Nick Sharma on

Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM)

www.satyam.com

Q: How have Remote Infrastructure Management Services evolved?

NICK: In the early stages of adoption, Remote Infrastructure Management services were primarily used to handle network monitoring. Checking the health of the network from the routers and switches, to the local loop, to the WAN circuitry, to network firewalls, etc. monitoring for any potential issues, troubleshooting those issues, managing capacity, etc. Over time, with advances in terms of technology, and monitoring and management processes, more and more elements of the IT infrastructure have come into scope for RIM based delivery. Today, every component of the infrastructure can be managed remotely from desktops, to networks, to servers, security devices, storage devices, etc...

Q: What are the benefits for using Remote Infrastructure Management?

NICK: The benefits of using Remote Infrastructure Management to support your IT Infrastructure are quite substantial. The biggest benefit is that by offloading day-to-day monitoring and management responsibilities from your internal IT staff, you free them to conduct more strategically oriented activities. You arent in the business of IT management IT is an enabler to your larger ambitions. As a result, you shouldnt have to develop all layers of the IT discipline from architecture and implementation, to ongoing monitoring and management. Your biggest return comes from having your resources focused on IT innovation not on 24x7x365 management. By turning to an outside party for RIM based services, you can place this emphasis on innovation. Given that your partner will be purely focused on IT infrastructure management, you will benefit from the deep levels of expertise that are brought to the table. Your infrastructure will run more smoothly given that advanced policies with respect to monitoring and management will be in place. The noise will be filtered out of these activities, meaning that non-critical issues will be prioritized lower than those that are potentially business impacting. As a result, resolution to problems will be more rapid, and potential down-time will be minimized. Should you elect to use a partner with a near-shore, and offshore delivery focus, you will recognize some substantial cost-savings benefits. In these times of economic uncertainty, relying on these types of providers makes a great deal of sense. By tapping into skilled labor in other parts of the world where wage arbitrage is at play, you will see your the overall total cost of ownership for your infrastructure reduce quite significantly.