Most companies waste resources by acting on IT problems only after they have occurred, as opposed to taking preventative measures, says Computer Associates (CA) technical consultant Paul Le Roux.
Le Roux says this is a result of not having integrated point solutions as management tools, and not having the right management policies in place.
He says despite the availability of solutions, there is a huge waste of resources in the industry.
"We found that a lot of companies do not have a real and accurate inventory management tool to manage their assets and are not able to manage the financial lifecycle of their assets, be that routers, switches, servers or PCs," he says.
CA technology strategist Bjarne Rassmusen says that without software to detect IT-related problems and implement an automated response, businesses will invariably spend most of their time sorting out problems as they come up.
"Companies from the smallest to the biggest need to understand that they need to manage their hardware and software resources in order to integrate them so that they work effectively, allowing one to focus on planned business and IT needs."
He says companies fall into four types: reactive, efficient, responsive and business relevant.
"Reactive companies just fight fires and have no integration. Efficient companies have some integration with service levels being implemented, but consolidation is ad hoc. Relevant companies achieve integration between business operations, service management and IT operations, but not all at the same time. Companies with business relevance achieve this seamlessly," he says.
Le Roux says most local companies fall within the effective rating, although a huge component of their response is still reactive. He says only a handful of companies can be rated as responsive.
"Many of the bigger companies will be able to react quicker to current and newer trends in enterprise management. This, however, does not mean that smaller companies cannot reap the same benefits by outsourcing IT infrastructures in order to focus on their core business," he says.
Rassmusen says companies are able to achieve return of investment by implementing service level agreements with clients.
"By knowing what resources you have and by integrating them, one is able to negotiate service level agreements with customers because you will be able to predict what kind of response times you`ll be able to deliver," he says.
Share
