Infrastructure Management Services (IMS) has become one of the most talked about topics in the IT outsourcing space today. IMS has undergone a sea change in recent times – from ensuring uptime of the applications and infrastructure, to evolving as a technology enabler for the business. According to the latest report by technology analyst firm Ovum, the global infrastructure market will grow 4.4 percent by 2015. Ovum’s Infrastructure market trends research suggests that it will reach £463 billion by 2015 and will hit a 4.5 percent growth rate by 2013.
Today’s IMS providers have more or less the same gamut of challenges faced by application development service providers. While the Application development team is faced with challenges of addressing the business need with the latest technology available, the challenge for IMS lies not only in learning the technology, but going a step further in ensuring it moves to the production and support stage with its appropriate availability requirements. IMS challenges just don’t end with response to the business; it brings with it the perspective of larger global awareness as well – given that it contributes to the betterment of our planet by reducing the carbon footprint, increasing power savings and also addresses the disaster recovery needs of enterprises.
IMS has evolved from a dedicated services model to a shared services model and eventually into today’s output-based model. While each model has its own set of challenges, the competitive market place has spurred IMS providers to innovate their delivery models, as well as their service offerings. The technology is also shifting from dedicated computing models to shared and cloud-based computing models. Enterprises are looking at all possible ways to increase their ROI. Increased responsibilities of IMS teams are triggering swift turnaround times for the business needs. With technologies evolving, the support processes are also changing from proactive support to predictive support. Quite naturally, Predictive support needs a deeper understanding on the business happenings, as well as clear knowledge of the domain-related challenges. The field of IMS is ostensibly moving from sustenance to “business” services.
IMS is also innovating and responding to the new technology paradigms like cloud computing, which has become a reality now. The evolution of cloud has broken many a myth around security and data related-concerns. With Cloud set to move beyond paradigms like private cloud and public cloud, to a collaborative cloud environment – such as hybrid cloud (a private public partnership), these evolutions are sure to make us expect the unexpected.
From a business landscape perspective, sooner than later, we can look forward to consolidation of services – and service providers. The market is responding positively to such consolidation as well, going by few of the acquisitions we have witnessed in the recent times.
On the technology side, IMS providers are gearing up to address opportunities, as well as challenges presented by emerging trends like tablet computing, BYOD, Big Data, etc:
Tablet computing: Changes to the computing environment is bound to pose a lot of challenges from a data protection perspective, making IMS teams to think out of the box.
BYOD (Bring your own device): BYOD is akin to tablet computing in more ways than one. While BYOD increases employee morale and productivity, the onus on enforcing proper checks and balances (from a security perspective) is very critical, challenging the very fabric of IT infrastructure in organizations .
Storage and Big Data: Enterprises are very keen to derive more value from the data they possess. The sheer size and scale of data presents unprecedented analytical challenges. It will be quite interesting to watch how a petabyte of data will be handled, analyzed for informed decision making. Not all enterprises have data that’s organized – or even better structured.
Changes to the traditional service desk: New technology paradigms like BYOD, cloud, tablet computing are posing stiff challenges to the traditional service desk. IMS providers should move towards adopting an approach that propagates self-help, blogs or vendor portals instead of housing an internal services desk. Crowdsourcing is another emerging paradigm that’s generating a lot of buzz. This makes it even more critical for IMS providers to have a well-focused transition strategy on how incidents or problems are handled. A robust contingency plan is quintessential.
Complexity: Adapting to newer technology requires a generalist to troubleshoot and even look at what’s happening around him. While we are witnessing an upsurge in complexities – spurred by the onset of virtualization, Big Data, BYOD, mobility and cloud – even as organizations have started moving from private, public to hybrid clouds, this might lead to a shortfall of subject matter experts for each of the technology or service area within the IMS space.
The IMS domain has reached an inflection point today. IMS providers are faced with a multitude of opportunities, as well as challenges. Analysts have predicted that Cloud-based infrastructure services will continue to overshadow other services. It continues to be the most talked about service. Although most providers want to make the most of this wave, not many are offering real public cloud solutions with high flexibility of changing baselines and pay-per-use pricing models. IT infrastructure management and cloud solutions are converging rapidly. Evidently, IMS is one of the most happening sectors within the IT Services industry today and will continue to grow in importance over the next few years.
The author is Associate Vice President, Infrastructure Management Services (IMS) Practice, Collabera
No comments:
Post a Comment