Are you getting bogged down with the day-to-day task of managing your company's network? ZDNet Australia takes a look at what you should consider if you're looking at outsourcing.
Andrew Mencinsky is no stranger to network outsourcing, but as for being a happy customer, he says "yes and no". Mencinksy is the CIO of Isis Projects, an interior fitout and design firm. Hired in December 2001, part of his role was to improve network efficiency.
When he arrived he says the company's network wasn't efficient at all, running on a point-to-point 64K ISDN connection. For an international company with offices in every major city, it wasn't working, a solution had to be found.
Mencinsky says the first thing he did was contact service providers and ask for proposals.
Enter Bulletproof Networks, a service provider that offers managed LAN and hosting services. Bulletproof proposed setting up a VPN over DSL at a good price, providing a redundancy system so if the DSL failed it would revert to ISDN, with 24x7 monitoring. For Mencinsky, the real selling factor was Bulletproof's proactive management, which he says the other providers weren't really pushing.
The contract was signed in January and five months down the track there have been teething problems. There are still some improvements to be made, but overall Mencinsky is a happier man, saying it has taken some of the stress off him and other staff members at Isis Projects.
Mencinsky's situation is by no way unique, and no doubt many other IT managers are facing similar situations. According to IDC, based on revenue received by service providers, outsourcing of network management grew by 10 percent during 2000-2001. And IDC predicts this market segment will continue to grow, with an expected increase of 13 percent next year and a compound growth rate of 20 percent over the next five years.
Kathy Benson, an analyst with IDC, says a shift in the approach to outsourcing explains the increase. In the past companies handed over their whole IT department to one provider; the trend now is to choose different providers for different areas, such as network management.
Performing daily backups, monitoring servers, fighting viruses, monitoring bandwidth, ensuring uptime...the tasks of managing a network are time consuming, repetitive, and can be a major headache. It is easy to understand why many companies are opting to use the expertise of service providers.
Of course it sounds good in theory, but entrusting the management of your network in the hands of someone else is not to be taken lightly, and because of this there are probably many sceptical IT managers out there.
Mencinsky has no hesitation in recommending outsourcing. "On balance, I would say go for it, I don't have any reservations about it and I would recommend it to other people," he says. "It has taken stress off me and off other people here."
Paul Wardale, technical manager at Minolta QMS, says opting for outsourcing has made his role a lot easier. For him it became obvious that a service provider was needed when the Sydney office was chosen to be the regional office for the Asia-Pacific.
"We needed to have a permanent high speed connection and [outsourcing] would save us setting up our own system," says Wardale. "I don't worry about the external ISP anymore, now I just get an invoice to sign."
But for all the benefits, any customer will attest it isn't all a bed of roses. Before your network is running smoothly in the hands of somebody else, there are many issues to face along the way. Before you even approach service providers, you will need to answer a few preliminary questions.
