Posted by Crystal Nichols on Fri, Jan 15, 2010 @ 08:00 AM
One of the best ways to reduce capital IT expenditures, increase your service levels and increase the efficiency of your IT department and your company as a whole is by using an IT solutions provider. A solutions provider gives you all of the benefits of having your own dedicated IT infrastructure management team without all of the costs. Solutions providers get rid of the day-to-day burden of IT systems management in that they assume responsibility for everything from application deployment through updates and daily support. This frees you up to meet your core business needs and to do what your company does best.
Here are 6 key areas that a solutions provider boosts your business:
- Cost. Using solutions providers reduces the cost of administering your IT functions. In many cases, outsourcing applications can reduce the cost of ownership for the application by as much as 50%. Applications costs become as reliable and simple as your monthly service provider bill.
- Expertise. When you implement an in-house solution, you either need to hire an expert to administer the solution or train existing personnel to handle the solution. A solutions provider, on the other hand, has staff that do nothing but deal with your particular solution. They’re true experts, up to speed with what’s going on in the field. When you use a solution provider, you save significantly on personnel and training costs, as well.
- Reduced capital expenditures. By using a solutions provider you eliminate the need for huge capital infrastructure investments. You also reduce the need for ongoing costs to upgrade or maintain your solutions. You can have the latest and greatest best-in-class solutions, administered by an expert, without the expensive and extensive cost of application development or infrastructure equipment upgrade costs. This lets you take control of the total cost of owning the technology.
- Rapid deployment. When you roll out a new implementation on your own, it can take months to finish. Your service provider, on the other hand, already has the implementations running. You simply need to plug in. Training end users on the solution becomes the most time intensive task in the implementation process.
- Increased predictability and reliability. In most cases, a solutions provider can give you a higher level of performance than what you can get on your own. In addition, when you have Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in place, you can guarantee things like uptime and security.
- Unlimited Scalability. Perhaps one of the most compelling reasons to utilize a solutions provider is scalability. If you hit the limit for what your current infrastructure can handle, you’re looking at a time-consuming and often costly upgrade process. When you utilize a solutions provider, you don’t have to worry about all of that. You simply contact the solutions provider, increase the provisioning of your solutions and you’re good to go.
In most instances, it just makes good sense to utilize a solutions provider for at least some of your business IT functions.
Data Center Optimization: Three Key Strategies
Advances in server and storage technology, along with a growing number of tools and methodologies, have dramatically improved the pathway to data center optimization. The challenge for IT managers is to carefully plan where to start, how to move forward and how to measure results.
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Posted by Crystal Nichols on Fri, Nov 20, 2009 @ 06:30 AM
More and more, it just makes good business sense to offload some of your IT overhead and put it squarely in the hands of experts. Whether you’re looking at a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution or whether you’re looking for infrastructure support services, choosing a solutions provider can be not only a good business decision, but a way to increase your organization’s efficiency, effectiveness and even improve your bottom line.
There are several compelling reasons to choose a solutions provider, depending on your particular situation. A solutions provider is often a better option than an in-house solution or a vendor-based solution.
Take, for example, the issue of network infrastructure. You may have a network infrastructure that utilized technologies from a number of different vendors. You might, for example, use Cisco routers at the edge, Alcatel switches at the core, and appliance devices for security. If you contract with Cisco for support, you still need to find support for your non-Cisco equipment. This can multiply your support costs exponentially, as each manufacturer or vendor struggles to get their piece of the support pie.
With a solutions provider, you avoid these costs. You can carefully choose the right solutions provider for your needs – one who can support all of your network infrastructure, not just one piece at a time. This provides the added benefit of singular responsibility. You avoid the finger-pointing that often occurs between vendors, as your single provider takes end-to-end responsibility.
The same principle applies when comparing the option of a solutions provider with in-house expertise. Here again, you need several times the staff expertise to handle the entire network. That may come in the form of additional employees or it may come in the form of increased training costs. Regardless, you’re looking at a much more significant investment than you would have with a solutions provider. They already have the expertise, and you can utilize them as needed.
Solutions providers give you a versatility you don’t have when you do things in-house. They give you access to expertise you don’t have with a vendor-only service agreement. They can also help to reduce your overall IT costs, all while increasing efficiency of your IT resources.
Reducing Cost with Strategic Rightsourcing
The Forrester Whitepaper, Reducing Cost with Strategic Rightsourcing, discusses these new models and offers guidance for:
- Which services to outsource and which to own
- How to focus your staff on mission-critical projects
- What steps to take to keep your rightsourcing under control
Click here to download.