Companies that have outsourced their IT infrastructure management are slowly realizing the advantage of having a common vendor for all services. Previously, operations management was a segregated affair with separate vendors handling separate operations. One vendor would take care of helpdesk support; while another vendor would specialize in server and mailbox support while the third would take care of the backbone network. The reason for using disparate vendors for every task was that infrastructure management as a service was not mature enough, IT departments were unsure of service levels as tools and processes had to be aligned between vendor and enterprise, and CIOs were wary of giving away what they thought was "control" on their infrastructure. Added to this was the perception that support services were an extension of the hardware and software supply function.

With the growing dependence on IT infrastructure, companies soon started understanding the pivotal role communications and IT made to their bottom lines. Vendors soon started realizing the new opportunity that seemed to present itself. With almost every business making use of some sort of IT infrastructure, the need for IT infrastructure support grew rapidly. Quite soon, many companies realized the potential of packaging their services for end-to-end support. This meant stepping beyond the support they provided for their specific products (say a storage device or a messaging platform). Organizations that provided remote infrastructure management services as a core competency and not merely an extension of hardware/software sold, began to mushroom. The key was to provide end-to-end services, thereby reducing the pain points of effective governance, competency building and talent retention. Suddenly, a CIO was not concerned with recruiting and training talent for his infrastructure needs - he had vendors who would do this, letting him focus on the needs of the enterprise.

Remote Infrastructure services are a consolidated IT infrastructure support service. A single vendor would have the competency to manage everything from network backbone, servers, firewalls and security, helpdesk support, etc. India has established itself to be a major player in the support space. Lowered costs of operations and English language support have helped India establish a market for Remote Infrastructure Management services that lies between $96 bn - $104 bn, according to a Nasscom-McKinsey report, titled 'The Rising Remote Infrastructure Management Opportunity: Establishing India's Leadership' (released in 2008).

The question that today needs answering is: can RIMS providers bring innovation to the market for a service that depends largely on keeping pace with technology? Can they bring economies of scale in their operations as they provide shared services and a combination of the dedicated and shared model? And, by way of extreme thinking, can RIMS providers get into a "cloud" mode where an enterprise can pick and choose elastic services from a cloud depending on the immediate needs of the enterprise? In other words, can a RIMS provider be highly responsive to his customers needs, to the point of having zero latency between volume of demand and the service without loss of SLAs.

Today's RIMS providers have managed to bring everything under a single roof: from managing every aspect of IT infrastructure, through various on-site and remote support models and via tools and processes that bring complete transparency. Now, we need to see innovation by way of elasticity.



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