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Enterprises always look for the right kind of applications, processes and resources when it comes to making a reliable and robust infrastructure at minimal cost.

And as enterprises grow, there is an upsurge in demand to manage network and network related issue, and network integration plays an important role here. Though most of the enterprises go for outsourcing their services as it helps them to concentrate on their core competencies-selecting the right partner is still a key issue for them.

Integration Services offer customers several unique benefits in addition to cost savings. The suite of services efficiently merges data, voice and video communications over Frame Relay, and ATM/Internet Protocol networks. This provides customers a single point of network control with fewer points of failure, a simplified network topology, remote dial-up capabilities and Internet access. Integration Services are expandable as the communication needs of a business changes, and customers can rely on experts that have expertise in voice applications, LANs and WANs to establish and support their integrated networks.The integration services accommodate all of a business' central site, branch office, and remote access demands in one complete suite.

Integrators try to deliver value by planning and building infrastructure solutions, connecting organizations, people and systems. The networking integration skills, project management capabilities and knowledge enhance control over end-to-end business process transformation and a multi-vendor network infrastructure while improving productivity, reducing complexity and strengthening RoI.

Some of the verticals where network integration has made an impact include healthcare, financial services, retail and manufacturing. And these industries have been benefited as vendors help companies in providing assistance to executives in making strategic networking decisions. It also helps enterprises procuring and provisioning networks, equipment, and applications on a rapid pace.

	EXPERTS PANEL
	Rahul Swarup, president, Enterprise Solutions, Sify Vikas Srivastava, general manager, Networking Solutions Group, Wipro Infotech Sunil Manglore, CEO, Datacraft India

The vendors provide network engineering solutions to help clients obtain the value from their existing information and knowledge assets while ensuring their ability to quickly, efficiently, and securely transfer information.  They also help selecting, integrating, and maintaining commercial-off-the-shelf products and developing custom solutions for customers' needs, which help them to improve productivity and decrease costs.

The services that vendors offer include network design and migration, systems and database administration, proactive monitoring for network performance and availability, enterprise backup and recovery and video and data network consolidation.  Therefore they help enterprise network service from concept to completion.

The Network Integration Services address the implementation of network elements within the network covering multiple technologies including fixed access, optical, circuit switched and data.

Also it brings together disparate elements across access, transport, and core network components for wireline and mobile voice and data networks to make a network function as a solution.

CHALLENGES

The growing complexity of networks and their geographic dispersion pose serious obstacles for effective system management. Meeting these challenges call for an organization, which can offer integrated network solutions that adhere to international standards, and is interoperable.

Security challenges: There are numerous security challenges in integration. Therefore, security and manageability is one of the pertinent problems in integration. It is, therefore, required to invest in tools for wireless security monitoring and management and also invest in Network Access Control Process. Also, clear implementable security processes is the need of the hour.

Prominent challenges CIOs face:

• Financial (managing and controlling communication costs)

• People related areas (building technical domain expertise and retaining them).

• Technological (managing the technological changes while protecting investments and providing continuum to existing infrastructure)

• Securing IT Infrastructure and applications from increasing security threats

• Reducing cost of operation of IT as a percentage of business costs

• Shortage of skilled staff to take up new projects which are important from business perspective

It becomes evident that decisions involving implementation are becoming more and more strategic and less tactile. More than ever the decision to deploy new technologies has become far more a managerial decision.

Many enterprises are unaware of just how much data resides outside the security of their data centers. For some, up to 60% of corporate information sits in branch offices that don't have the infrastructure or trained personnel to ensure it is properly protected. Incomplete or faulty backups and missing or accidentally over-written tapes are common branch office problems that expose the business to significant risk and potential expense. Thus, branch office data protection is a major challenge facing enterprises which wish to expand rapidly.

As newer technologies emerge and branches are added at a rapid pace, the task of maintaining such networks becomes even more difficult. Confronted with the complexity of networks on one hand and shortage of staff on the other, in addition to the threat of ever increasing competition, Indian corporates are faced with a dilemma of 'To outsource Network Management or not.'

In the post 9/11 environment, enterprises are faced with different security threats-in the form of unauthorised access to restricted areas and criminal activities. Such security threats increase commercial risks to companies and security risks to government agencies. The need of the hour for enterprises now is to implement flexible and intelligent productivity tools that can help them to cost effectively monitor and secure physical premises.

SOLUTIONS
Wireless is a low-cost investment with high RoI. It's better to migrate high speed links to Metro Ethernet and go for WAN optimizers after understanding traffic applications of your network.

The primary challenges are to do with network coverage and capacity planning. These can be tackled by deploying multiple base station sites in each city and also by deploying advanced modulation techniques.

