Managing the Real-Time Enterprise

From the Editors of ITSC

When Gartner Inc. researchers pointed out last fall that IT operations managers "feel constant pressure to reduce costs, improve service levels and improve risks," no doubt few in such a position were surprised.

Gone are the days when ensuring the security of an organization meant only preventing virus attacks or network intrusions, important as those efforts continue to be. Today, IT managers must also ensure that the entire IT infrastructure and the information that resides within it, are managed and protected, while offering consistent availability, performance, adaptability and scalability.

Welcome to the real-time enterprise.

Business now

Today's IT environment can be characterized as a large, distributed, and complex infrastructure of servers, desktops and laptops that are constantly adapting to meet the needs of fiercely competitive businesses. In such an ever-changing environment, IT departments must be able to:

• Remove vulnerabilities by instantly deploying vital security patches and configuration updates throughout the enterprise.
  
  
• Minimize the risk of downtime by automatically adjusting backup policies for mission-critical servers and workstations.
  
  
• Rapidly recover critical systems and data after an attack.

Increasingly, IT departments are realizing that the only way to accomplish these essential tasks is by automating and centrally managing them.

Technology group IDC, in a report issued in January of this year, came to the same conclusion. In the research group's view, organizations that, for example, used a centralized approach to operating system migration would benefit, saving on costs and ensuring security, continuity and availability. "Businesses that use software solutions that centralize and automate the distribution of software updates will incur a lower cost of ownership than those that choose to manually manage updates to PCs and servers," read the report. On the other hand, those companies that failed to plan such a migration well would incur higher acquisition and deployment costs, not to mention higher total cost of ownership. Said IDC, "The cost of supporting PCs can increase for organizations that do not employ solutions that allow them to remotely resolve PC problems."

Software provisioning and delivery

It's not easy tying together the disparate devices and gateways in today's heterogeneous enterprise environments of connected and mobile PCs. Indeed, few PC management tasks are as daunting as upgrading hundreds or even thousands of computers from one operating system to another. It's a process that can take months to complete, and touches nearly everyone in the organization. But to keep companies from being compromised by such a task, IT executives must work to control the spiraling costs of setting up new PCs, migrating user desktops, and deploying operating system and application updates.

Remote control is key to this end. The ability to wake up remote machines, schedule deployments for off-hours, view all installed hardware and software, and dynamically configure operating systems, applications and hardware on multiple remote computers simultaneously, will reduce the number of man-hours spent on each aspect of such migrations, and allow IT executives to have a bird's-eye view of their progress. Remote administration of these tasks streamlines the management of servers, desktops and notebooks, helping to reduce IT costs.

Patch management and helpdesk operations

There are other areas where an automated and centralized approach will bear out. Given today's constant threats from worms and viruses, enterprises need to have the ability to proactively scan and deploy security patches to thousands of PCs simultaneously, creating a more efficient helpdesk in the process. Such an approach will free up troubleshooting time at what are generally understaffed helpdesks -- cost centers that must solve as many end-user problems as possible during a given workday. For that reason, smart enterprises will deploy a solution that provides the ability to securely take control of an end-user's computer so that helpdesk personnel can quickly fix the problem instead of talking to the user by phone. "Securely" needs to be emphasized, as remote control software must provide multiple levels of security to ensure that only authorized users can connect.

Doing more with less

IT departments continue to be asked to do more with less -- to act more quickly and with greater impact on business success. They are not only being asked to keep the business up and running, but to implement and maintain new capabilities that will enable the enterprise to pursue new opportunities, attack new markets, maintain competitive advantage and more deeply imbed customer relationships.

The one constant for every enterprise today is change. Smart enterprises will address constant business and technological change by adopting these appropriate management solutions to manage and protect the information contained within the IT infrastructure.