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management (IM) is one area that h
emerged as a must-have for organization of all sizes. In recent
times, the global recession that impacted the bottomline of almost
every enterprise and industry, was a major driving force for the
growth of the IM sector. In fact, the IM industry is one of the few
areas that have demonstrated accelerated growth in the last two
years. As organizations everywhere looked towards increasing
efficiency and improving productivity while at the same time
drastically cutting down on their IT spends, IM provided new and
innovative models, to meet the information technology needs of the
enterprise. As per a Zinnov Consulting study on infrastructure
management services (IMS), the Indian vendors account for a market
size of $1.4 billion, growing at a CAGR of 44 percent. According to
PR Krishnan, VP and Global Head-IT Infrastructure Services, TCS,
customers today are opting for IM rather than standalone solutions,
as these solutions introduce silos. The end-to-end IM approach
holistically addresses operational efficiencies, thereby streamlining
new solutions and bringing benefits to customers. And apart from the
large ones, the demand for infrastructure outsourcing is also coming
from the SMBs.
IM is witnessing growth not only in the private sector but in the
public sector as well. Both at
the state and the national level, the government has floated many
projects, that involve complex IT infrastructure
that needs to be monitored, to make sure adherence to stringent
service levels. One of the key
trends in IM is remote infrastructure management (RIM), which
involves monitoring and managing major IT and infrastructure
components of an organization, remotely. In fact, many companies have
achieved twice the growth in RIM, compared to application development
and maintenance.
“
presented by the global economy and the technology need of Indian
companies within the
small and medium ranges have provided the most scope for growth of
RIM in India,” said ER Ashok Kumar, VP-Cisco Services, Cisco
India and SAARC. Ivy Rajesh, VP and Country Head-Industry Solutions
Business, HCL Technologies added, “RIM is gaining acceptance in the
market and is considered to be the growth driver of managed services.
It has had a significant impact on global IMS services, changing
industry economics and customer expectations. India is becoming a
significant beneficiary of this shift.”
Indian RIM market has seen rapid improvement, especially in the
telecom sector and its increased reliability has led to off shoring
of complex and critical services like datacenter management, server,
and storage management. Some of the core RIM services such as
infrastructure architecture and projects,
managed security services, and managed network services are slated to
grow faster than other standard
RIM services because of the increased confidence of customers in
remote delivery. Avinash
Pitale, Joint MD of Omnitech InfoSolutions, further believes that
improved SLAs, reduction in delivery
cost and diversity of operation have driven RIM market globally as
well as in India. Today, the availability
of various low-cost RIM tools has made RIM services support very
cost-effective and that is certainly accelerating the RIM service
requirement exponentially. If taken a look at some of the strategies
being adopted by vendors in this space, we will find that apart from
providing very technology-focused services, vendors are looking to
provide business solutions through the IM model such as
security/threat management services and network management services.
And to meet the need and requirement of enterprises, vendors have
also introduced multiple solutions to the market, tailored to each
vertical and have come up with new models of engagement such as pay
per-port/per-user/per-month. “Vendors like CSC have developed deep
partners and alliance relationship, to always get the best of the
breed tools and related expertise to bring continuous improvements
for its customers,” highlighted Kothandaraman Karunagaran,
VP-Global Infrastructure and Enterprise Services, CSC India.
cloud computing and virtualization are seen as technologies in IM
that are slated to change the
market dynamics. These technologies enable vendors to provide
solutions via 'anything-as-a-service' model in the likes of
software-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service, where companies
would only 'pay for usage' or on a 'pay-per-month' basis.
“
enterprise management platforms, self healing tools, which can
prevent problems from occurring,
pro-active monitoring tools, automation tools, SLA management tools,
ITIL-based service desks, remote management of desktops, and cloud
monitoring tools are some of the technologies that are
going to play a crucial role in IM,” asserted Ram Mohan C, Senior
VP and Head-Infrastructure Management
and Technical Support, MindTree.
