor and then access it over the Internet

directly.

Cost reduction



Depending upon the type of service model adopted, enterprises can significantly
lower their costs. According to a Gartner report, companies can cut labor costs

by 10-60 % depending upon the delivery location. Going a little deeper, with IT

infrastructure outsourced, a company directly saves on the cost of hiring more

people to maintain its IT infrastructure. In cases where a company is using

service providers' infrastructure, it also saves maintenance costs.

Security challenges



When somebody else is managing an enterprise infrastructure or an enterprise is
using somebody else's infrastructure, then security and data protection are one

of the major concerns. Security issues again vary according to the service model

chosen. If an enterprise is using Internet for remote connectivity, then the

first level of security is to go through a secure tunnel. Another commonly used

option is to restrict any type of inbound connection from remote locations. In

this case, whenever an event happens, that crosses a certain pre-defined

threshold, it triggers an outbound connection which then connects the location

to the NOC. To tackle security challenges, it is always a good idea to have

stringent security policies and follow globally accepted best practices. When we

spoke to vendor's about this, most of them didn't see too many security

challenges coming in the way. Giving us a little insight on the subject, Ram

from Mindtree says, 'Earlier all events had to be transferred from client

location to vendor location for analysis. This not only required large

bandwidths but there were security issues during data transfer. Now most of the

tools have become web enabled and are mostly hosted at a client's location. So,

there is very little data transfer and whatever is transferred is completely

encrypted.' Encryption plays an important role in RIM. It is not just the data

that is traveling that needs to encrypted, you also have to ensure that you

critical data is encrypted even when stored at a remote location. As G K

Prasanna from Wipro says, 'Security as a risk is more of a perception than

reality.

Outsourcing your infrastructure



Before going for Remote Infrastructure Management Services (RIMS), the first
thing you need to do is to decide what you want to outsource. Usually the first

thing to do is divide your IT infrastructure into service-enabled models. Once

you have prioritized your services and decided what you want to outsource, the

next step is to find the right partner. One challenge you are likely to face is

whether to go for a multi-vendor approach or a single vendor approach. Chances

are you have already outsourced a part of the IT infrastructure and you might

not choose the same vendor when outsourcing other parts of your infrastructure.

So, you need to ensure that the service provider you choose, must gel with your

existing eco-system.

When choosing a RIM service provider, make sure he specializes in that field,

ie it should be his core business. Next ensure that the man power of your

service provider is qualified and suits your needs. It's always a good idea to

find out the service provider's track record, especially with enterprises in the

same business.

Another good idea is to look at the service provider's infrastructure. How

many delivery centers does he have? Further, what kind of DR and other policies

does he use? What kind of certifications or compliances does he meet? After all,

a service provider can also be hit by a disaster and they need to ensure your

data must be safe with them. The next most important thing is to have stringent

SLAs with the service provider. You can also ask him for adherence to standards

and best practices followed across the globe.

Pricing models



There is a lot of flexibility in pricing models of RIM but these largely depend
upon the kind of solution a company goes for. Common pricing models offered by

vendors include: Fixed pricing, Input based, outcome based and Unit based. Input

based pricing model is usually based on time and material, cost per full time

employee, etc. Output based service model is another preferred model around.

This is largely based on services provided by the vendor, price per ticket

raised, price per server used, etc. This one is commonly used in consulting

projects. The Unit pricing model is losing in popularity because as the number

of units increase, customers have to pay more.