Businesses are continually looking for ways to supplement their technology budgets by putting more emphasis on the services offered around the technology.
The reasons, which include the need to streamline operational expenditure and increase profitability, are fairly simple, but, in the long run, carry the most weight for businesses.
On the technology side, businesses are no longer investing in new and leading-edge technologies for technology`s sake alone.
On the contrary, businesses now need to find ways to run their infrastructures as cost-effectively as possible, while gaining the maximum amount of value from what they have already rolled out and installed.
This mindset has prompted technology vendors to promote innovative ways of deriving the best value from networks, through added services and capabilities.
Convergence is an example of one such trend, where companies are able to deliver a multitude of different media (audio/video, data and voice) and services across a single network.
There are obviously many issues that still need to be addressed from a legal point-of-view, but provision is already being made to add value through next-generation networks.
Effective network management is possibly one of the biggest areas where businesses can derive value from their ICT and network investments, especially with richer forms of communication taking their place in the business.
The provisioning of network services on new generation networks has to happen in real-time.
Andy Brauer, Chief Technology Executive at Business Connexion`s Networks competency.
The ongoing emergence of multi-service, converged and next-generation networks is demanding new or advanced network management services. Convergence has brought different pieces of the network together into a single element, which cannot be managed as disparate silos.
Take IP billing as an example. This is a method used to quantify bandwidth usage across a network and assign monetary values to it. IP billing systems can produce highly detailed reports, showing who is doing what, how much bandwidth is being used and whether a network pipe is being under-utilised.
When looking at it separately, this single element does not add much value to the network because it lacks the proactive ability to address problems. As a result, IP billing has been seen as a costly nice-to-have for budget-conscious businesses.
However, IP billing is a key part of the bigger "system" of total network management. When incorporated as a part of the entire process of network management, its value can be vast as businesses can use the information it generates in resource provisioning, threat management and overall performance and service level management across the entire business.
The ethos surrounding the notion of total network management is simple, yet it makes a lot of sense: if you cannot manage or measure it, you cannot bill for it.
Essentially, the provisioning of network services on new generation networks has to happen in real-time. Failure to react to the rapidly changing needs of business in this day and age could prove to be costly for both the client and service provider.
This is where technologies and the services offered around the technologies need to justify themselves. There is a major industry trend to move to the concept of utility computing and consumption-based billing of ICT services, which will demand the ability to dynamically change business processes to fulfil certain needs.
Another major trend, which is fuelling the "journey" to utility computing, is the ongoing drive to standardise. Open standards means that manageability, on all levels of the whole system, is simplified. This brings about the ability to save time and money by dedicating staff to the core business and automate those mundane processes where human intervention is either slow or not needed at all.
The truth is that while the ICT industry is indeed on a slow upturn, businesses still need to be smart about rolling out technologies and services while maintaining costs at acceptable levels. And the best way to do that is to effectively manage services across the entire system.
Business Connexion sponsors ITWeb`s networking industry portal. In a connected world, the network is the business backbone of most companies. This portal is an invaluable one-stop source of information and news on how to gain maximum benefit out of networking infrastructure.
Share