Amongst many solutions, the proven ones are building enterprise Intranets over the public Internet using secure technologies. Also while planning your network infrastructure, there are some important things that should be taken into consideration:

• Detailed planning for network migration or expansion since networks are now the lifeline of the company.

• Take consulting services by paying small amount of money so that you get quality advice from people who have gone through this experience

• Don't revamp unless you have a clear RoI for network enhancement

• Identifying “what is old” is the first step the IT department should carry out, as this is primarily a business-driven exercise for eventual cost justification.

Network Integration helps reduce overall TCO of enterprises. Enterprise IT Infrastructure has three pillars that include computing, networking, and storage. Networking cost is closer to 30% of the overall IT spend of enterprises including bandwidth. Therefore, networking is key to enterprises. It reduces their business operations cost and improves customer satisfaction.

Today, banks are completely dependent on networking for all their applications that include ATM transactions, branch banking, Internet or telebanking. Same is the case for auto, manufacturing, consumer electronics, FMCG and other sectors.

In the networking domain, the bandwidth prices have come down heavily. But still Indian prices are at least three times higher than Australia, China or US. Therefore, it is imperative to reduce Internet bandwidth prices further for widespread coverage.

Also, prices of branch networking equipment (routers and switch cost is still too high and is one of the inhibiting factors for even more branch connectivity. It is also important to have lower duties or local manufacturing to get India the required pricing for networking equipment.

Also, outsourcing IT Infrastructure management to qualified service providers can shower enormous benefits and reduce the total cost of ownership.

IT departments evaluating a wired-wireless integration should carefully consider what is already deployed on the network and develop a clear evolutionary path so that legacy and future products integrate seamlessly. Clear thinking is even more important if the wireless network was handled separately, since an integrated wired/wireless network puts more of the organization's communications needs in one basic.

Outsourcing network management needs offer companies a key tool not only to save costs but also to give them a strategic and competitive advantage. Also, because a network management services player has access to the latest software and applications, it can bear upgradation costs by letting clients use its resources on a shared basis. Outsourcing networking management combines with the benefit of expertise along with the added advantage of costs.

Building value-added services around products would be the key to growth and rapid RoI.

IP Telephony is often seen as the first phase of a converged infrastructure solution and offers quick return on the organization's networking investment.

A few other solutions that can offer quick return on investments in networking and infrastructure are:

• Conferencing and collaboration

• Messaging

• Centralized Data Storage & Management

MARKET DEMAND

The SME market is big for vendors since the networking technology has now become affordable-routers, switches, and wireless security products are available at affordable prices. The products designed for SME are easy to use and don't need too much technical expertise. No doubt, the SME segment would be the key focus area for us in the coming times.

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 has become 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 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.

In the government sector today, there is a wave of development, which is introducing exponential jumps in the CIO's ability to deliver better performance, react more quickly, and lower costs. Current e-government efforts are focused on simplifying, standardising, and increasing the value of the IT infrastructure already in place.

To a government IT head, the challenge still continues in the form of digitizing information, collecting and storing data, improving office productivity, offering citizen and business services, enabling real-time transactions, and offering wireless solutions. These challenges have now been coupled with current IT activities wherein establishing links between all IT departments, creating interoperability between services, and realizing network integration is of prime concern.

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.

INTEGRATOR CHAOS
How can an integrator help understanding and aligning technology solutions to meet business needs?

The vendor should understand business requirements and design and integrate the network with business so that the business continuity should not suffer and disruption does not occur.

Most of the time, vendors don't take a serious approach towards integrating technologies, due to which flaws occur in the network which eventually result in major business problems. Customer references are an important tool in measuring the integrator's viability, experience, and capabilities.

Also, since enterprises outsource their networks to third party, vendors often take a middleman approach and subcontract their job. This really creates lot of complications in business processes and also in network. Vendors take this approach only when they don't have the expertise to manage networks or when they want to make quick bucks.

Therefore, a CIO should read the vendor properly and as per the business requirement, assign the job to the right vendor.

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.

Therefore, a CIO should settle for nothing less than best-in-class customer service and insist on an established measurement and evaluation system to ensure the service class.

Also, it's important that partnership with the integrator is the right technology partnership. A vendor should be able to understand the technology and customize it for his customers. This enables him to keep the customers ahead in technology and assist them in making right decisions.

Location is another important issue in integration. If an enterprise has multi location presence, it's better to go with one vendor that has pan India presence. Different integration partners in different locations only complicate the network processes. Also, 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.

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

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

Rahul Gupta
rahulg@cybermedia.co.in