IT has come out of its oblivion and is an integral part of any business today. Gone are the days when IT was considered to be a cost centre. Not long ago, every CIO was made to sit and ponder as to what revenue does IT bring to his/her business and is it worth spending so much dollars on it?
“There are three stages of managing IT. They are break-fix model, remote infrastructure management (RIM) model and automation management or automatic management model. The next level of IT management services is automation, which in turn will turn IT into a revenue driver”.
How is automation going to change IT from a cost centre into a revenue driver?
Unlike before, today it is all the more important for a business to ensure that its IT assets run properly, at least 99.99 percent of the time. So from a reactive method of break-fix model, companies have to move into a proactive method to manage IT and that is automation.
Unlike before, today it is all the more important for a business to ensure that its IT assets run properly, at least 99.99 percent of the time. So from a reactive method of break-fix model, companies have to move into a proactive method to manage IT and that is automation.
Automation helps reduce human errors, improve productivity and also improves service levels. The developments in this area lead us closer to the dream of autonomic computing or self-healing technologies, where problems in devices are automatically fixed through intelligent tools without human intervention.
What are the newer trends that are coming up in IM space?
One of the trends is automation. Automation evolved in the early 90s in the West. Today, the West is moving towards a run book model or configure management data base (CMDB) model.
CMDB means every asset and footprint in a network is configured and all those configurations, both hardware and software, are then stored in a centralized location. With this, one can map which person is working on what application, at what level etc.
Moving forward, IT assets will be taken care of as a run book model, where all the policies and procedures are carried out in an automated way at different service levels. Once automation comes in, IT will start providing value-added service to other business units too.
Moving forward, IT assets will be taken care of as a run book model, where all the policies and procedures are carried out in an automated way at different service levels. Once automation comes in, IT will start providing value-added service to other business units too.
Thus IT will stop being a cost centre and with automation every CIO will be able to answer the billion dollar question, “What value is IT bringing to my business?”. India is slowly moving on to this model.
How has remote infrastructure management evolved in India?
Remote infrastructure management technology has been with us for a long time. However, because of the lack of economic viability of the technology, only large markets could afford it.
Evolution of RIM in India is much more rapid than in any other market. Till about 2007 nothing of this concept have been heard of in India. In 2008 and early 2009 there were a lot of buzz about RIM in India; however, nobody had any clue. A few service providers started providing RIM and thus started learning the concept in early 2009.
However, today the evolution is very fast. We are in the early stages of a matured market. The speed with which we are growing, in another two-three years we will get a widespread model.
By 2013 nobody is going to manage IT as such in the break-fix model anymore in India. Most of the market will be then managed through RIM. However, it will take 2013-2015 for the market to get widespread automated managed service.
How will virtualisation and cloud shape up RIM space?
Cloud and virtualisation are one aspect of IT operation, whereas, automation and RIM are different.
Cloud is a common infrastructure where people can pool in and start using the common infrastructure and put their applications and data into further use. Whereas, in virtualisation, people use infrastructure that is available virtually. These were the initiatives that started in 2005-2006 in the market and will only mature by 2012.
Cloud is still in the early stages of developments and will be full-fledged only by 2014, since there are only a very few Indian cloud operators today. Whereas, virtualisation is picking up very quickly, as a concept, where applications scale up virtually.
Moreover, companies such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, have been able to effectively perform and optimise in a virtualised server. Today all these software solutions are capable to work on a multi-tier architecture or a client-server model.
However, these software producers have not invested and come out with any product that can work effectively in a virtualised environment. Even though in a virtual server any software can work directly, the code that runs in these software has not been designed to run in a virtualised environment.
So, unless the business applications are transformed in to virtualised model, this will not really create a big value for the business. And we are still three years away from it.
At the end of the day, virtualisation and cloud are IT assets, so RIM is required to manage them.
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