What is an infrastructure management solution?
For an organization's information technology, infrastructure management is the management of essential operational components, such as policies, processes, equipment, data, human resources, and external contacts, for overall effectiveness. Infrastructure management is sometimes divided into categories of systems management, network management, and storage management. Among other purposes, infrastructure management seeks to:
- Reduce duplication of effort
- Ensure adherence to standards
- Enhance the flow of information throughout an information system
- Promote adaptability necessary for a changeable environment
- Ensure interoperability among organizational and external entities
- Enforces granular security roles
- Maintain effective change management policies and practices
Although all business activities depend upon the infrastructure, planning and projects to ensure its effective management are typically undervalued to the detriment of the organization. According to IDC, a prominent research firm (cited in an article in DMReview), investments in infrastructure management have the largest single impact on an organization's revenue.
Why would my organization need an infrastructure management solution?
Every enterprise and small business needs a robust IT infrastructure in order to function effectively. Infrastructure is the foundation of business productivity and success. Many IT groups, however, don't have enough skilled infrastructure staffers to provide the solid foundation required. Unfortunately, qualified infrastructure people are hard to find. Here's why:
Applications are more highly valued. Most executives recognize that effective applications offer significant business value. Unfortunately, they usually assume that the underlying infrastructure is easy to construct and maintain. As a result, they often give less attention and recognition to infrastructure. (Even CIOs generally understand applications better than infrastructure.)
Infrastructure is increasingly complex. The infrastructure group now manages a number of new technologies, including virtualization, advanced networking and cloud computing. In addition, infrastructure frequently has primary responsibility for privacy, security and standards. As the biggest energy consumer, infrastructure is also responsible for "green" initiatives, such as cutting IT energy use and complying with hazardous-substances mandates. All the pieces must then be knit together efficiently. As a result, infrastructure jobs require far more technical breadth and depth than ever before.
Infrastructure is becoming more customer focused. With the advent of software as a service, outsourcing and application software generators, IT needs fewer technical specialists. But infrastructure functions now require high levels of customer contact, because of ITIL v3's focus on customer service. Many technical staffers (often introverted, per the stereotype) are uncomfortable with this requirement.
Infrastructure is a thankless job. Unfortunately, many employees have a very limited understanding of infrastructure. Few people appreciate the difficulty of the preproduction testing or postproduction tuning associated with installing a new system. This lack of understanding often leaves infrastructure staffs feeling undervalued and underappreciated. When the servers are up and the network is functioning, infrastructure availability is taken for granted. But when work stops because an application is unavailable or the network goes down, all fingers point to infrastructure. Infrastructure gets attention only for failures.
Infrastructure education is insufficient. Few U.S. colleges offer IT courses covering infrastructure functions. In addition, most high school and college career counselors advise students that there are more job opportunities in applications than in infrastructure. Moreover, the head of applications is more often promoted to CIO than the head of infrastructure, so the long-term career path is not very appealing. The result is a shortage of qualified people pursuing infrastructure careers.
What is the difference between business continuity and disaster recovery?
Business continuity plans are sometimes referred to as disaster recovery plans and the two have much in common. However, a disaster recovery plan should be oriented towards recovering after a disaster whereas a business continuity plan shows how to continue doing business until recovery is accomplished. Both are very important and are often combined into a single document for convenience.
Why is a disaster recovery plan so important?
It is not realistic to assume that any business is immune to natural or man-made disasters, not in a day and age in which a seemingly endless procession of fires, floods, hurricanes, and power outages have struck businesses in all parts of the country. Consider these odds: one out of two businesses never returns to the marketplace following a major disaster. Of those that do, half go bankrupt within three years. The ones that survive plan their response to a disaster before it strikes. Businesses need to prepare to meet the needs of their customers regardless of any disruptions that they may experience. Companies must recognize their vulnerability to disaster and their position in a competitive marketplace as the first step in disaster recovery planning.
How can The Network Folks help us if we already have a dedicated IT team?
Our role in your organization can range from that of an outsourced IT provider to that of an upper level on your escalation matrix. With over a decade of experience supporting a diversity of platforms and exceptional access to resources both internally and externally, we can ensure that your team will never come up short. Some companies also choose to selectively outsource a limited number of the components of their infrastructure that fall outside of their technology resources core competencies. Other organizations prefer to maintain a backup for their IT staff to provide additional support in the event of vacation or sickness.
Do you require a contract or service agreement?
No, The Network Folks does not believe in contracts or service agreements. We operate off the simple business philosophy that if we don’t exceed expectations, you have the right to use someone else. We have our standard hourly rates and our retainer client hourly rates which are discounted 30%, it’s that simple.