Today's enterprises face enormous challenges in managing their infrastructures:
First, the definition of what "infrastructure" requires management is ever expanding. For example, as new communication technologies emerge and old ones converge it is ever more difficult to define what needs to be "managed". Networks, including the Internet, intranets and extranets are growing rapidly and becoming increasingly valuable as more computers, cash machines and kiosks are connected. So, communication now encompasses plain old telephone service (POTS), e-mail, groupware, video conferencing and electronic commerce as well as bewildering combinations of the above. Management solutions must embrace these new technologies, while providing the same levels of reliability, availability, serviceability, and security on which corporations depend.
Second, even traditional IT infrastructures include a greater range of information architectures and elements. Technological approaches to networking, database, application, hardware and software platforms continue to diverge. Enterprise desktops, for example, can range from personal computers, to netPCs, to network computers (NCs), to lean clients, to MS Windows-based or ASCII text terminals. In order to provide comprehensive, consolidated administration of the entire IT infrastructure, management software must bridge the myriad differences existing in an enterprise.
Finally, business success in todays economy is predicated on keeping costs in line while delivering more timely and better targeted, goods and services than the competition. Efficiency and productivity must prevail in an environment where rising costs can not be passed on to the customer. Flat organizations, mergers, and similar management mayhem result in staffs charged to do more with less so organizations must anticipate failures, bottlenecks or related problems, before they impact the business. As a result, systems must become predictive and self-manageable: Integrated intelligence and autonomy help address the enormous challenge of keeping complex infrastructures up-to-date in this dynamic business climate.
IT organizations need to manage the entire information infrastructure participating in the delivery of the organizations products and services, from the staid and traditional to the new and transient. It must provide flexible, end-to-end coverage of enterprise assets whether from mainframes to PDAs or from cash registers to cellular phones.
The right solution must also provide a means to evaluate and accelerate the infrastructure effectiveness from a business perspective. Administrators should be able to answer business-relevant questions: How secure is the application running on the web server for registering new customers? Are all the cash registers running and updating inventory? Why are dairy products spoiling in our new refrigeration units? After all, enterprise management exists to support the organization's business processes, not the other way around.
No single product will ever meet all the needs of every enterprise, so the solution must be extensible and customizable to reflect an organization's unique business requirements and characteristics.
ITS has the experience to deliver the next dimension in enterprise management.
Our habit of incorporating innovative technology into an organizational perspective yields the comprehensive, integrated, business-centric management solutions required to take customers into the 21st century.
