When it comes to maximizing the performance, scalability and value of their IT infrastructure, corporations want the best of both worlds: the features, functionality and benefits of their business applications without the headache of managing and running them.
It has been a challenging proposition for enterprises to optimize their outsourced investment and the performance of their IT spend. Increasingly, however, these companies are turning to providers of colocation and managed services for an IT optimize solution that extends beyond the infrastructure to provide above platform-level support and services.
Smart Business spoke with Don Goodwin, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Latisys, to help executives determine what to look for in an IT optimize solution, and how they can gain the comfort and assurance needed in turning over ownership and management of their IT infrastructure to a colocation and managed services provider.
What is the most significant difference between an IT off-load solution and an IT optimize solution?
The primary distinction between ‘off-load’ and ‘optimize’ has to do with the responsibilities around the compute layer of an IT infrastructure. With off-load, an IT organization is responsible for the procurement and support of the server hardware, as well as the hypervisor and operating system. With an IT optimize solution, the server hardware, hypervisor and operating system components become the responsibility of the service provider. The provider will capitalize the hardware purchases to leverage their economies of scale, utilize ‘Service Provider Licensing Agreements’ to provide the software in a cost effective and scalable fashion, and provide advanced around-the-clock support for both — all for a predictable monthly expense.
What kind of requirements do companies that are ready for an IT optimize solution have?
Given that these profiles build upon each other, the functional requirements from clients that are classified within the off-load and off-site profiles are similar. Organizations within each profile require highly robust platforms from which they can deploy the critical IT services needed to operate their businesses.
The primary distinction we see between optimize and other profiles is the need for an organization to further optimize their operation by:
- Moving even more dollars from CapEx budgets to OpEx budgets by shifting hardware and OS/hypervisor software licensing responsibilities to the provider.
- Optimizing head count through eliminating the need for IT staff to manage the tactical care and feeding of the network, hardware, hypervisor and operating systems.
- Filling knowledge gaps for server hardware, hypervisor technology, and operating systems by leverage the expertise and support of the service provider.