GAME CHANGERS
to popular belief, implementation of IM is not restricted to large
system integrators or infrastructure service providers only. Even the
lesser known solution providers have joined the fray, including the
likes of Associated Business Computers, who believe that for a long
time, IM was limited to procurement and installation of hardware and
software assets. As one of the leading solution providers, the
company is definitely thinking of IM as a solution and is offering
this to its customers. Of late, it has been working in this area with
a handful of clients, wherein it is managing right from inventory
planning till inventory disposal of its clients. In the recent times,
the company has successfully rendered IM solutions to three clients
each belonging to a different segment altogether; ranging
from Health & Wellness to Engineering and Manufacturing to
Government Organization.
one of the healthcare industry giants, it encompassed designing,
implementing and managing all
the IT components namely network, computing, servers, storage, and
security. It also provided Facility Management Services to this
client. It has also implemented software IM utilities to automate and
fasten the management and troubleshooting cycle.
Manufacturing and Engineering one was a multi location project. The
client was facing trouble in managing
their vast network spread over more than three cities. Here, the
company started with connecting all the locations and network with
MPLS cloud. The next step was to consolidate the data. It included
designing NAS and SAN gateway solutions. It made sure that every
single bit of data that flows should be protected. This is the case
of RIM, as it is managing it from its site itself through IM
utilities. All the updations, be it on patch level, OS level or
firmware
are being done from the company's end. It is
managing
around 500 nodes.
third project was with one of the Government Defense Organization,
wherein it has implemented FMS.
Due to their vast spread out campus space, it was getting difficult
for the IT manpower to reach to the point of problem. The company
sorted this out with its RIM solution. Though due to secrecy mandate,
the servers and the data are hosted at the site itself, but
everything is managed from a single point.
It has also deployed and managed virtualization solutions at this
site. Right now, IM contributes around 10 percent in its overall
business model, but going forward, it is aiming for at least 35
percent.
“
we have been involved in projects that were a part of IM, but they
were in a disintegrated manner. We were doing this unconsciously
without dedicatedly and deliberately focusing on IM. But now the
scenario has undergone a complete change. Today, IM enjoys a major
part of our focus and action. We have been redesigning our model
around this activity for some time now, ” added Sujeet Narula, CEO
of Associated Business Computers.
forward, IM will be one of the company's core focus areas in 2011, as
it is making itself adept and
skilled in terms of structure, manpower and other tools that are
needed to excel in this space. Targus
Technologies, is another solution provider, who has started providing
IM solutions to its customers
around server and network management. In fact, it is witnessing 100
percent growth YoY in this
space. It has further added its strength on application support and
security infrastructure solutions
as well. The company believes, that today's customer needs those
solution providers or partners, who can support end to end IT
infrastructure. And it helps its customer organizations to adapt ITIL
compliant processes and engage in SLA-driven commitments. Till date,
the IM solution part is about 25 percent of its overall business,
which it believes will definitely increase to 50 percent in the
coming years. Targus is currently working on different aspects of IM
solutions. While keeping security-as-a-solution in mind, it has done
various projects on virtualization, applications and server
consolidations. And the verticals it has recently covered include
telecom, packaging, consumer durables, and insurance sectors.
“
large enterprises and medium-sized companies have deployed multiple
types of IT infrastructure management
solutions. The top perceived benefit for adopting IT infrastructure
solutions is the ability to expand operations, as needed, with the
requirement of minimal administration. In IMS, the supplier assumes
operational responsibility of certain end-to-end functions related to
the IT infrastructure,” asserted Amarjeet Walia, Senior VP at
Targus Technologies. Delhi-based Netlink Business Systems, considers
itself as one of the pioneers in this space. Apparently, it has
productized the concept of IM in 2001 and used to call it 'Total IT
Infrastructure Management Services'and focused on all the four
components of it, including design, deployment, delivery, and
optimization. The company is of the view that today, it is all
together a separate domain. There are integration companies, that
talk only about the design part of it, or only about the design and
deployment parts. However, the most significant
part of delivery has become a very small fraction of the entire
package for most of the integration companies. “I believe delivery
mechanism is the most important part of the pyramid. Apparently, the
fact is that it does not need rocket science. We have our focus
towards all the four components,” opined Rajesh Bakshi, CEO,
Netlink Business Systems.
main focus has been towards the education segment along with
corporate and hospitality
sectors. In the education sector, in the last two years, it has done
deployments at around 12,000
schools pan India, wherein it has deployed the complete IT
infrastructure. And education sector is
one segment wherein it will have its continued focus in the coming
years as well. In terms of mind share,
IM enjoys around 80 percent and in terms of turnover, it will be
approximately 20 to 25 percent of its overall business model. In
future, Netlink's focus is going to be towards providing complete
IT-enabled services at the customer side. Bakshi believes, that the
way IT is going to shape up in the coming years, it will definitely
bring distributed IT infrastructure management opportunities for the
solution providers.
