Managing Enterprise IT Operations, from Afar

According to a recent McKinsey & Company report, their research results demonstrated that the potential for managing servers and other IT resources remotely is essentially underutilized.

However, changes in the current business environment will increase the adoption of this approach. Plato, a wise Greek philosopher, wrote about how "necessity is the mother of invention." Certainly, that perspective is equally valid today.

The motivation for utilizing the resources of a service provider can be considerable. A case in point: Fortune 50 companies, with budgets of $2 billion, can save as much as $500 million of their IT infrastructure budgets.

How, you may ask? Apparently, it's mostly from reducing fully-loaded labor costs.

Evaluation of IT Assets and Liabilities
McKinsey surveyed 141 CIOs at multinational corporations, and 34 percent of them said that they anticipate utilizing some infrastructure management services over the next three years -- which is an increase from 19 percent of respondents in a similar survey performed during the prior year.

Economic justification is the basis for the expected growth. As hardware costs fall, labor has become the focal point. They estimate that costs for non-labor IT components -- the hardware, software, maintenance, and facilities -- declined by almost 44 percent between 2000 and 2008 as prices have dropped.

McKinsey also estimates that total costs will fall by nearly half from 2000 to 2010, however the labor component will more than double -- to 62 percent, from 30 percent.

Apparently, the attraction of a managed service solution is due to changes in the deployment of infrastructure. Many organizations have simplified their IT and network architecture, making it easier to decouple components, and utilize service providers.

Selectively Out-tasking the Drudgery
Besides, standardization has made some management tasks ready for automation. As a result, it is now easier to manage some complex IT tasks, like network security monitoring, from a remote location.

Furthermore, organizations can selectively out-task parts of their IT infrastructure management. Some companies will choose to only out-task network monitoring, while others seek assistance with the total management of their data center needs. Clearly, it's a flexible model that can adapt to shifting business requirements.

In summary, McKinsey believes that the greater speed and security of data networking has made interactions between the service user and their provider more stable. This progress has therefore increased acceptance of the managed service delivery model.

By the way, before you rush to reduce your Business Technology deployment plans, you may also want to reflect upon McKinsey's guidance on IT spending cuts: they believe that "IT investments deliver more value to a company's top and bottom lines -- by creating new efficiencies and increasing revenues -- than any savings gained from traditional IT cost cutting."

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Online Security in a Global Networked Economy

Because of the expanding growth and complexity of communication networking, and the risks presented by a new breed of skillful hackers, serious security threats are an unfortunate certainty within the highly interconnected office environment of today.

These threats are very real and the results are costly to those businesses that have been affected. Apparently, the victims aren't entirely at random, which is often assumed to be the case.

According to the 2007 CSI Computer Crime and Security Survey, almost one-fifth (18 percent) of those respondents who suffered one or more kinds of security incident further said they had suffered a "targeted attack" -- defined as a malware attack aimed exclusively at their organization or at organizations within a small subset of the general population.

Beyond the Virus Threat
Moreover, financial fraud overtook virus attacks as the source of the greatest financial losses. Virus losses, which had been the leading cause of loss for seven straight years, fell to second place.

In today's global marketplace, every business needs to be vigilant in pro-actively protecting its corporate assets. Gone are the days of simply scanning for viruses. Today a comprehensive, layered approach is required to secure the network and company resources from multiple types of threats.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are particularly vulnerable because they typically do not have expert resources on staff to ensure the network is secure, that regulatory compliance issues are being properly addressed, and that network monitoring and updates are effectively maintained 24 hours a day.

Alternative to the In-House Solution
Managed service providers can help SMBs secure their network by deploying a layered approach that uses various advanced technologies and solutions, protecting the network, and anticipating multiple types of potential security breaches -- from Trojan horse attacks and spyware, to data tampering and information theft.

Managed security services create a resilient multilayer defense:

• Prevention -- proactively keeps the intrusions out
• Detection -- identifies when an intrusion is occurring or has occurred
• Response -- takes action to defeat a potential intrusion once detected
  

The advantage of working with a managed security provider is that services can be scaled to meet an organization's exact security requirements. This flexibility allows companies to minimize service outages and operational expenses, thereby reducing the overall financial impact.

The Challenge to Stay Current
Frankly, a large enterprise IT team can also benefit from an out-tasked network security solution, as the demands to ensure that in-house staff is staying current increases exponentially over time.

Ask a managed service provider to help you assess your security needs and design the best solution for your business. A comprehensive security audit is often the first step in this process.

By all means, be prepared for the unexpected, and keep your business safe. However, this is a complex task that's best left to the experts, while you free-up time to focus on your core business objectives.

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