There is a tendency for us to view systems management as an internal issue. For every system that we operate, there is a need to manage it and monitor it. Historically, this has turned into a long-winded and resource-hungry task - inevitably eating a fair amount of budget along the way. Is there, perhaps, an argument for outsourcing some of this effort to a suitably organised third party?
Any infrastructure management architecture can be divided into three distinct activities. At the lowest level there are facilities for monitoring and reporting events within IT components. At the highest level are to be found the reporting and analysis functions that provide the information at the level it is required. In the middle, providing the abstraction needed to get from the physical IT infrastructure to the reporting, is a modelling function.
There is a clear opportunity for third parties to work at the middle and higher levels; taking event information from the IT infrastructure and feeding it into their own management models.
Until recently this was not really possible because the levels of interaction between monitoring agents from different management solutions was not good. However, today we see that all of the major enterprise management solutions and some of the lesser ones have the ability to share event information collected by each others' agents. Therefore, for example, a business that has built up a monitoring solution consisting of BMC's Knowledge Modules can happily feed its event information into Tivoli, OpenView or Unicenter.
This is good for the customer because it can use the best monitor for each technology component. It is even better for a third party outsourcer because, now, it only needs to set up a secure and reliable NOC using a single technology supplier. It can then feed information from all its remote customers regardless of their preferred solutions.
Why is outsourcing an option? The answer to that one is in repeat business. The outsourcer only has to set up one NOC. As its customer base builds, it can provide rapid time to market because the central management is already configured and it can provide instant intelligence because it will have event management procedures for the majority of components already defined. It's a better solution available more quickly.
The major effort required is in the development of the model and reporting. This is unique to every customer but the modelling can support everything from basic device monitoring through to full-scale SLA implementation. Web based reporting ensures corporate dashboards, SLA compliance or even shared consoles are easily available - even if the NOC is in another country.
Whilst there are obvious parallels with Application Service Providers - the need for a very robust operations centre and an ability to move on at the end of a contract - this is a single specialist service. With the right pricing model, the opportunities exist for businesses of all sizes to implement or evolve their management solutions at whatever level they need for a reduced initial investment. Think about this next time you consider how much your company spends delivering its managed IT services.
