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 Managing The Cost Spiral Spells NSM By Patricia Schnaidt Much ado has been made about the high cost of ownership of PCs (and, therefore, PC networks). The real cost of a PC lies not in the initial purchase of the hardware or software, but instead in the never-ending software upgrades, the niggling incompatibilities and the tinkering users (like that VP who keeps futzing with his machine's IP address). While a lower cost of ownership has been widely given as the justification for purchasing network computers, IS organizations must gain control of their networks regardless of whether they plan to adopt them. Think about the problem again. The cost of networked computing lies in its distributed systems, its multivendor roots and it s built-in flexibility to support different applications and users in any geography. Did we as an industry purposely forget that complexity means cost, or did we dine-and-dash, figuring someone else would pay the bill?
If your IS organization is a half step ahead of the support fires, don't expect that you can keep the flames from licking at your heels tomorrow. You can only blame the Web for so long during your monthly meeting with the chief financial officer to explain the IS department's overages. Experienced managers of enterprise networks are hard to hire and expensive. Their availability doesn't scale neatly with the num ber of network problems. These gurus are centralized but the problems are in the branches. First- and second-line support people don't have the depth of experience to solve the complex problems. Still confident? Connections to the Internet and intranets do noth ing to reduce network complexity and, therefore, cost. Just wait until objects and component software hit your applications in a real way. Standardization is the first painful step to a more controlled environment. While flexibility to support the departments' business and applications needs is a fundamental principle, you have to distinguish between infrastructure and competitive edge. Build a standard infrastructure of network hardware and protocols, and where possible NOSes too, because you will gain efficiencies in operation and reduce the combinations and permutations that lead to incompatibilities. Enable diversity for your organizations' strategic functions and try to enforce standards elsewhere. You'll have to mediate among religious warri ors (NT versus Unix for instance), but it works. Well, it works some of the time. As hard as you try to have a single directory system across the enterprise, the departments don't live under the all-powerful thumb of IS. You can either live in a hut in Costa Rica or you can implement tools that will help you get a better view of your entire network from desktop to application and better control its changes. Network systems management software is a tool that will help. Automate the labor-intensive processes with the right management software. The cost of a software-distribution package will pay itself back in a shockingly small amount of time when you compare it with the number of hours your IS staff spends upgrading and installing OS and applications software. Asset or inventory software is often the first step before software distribution, because you need to know what's out there before you can install software on it. Management software is available for all sizes and types of organizations, fro m small to large and from decentralized to centralized. Software is available to perform a dizzying array of everyday and strategic functions from backup to business-process management. You can choose from point solutions, which will relieve an immediate pain, or fr om the more strategic frameworks or suites, which tend to work best in a medium-to-large organization, or one that's centralized by offering a set of applications that have integrated functions and database--across the multiple platforms that naturally occur in a large enterprise. (Next month's Networkologist will discuss the pros and cons of the different network systems and applications management architectures.) Patricia Schnaidt can be reached at pschnaidt@nwc.com. |
Built on Late Nights and Dedication
It's obviously not cost-effective to add a support person for every 100 or 200 new PCs, yet IS organizations often have no other option. Without human horsepower, PCs won't get installed, configured and supported in a way that actually helps the users.
by Bill Frezza Corporate View by Brian Walsh On The Wire by Bill Alderson and J. Scott Haugahl In The Middle by Bruce Robertson Updated February 21, 1997 |