Delhi-based solution provider, Zest Systems, is gradually gearing up
to make a mark for itself in this domain. It has done deployments in
this space in the education and hospitality sector. One of the major
projects executed by Zest, worth $4 million, was for providing
infrastructure across 14 locations for an educational institute.
Besides, it is remotely managing the IT infrastructure of a hotel
located at around 240 kilometers from the city of Mangalore. The
company has also entered into a contract with a leading
infrastructure company to provide IT set ups for the toll plazas
being deployed by the company. Apparently, it has already set up the
IT infrastructure at one such toll plaza in Noida, Uttar Pradesh and
is in the process of setting up the same at plazas in Rajasthan,
Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra.
the current fiscal, the company has made a strong bid to win large
government tenders and has assigned
a dedicated team for that purpose. In states like Uttarakhand and
Himachal Pradesh, Zest is in the stage of convincing the government
that this is the way their IT infrastructure can be managed in a more
we have been involved in projects that were a part of IM, but they
were in a disintegrated manner. Today, IM enjoys a major part of our
focus and action” Sujeet Narula, Associated
Business Computers
way. “Today, we are gradually moving from capex to opex model. As
the SMB growth story is written throughout the world, people cannot
afford heavy investments in IT. So, it is best to manage your IT on
an opex model, as it does not invite outright investments.
In the next couple of years, we will see IM becoming the next big
thing in the field of IT. And I am sure that by 2012, this concept
will consolidate and we will be the top few SIs in this space,”
pointed out Rajeev Mehta, MD, Zest Systems.
of the country's largest solution providers, Progressive Infotech, is
also having a large presence in
the IM space. It is seeing customers in the government and public
sectors opting for outsourcing of IT infrastructure management. The
company continues to grow at about 35 percent in this area. And in
the overall business model, the share of IM is about 25 percent in
terms of topline revenue. Of late, Progressive
has had some good win in the public sector, wherein it has signed a
multi-year agreement with the aviation department and others. And not
only in India, it has also recently bagged a large order from the
government sector in the Middle East. “IM is definitely a growth
sector and over the next five years,
we will see a double digit growth in this area. There is strong
adoption because of the increasing complexities
in running any business and the cost factor. IM brings in tremendous
value to any company's
RoI. Since this is our core area of focus, we will continue to invest
and grow. Today, a lot of work
is done on site but as we go along, this space will get blended with
remote services,” said Prateek
MD and CEO of Progressive Infotech. Bengaluru-based Frontier Business
Systems is also not far behind its competitors in providing IM
solution to its clients. Though it has started offering the services
only last year, it has been a steep learning curve for them as a
solution provider. The company views IM as one of the most important
emerging services and revenue generators of the future.
has been involved in three types of deployments. One is the RIM where
it manages all aspects
of client's infrastructure from its Managed Services Operations
Center (MSOC); the second one is in-house infrastructure management,
wherein it provides consultancy services on IM to the clients and
also assist them to deploy and manage the IM platform; and lastly,
Hybrid infrastructure management which is a combination of RIM along
with on-site engineers at the client's premises. “In the Indian
market, there are no dominant players. Infrastructure management
services is a focus area for Frontier in the coming financial year.
Automation in infrastructure management and compliance is going to be
an important service in the coming years as well,” added Ravi
Verdes, Director and CEO, Frontier Business Systems.
CHAMP
cue from the work being done by these solution providers in the IM
space, Associated Business Computers
certainly bags the top slot. It is definitely a cut above the rest,
as it has the zeal to make it big in this segment.