Remember, you're likely to be talking to people responsible for the company's everyday business operations. You could argue that testing has a direct link with those operations, but you're not likely to convince the CFO that an IT testing lab is part of the organization's nuts and bolts, such as cash flow, direct materials and direct labor.
As we talked to IT managers, we kept hearing the theme of avoiding "hassle" through the use of testing labs. But unless you translate "hassle" into dollar figures so that your audience can understand the connection, you can expect your plea to end up on nothing more than a wish list.
To prepare for the pitch, consider more than just the current justifications for your lab. You'll probably have to defend your testing facility throughout its life and provide for ongoing funds to keep the lab functional. World events, such as Y2K and virus disasters, drove a one-time buildout of lab facilities at OMB, for example, but that facility remains useful today, testing virus updates and patches as well as software compatibility, says IT specialist Gauthier.
Be ready to justify the ongoing costs incurred by the steady deployment of security and other bug-fix patches over the lab's life span. Testing labs do quality assurance on service packs at Office Depot, for instance, and senior MIS project manager Rachel Pace is quite bullish on this use. "It's pretty easy to quantify savings," she says. You base those numbers on the type of work required when things don't go according to plan. If a patch is known to work fine across the industry, for example, but it conflicts with your homegrown application, you could face hundreds of hours of downtime and remediation across your user base. This is particularly true for large shops and ones whose operating system setups are diverse, as the window of time to patch critical flaws is small.
Besides emphasizing a lab's potential savings, look for ways to turn the lab into a bottom-line booster. If your organization is large enough to warrant them, for instance, chargebacks (charging other departments for services from your organization) are an extremely good way to keep your lab competitive--and therefore efficient. For example, one large Midwest manufacturer sells its lab's services to internal customers "as another way to improve its ROI justification," says a security manager at the company.
Clearly, this type of lab is the most entrepreneurial. It's a minibusiness within your enterprise, since it has both revenue (the chargebacks) and expenses. Fair warning: A lab that typically operates outside of the main IT department (it charges the IT department for its services) will require the most detailed proposal (see "The IT Agenda: Move Beyond the Free Lunch").
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
