MANAGED SERVICES

From the May 2007 
issue of Communications News

Simplify management of services

Organizations have several options when considering the outsourcing of unified communications functions.

by Francois Depayras

Unified communications is transforming the way small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) conduct business. This integrated set of communications applications holds the promise of increased productivity, simplified operations and lower costs for enterprises, but often IT departments can be overwhelmed by the complexity, deployment and maintenance of these applications, and the large ecosystems of components they require.

Keeping up with the latest business communications applications has often meant adopting a wide variety of technologies over time, each implemented and working independently of one another. By today’s standards, even a single messaging solution has grown to include such features as archival, security and mobility components. This complexity contributes to IT resources becoming increasingly burdened with basic maintenance and support of accounts, such as provisioning new users or canceling services for employees who are no longer with the company, rather than focusing on strategic projects aimed at improving a business’ core competencies.

As a way to resolve these issues, many enterprises have begun outsourcing their IT needs, at least partially, to either a shared hosting provider or a managed service provider. Service providers offer the benefit of focusing on specific services and often offer tools that allow for the automation and delegation of service provisioning. The implementation of these tools can cut the total cost of ownership of unified communications by half or more.

Enterprises have several options regarding outsourcing their unified communications services. They can choose a shared multitenant platform, a managed offering or even maintain the infrastructure on premises. Regardless of which option is chosen, an enterprise can benefit from the reduced costs associated with delivering and maintaining its communications services by employing a comprehensive IT management solution.

The key to enhancing the operational efficiency of an enterprise’s internal IT department and lowering its overhead costs is finding a solution that can centralize, automate and delegate the management of a business’ mission-critical applications. Those that can offer automated self-management options via Web portals give users a way to troubleshoot and manage their own services.

Self-service Web portals can also automate and simplify common operations, such as the ability to change user passwords, change configurations or install new applications. Together, this can lead to improved productivity, lower costs and a reduced workload for an IT department.

A user-friendly, Web-based management portal with online support also helps eliminate the need for extensive training, and allows administrators to delegate administration and control to other administrators and end-users based on their geographical location or departmental functional. Some of these IT management solutions allow customizations that can be branded or internationalized in several different languages for multisite global enterprises.

Whether an enterprise elects a hosted, managed or on-premises solution, an advanced IT management solution, including delegated administration and automation tools, can provide cost savings. Enterprises should look for the following functionality in a unified communications management solution:

• automated provisioning and management: identity (user) management across multiple applications, predefined templates for quick provisioning, deployment/import tools for bulk provisioning, application health monitoring, efficient capacity allocation and tracking, and analytics and business intelligence;
• access rights management: ability to define granular and atomic access control rights, delegate administrative rights, and ability to define custom “roles” (collection of access rights);
• policy enforcement and implementing business processes: customization of workflows for data validation and implementing the approval process;
• user-friendly management interface/portal: role-based management interface, delegated administration of help-desk tasks and employee setup wizards;
• audit and regulatory compliance: government regulations on data security, and complete change management and audit logs for all operations; and
• data integrity and high availability: data consistency across all applications and consistent service-level guarantees.

Beyond these capabilities, enterprises planning to outsource their day-to-day IT activities should seek hosted or managed service providers with the following characteristics:

Proven infrastructure. Choose a provider with a proven, multitenant architecture with strong service-level agreements. The added benefits of multitenancy include a faster time to benefit, from years to a few months or even weeks, and fewer upfront costs related to infrastructure and licensing, meaning less of a financial risk.

High availability and risk management. Administrators should continuously monitor their IT systems to gain insight into the health of critical communications systems. An outsourcing provider can ensure the high availability of all services through backup-and-restore features.

Unified service management. Choosing a hosting provider that uses a centralized platform to manage and control all the communications services it delivers can be beneficial. As companies grow and technology evolves, the ability of the provider to integrate additional services and add-ons under the same management platform becomes crucial. Enabling the delivery of future solutions through a single Web-management portal means that employees and administrators alike will require minimal training, as they will already be familiar with the system.

Making a case for outsourcing unified communications services will depend on many variables, ranging from the number of employees, geographical locations and industry legal requirements, to the existing infrastructure and its integration with third-party applications. Regardless of which delivery system is ultimately utilized, solutions that can simplify the complexity of managing critical communications systems will relieve the burden placed on a business’ IT resources. o

Francois Depayras is vice president of sales and marketing at Ensim Corp., Santa Clara, Calif.

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