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April 04, 2010Remote Infrastructure Management Services - Is it Catching on GloballyBy: Ahmar AbbasA Q&A session on RIM1) Given the ongoing economic turmoil and the resultant CIO propensity towards RIM services, how have you fared in the last 12-18 months (domestically) in terms of business? Ans: The economic turmoil has caused CIOs to evaluate cost saving and efficiency focused initiatives with tremendous vigor. As such RIM services have jumped at the top of list of strategies for CIO to achieve both cost saving and drive efficiency. We have seen dramatic increase in interest in RIM over the last 12-18 months and have succeeded in winning deals. 2) Could you give us a sense of the overall RIM market in India and how are you placed in it? Ans: While historically the RIM market in India has lagged behind North America and Europe, we are noticing an interesting shift. Indian companies are evaluating and deploying infrastructure optimization solutions, such as cloud computing – infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and software as a service, at the same pace as North America and ahead of Europe. This is primarily driven by low upfront investment and low risk associated with these new technologies and operating models. We expect the next 12-24 months to be a very interesting and rewarding period for RIM players in India. At CSS, our focus has always been to forecast and implement strategies to take advantage of such inflection points. For example, we became actively involved in infrastructure optimization through cloud computing several years ago and nurtured our service offerings with extensive betas, proof of concepts and partnerships. That investment has positioned us extremely well as an innovative RIM player in India and is yielding very interesting successes for us. 3) What are some of the more recent trends that have emerged in the space that you think are going to impact the market? Ans: We are operating our RIM business by focusing on a defined set of key trends that are emerging in the space and that we believe are going to impact the market. Our engineering efforts are geared towards adapting and expanding our services portfolio to deliver mature services for each of the key areas we have identified. First is the trend and greater acceptance of managed services. Enterprise customers in India are getting more and more comfortable with full managed services being delivered by RIM vendors, and learning to focus on quality of delivery, uptime availability etc. Second, as mentioned earlier cloud computing is providing a new paradigm for delivering infrastructure and software that bends long term operating cost curve, but also has a high benefits to risk ratio. Third, we see an increased focus on automation of existing IT processes, whether it is to optimize data center operations or reduce help desk ticket volumes. Our run-book automation services are gaining a lot more attention in the recent months. Fourth, the introduction of Windows 7 is getting companies to revaluate their end user computing strategy. We are seeing a lot of traction in our application packaging, application compatibility and desktop management services portfolio. Fifth and final trend is mobility management. This includes the gamut of Wifi, smartphone and mobile application operations and support. 4) How optimistic are you about the market opportunities in 2010? As a vendor, which are the verticals that you think are most promising for you? Ans: To use a cliché, we are cautiously optimistic. We have seen three quarters of increased activities, especially in the emerging areas that we mentioned above – and we expect that trend to continue through 2010. We do think enterprises are becoming more discerning in who they want to select as their partner, and the winners will be those who bring sustainable value and constant innovation into the mix, beyond just simply their size and girth. For our traditional RIM services like server management, database management etc we expect the financial services sector will get resuscitated in 2010. For our leading edge services like RIM for Cloud Computing, Automation etc we are expecting telecommunications, technology and media verticals to be very buoyant in 2010. 5) What do you think will be some of the key drivers fueling the growth of RIM market? Ans: The key drivers for growth of RIM have not changed dramatically over the years and will probably not do so in the future. RIM is the best and cost effective solution for managing the ever growing complexity of the IT estate at enterprise. As companies strive to become real time enterprises requiring decision making information at their finger tips, the IT organizations are responding by building out more applications, enabling mobility and enhancing performance of existing infrastructure etc. To support this dynamic and complex environment, CIO’s are looking to partner with vendors that can help them not only keep the lights on but also provide an innovative edge. CSS, as a RIM vendor is helping CIO’s by optimizing the day to day operations. For example our automation solutions are allows CIO’s to do more, with less and with better quality of service. 6) When you look at the Indian customers, do you find any difference between them and the global clients in terms of the key issues, needs, kind of services they opt for etc? Are Indian customers unique in any way? Ans: There aren’t substantial differences between the needs of global client and Indian customers. Organizationally IT estates tend to be more centrally managed in Indian companies then in global companies that give a lot of latitude to business units or smaller clusters of users in IT purchasing decisions. Similarly RIM decisions are still being made by C level executives in Indian companies, whereas the decision making has devolved to senior and mid level managers in global companies. From services perspective, we see more comfort by Indian companies in having vendors to server management and application management, while the interest to keep Tier 1 Helpdesk and end user services in house and not have them delivered remotely. As mentioned earlier, we are seeing a lot of interesting in emerging RIM offering like cloud based infrastructure from Indian companies which is at the same level as we are seeing from North American companies. 7) While the benefits of RIM are well understood by most, isn’t it true that there are certain risks enterprises can get exposed to when employing RIM? How real are the threats, such as disruption in core IT systems during transition, data security & data loss, IP theft or financial frauds when it comes to RIM? Ans: Yes, there are certain risks that are associated with RIM. However, there are extensive technical as well as governance solutions that are deployed by vendors such as CSS that mitigate risk. From a technical perspective there a firewalls, encryption technologies, VPN tunnels, private networks, intrusion detection/prevention systems, etc that are employed to protect customer data. Secondly, governance frameworks such at ISO 27001, ITIL and proprietary processes such as those deployed by CSS make sure that the RIM delivery organizations are tuned to indentifying and managing all elements of risks such as social engineering etc. While no systems or processes are foolproof, RIM vendors such as CSS have achieved sufficient level of maturity where the risks of RIM today are no more or less than what an enterprise carries if they are not utilizing RIM services. Link | 04 April 10 @ 11:02 | Discuss ( 0,0 comments ) | Views ( 3024 Views) Start the Discussion |
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