Information Technology Infrastructure (ITI) plays an important role in any organisation. The majority of business technology trends currently being embraced by leading organisations are mobile and social-orientated solutions, with the utilisation of data analytics and cloud services. Recent prominent studies indicate that 7 out of 10 companies have already started to realise the productivity benefits of optimising ITI within their organisations. If there are still any doubts in your mind, the following may wash that hesitation away.
ITI to Optimise Your Productivity
The term ITI refers to a set of hardware, software and networks, plus anything connecting them together to develop and support the IT services of an organisation. Many success stories have been told highlighting proven ITI optimisation, often with organisations, enjoying benefits such as increased productivity to operational efficiencies and improved collaboration between teams. For example, one such productivity report noted that companies and their employees realise workload completion efficiencies, achieving faster job task completion in a significantly shorter time period. IAT Group is one such example of how ITI optimisation through the implementation of a Managed Network Service (MNS) had brought their efficiency and productivity to the next level.
IAT Group is an insurance company with its headquarter in Raleigh, North Carolina, and 18 offices across the US. Based on a case study by Riverbed in 2015, they wanted to centralise their applications, but one of the most critical apps would not perform well over the WAN. It even took 90 minutes up to two hours for the company’s insurance agents to write a policy. Most of the time, they just waited for the application to transmit information. Hence, their productivity level had been impacted.
Finally, IAT Group installed WAN Optimisation, a product subset of MNS, in their data centres and branch offices. The result was quite outstanding. The implementation of WAN Optimisation successfully solved the problem with the application performance and it resulted in the improvement of their agents’ productivity. Agents are now able to write policies in just 20 to 30 minutes. Over the WAN, IAT Group can also upload and copy files to headquarters in a shorter period of time.
Managed Network Services Role in Supporting ITI
According to IDC research, 60% of companies have included ITI in their business plans in order to increase productivity in the coming year. (Source: IDC, 2015). MNS is one of ITI products that companies need to have on their 2016 agenda to succeed in today’s competitive marketplace and drive future business growth. MNS has the ability to transform a complex and difficult network solution into a productive resource that delivers optimised workflows for businesses. MNS can manage your complex network, from your data centre, to your WAN, to your LAN. That way, you will be able to deliver your customer’s needs more quickly.
Even with limited IT resources, MNS allows you to identify the source of a network or ITI problem faster. MNS will not only increase your productivity, but it also empowers you and your business with self-service capability via a customer-portal; a single pane of glass giving you visibility to all of your organisations’ ITI operations and performance. The portal offers you greater control over your services, enabling more flexibility, faster resolution and better ability to explain network issues. In turn, this builds stronger relationships with your customers, giving them visibility and transparency to their own network.
Managed Network Service to Maintain ITI
MNS can provide your organisation the required tools to maintain and streamline your company’s ITI. In general, ITI maintenance refers to the IT department’s management of your ITI related activities, such as software tools, servers, storage, methods, and human resources.
On average, most ITI equipment and applications have a lifespan of 3-5 years. In addition, ITI maintenance, covering areas such as backing up stored files, updating hardware/software, installing updated operating systems, repairing/removing equipment and applications may be a time consuming and costly exercise. These are unavoidable and challenging aspects of managing your ITI. Thus implementing and MNS solutions for your organisation’s ITI will help manage and maintain these aspects and keep your ITI running with optimal productivity and reduced cost.
MNS Helps You to Focus on the Core Business
These improvements provided by the MNS implementation will help you to focus on your core business and on what your organisation has to offer to your customers. By implementing an end-to-end MNS solution you will no longer have to focus on management of the ITI. You can focus on what you do best: Your business.
Successfully managing your ITI depends on the MNS provider you choose. Telkomtelstra offers an end-to-end service delivery and service assurance MNS framework that is efficient and effective at managing your ITI. This helps you to focus on your core business rather than the day-to-day management of your IT infrastructure.