As the enterprises spread their businesses beyond geographical boundaries, pressure to maximize resources gets higher. They look at every opportunity to cut cost and plan for a robust, reliable, and scalable network infrastructure that can support various business applications and processes.

As technologies advance and convergence of voice and data makes their way to the network, integrating, managing, and maintaining the network becomes complicated, expensive, and difficult. Further, in most cases the core competency of a company is not network related and, hence, they look out for third party to do the job for them.

Selecting the right partner who can meet the enterprise's critical needs with comprehensive network integration and management capabilities in a timely and economical manner is essential.

Network integration has moved beyond the scheme of assembling boxes and putting together tools. It requires proper evaluation of the requirements, assessment of the best in breed technology to full the needs, good support system, and scalability issues keeping in mind the future expansion plans of the organization. And, all this makes the work of a CIO tough. He has to look for a technology partner and total business advisor rather than mere integrators.

Challenges before a CIO
The first challenge a CIO faces while choosing an integrator is the dilemma of whether to go in for in-house or look outside. The answer is simple: The outsider has the expertise and coordinates with the best technology vendors, which is not the core competency of any internal team of enterprise.

Evaluating the organization's requirements and the possible solutions to suit them is another challenge that the CIO faces while integrating his network. He should look out for NIs who has the capability, expertise and team of experts to accurately do the assessment.

The assessment has to be done for not only the present requirements but also the future plans of the company and how the technology would shape up in the future.

A good integrator can help organizations to make improvements in the existing technology infrastructure that they have.

Organizations might also need to rework the design of the network through a due diligence by inspecting the current logical and physical configurations.

Organizations are becoming conscious of the total cost of ownership and return on the investment. A lot of attention is being given on reducing the TCO on networks.

Often, the networks are designed to handle growth in demand but the applications are not used optimally. There needs to be a balance between the investments being made on the networks and capacity utilization.

The integrator designs the network within the given budget and makes it scalable when required.

To get the correct picture on the returns on investment, the customer should clearly spell out his business needs. This helps to forecast the cost and returns from a technology before the project takes off.

Security is another area of concern for the any organization. With enterprises putting mission critical applications, data, and productivity tools onto the network to be conveniently accessed from any location, it is becomes critical to assess security preparedness of the integrators too.

Does the NI answer these?
Does the integrator understand and align the technology solutions to meet the business needs?

The vendor should be able to design the most suitable network infrastructure and integrate it with the business with minimal disruptions of operations.

Installing, configuring, and integrating technology and solutions is taken for granted. Customer references are an important tool in measuring the integrator's viability, experience, and capabilities.

Is the vendor an integrator or a contractor?

Many network integrators have a middleman approach and introduce many complications in between. They are more of contractors.

A CIO must avoid a company which subcontracts jobs a lot and often escalates the overall cost.

Does the vendor have the skills and expertise to carry out effective deployment of technology?

The rapid advancement in technology and the ever-increasing demand for a robust, secure, always-available network with the 24X7 support system requires a high level of expertise. A certified and well-qualified team of experts from the NI would ensure good returns on investment made in technology.

Does he deliver best-in-class customer service?

Settle nothing for less than best-in-class customer service and insist for an established measurement and evaluation systems to ensure the service class.

Does he have access to new technologies solutions?

Integrators partnership with right technology vendors ensures access to the latest technologies.

He should be able to understand the technology and customize it for his customers.

This enables him to keep the customers ahead in technology and assists them in making right decisions.

What is the area of presence of the Network Integrator?

If your company has a pan India presence, it is not advisable to have different integration partners. For ease of operation, uniformity, and low cost of ownership, the integrator should have single point of contact across all phases of the networking life cycle.

In case you are not able to find a suitable NI in your area of operation, try other integrators in that area who have similar experience and technology expertise.

Is the integrator ready to be a long term trusted business ally and advisor?

If the network goes down, your business takes the hit. An integrator should understand company's long-term goals and his role should go beyond merely incorporating latest technology to your network. He should be partner in your business and should align himself to grow with the enterprise. Choose an integrator with a good financial backing.

What are the timeline for the infrastructure to be up and running?

The projects are often delayed and add to the overall cost. So terms should be clearly laid down and deadlines should be drawn. And in case of a delay, a backup plan should also be in place. Proper delay notification procedures should be in place.

Where market has moved
Increasingly, the concept of end-to-end or one-stop solution providers is gaining momentum. It saves the frustration of working with multiple partners and the NI is able to offer a total suite of related solutions.

The NI then becomes the single point of contact and customizes the right and related technologies to offer an entire solution kit that addresses the business requirement and the full networking life-cycle.

The demand has been for vendors who can provide equipment as well as the applications to run on them.

Today, most of the network integrators have been offering managed services as well.

The fact remains that the NI understands his design better and can offer better post-deployment services. The market has also moved towards remote management services and outsourcing companies have been a major attraction for most integrators.

Manufacturing followed by the financial sector has been driving complete outsourcing of infrastructure integration and management market. But government buying, telecom service providers and the IT companies have also been pitching in with their contributions.

Equipment vendor as Network Integrator?
Though the Indian market has witnessed steady growth, there are many irritants that need to be removed. In the current scenario, equipment vendors and connectivity service providers have greater clout in the market than the integrators.

Often the stringent SLA clauses become difficult to be followed, as it is dependent on the third party rather than the NI.

Also, dependency on the third party, particularly in the connectivity side acts as a deterrent to end-to-end solution offerings.

So why cannot an equipment vendor or an operator become a network integrator? The core business of these companies is not designing network or managing them.

Though vendors like Ericsson and Nokia have ventured into this segment, they would like to focus in supplying the equipment rather than putting up the infrastructure.

The customer wants the best available technology or equipment for himself.

The involvement of an equipment vendor tilts the contract in his favor and the customer is forced to buy even if that vendor does not have best equipment in every category.

Further, a vendor would not like to get involved in local area networking (LANs), he is likely to find good business in doing wide area networking.