Networks have come a long way today and incorporate a whole lot of different, complex and heterogeneous technologies. Outsourcing network management and control system requirements has enabled enterprises to grow and focus on core businesses. That's the reason major chunk of large enterprises preferred outsourcing their Network Management Services (NMS). NMS market grew by 80% from Rs 293 crore in FY 2004-05 to Rs 526 crore this year.

Managed Services was the boon for lot of organizations last year, who focused more on their business, rather than the upkeep of infrastructure. With appropriate SLAs in place that ensured uptime and response time for network infrastructure, organizations let the managed service provider take over the management. In certain cases, this has definitely contributed to reduction in TCO where the cost of network maintenance was higher than what is being paid to the MSP.

Wipro Infotech managed to make most of its revenues from network management, as it was the key element of growth. Telecom and banking segments contributed the most. The government's project and some state level projects laid the foundation for network, integration and management. The growth in IT and ITeS sector provided good opportunity to Wipro to grab some campus projects.

Customers such as Corporation Bank, OptiMix, Maruti,  HLL etc have leveraged on Wipro's processes and tools to develop business impact metrices.

Reduced bandwidth prices, relatively easier availability of bandwidth and drop in equipment pricing has enabled organizations to use network as a key strategy for business expansion as well reducing transaction costs. Other drivers were services led focus, consultancy approach, importance of compliance for service management.

Wipro did broadband deployment of more than seven lakh lines of DSL based internet services. It also did expansion of MPLS network for one of premier telecom companies from 11 to more than 80 PoPs and integration of the MPLS network with Metro Ethernet Network.  It had also set-up a greenfield MPLS network for a publicly listed wireless data service provider across the country.

Datacraft though didn't focus much on NMS and continued with last year's projects. Vendors such as IBM and HP currently are also very active in NMS space. HCL Comnet has built competency over a period of time and is adding value to NMS offerings.

Most of the action is currently taking place in BPO and BFSI segments but it is gaining acceptance in other verticals as well still it has to go a long way.

The industry has also witnessed that outsourcing the NMS of a company does bring in an element of risk that includes security concerns, loss of control and vendor lock-in. The primary and predominant risk involved when outsourcing the network management of the company, revolves around the capability of the service provider to access privy information of the company by virtue of its control over the network. This risk has been reduced by having adequate SLAs in place and also having a trust worthy and established vendor as outsourcing partner.

But the possibility of the company being compelled to continue with the service provider despite inadequate QoS due to contractual or security reasons is still a major cause of concern. Outsourcing the network management has also resulted in the service provider owning or sharing the control of the network, which has resulted in losing the technical know-how of network management in the long run. Also issues such as quality of service (QoS), SLAs, ubiquitous access to services, network growth/deployment and most importantly network security are critical areas that are asking for advanced capabilities for alarming, troubleshooting, diagnosis, and management.

Trends
With changes in network topology and increasing importance on value added services, the expectations from a network management application and services has increased multi-fold. The path that NMS is evolving into includes the development and usage of re-usable components to have a uniform platform, to build applications on a single point configuration and management operation along with a hierarchical view. Additionally management system correlation, Web based network management, increased focus on QoS and performance management are the other areas that are still to be addressed.

Some of the technology trends that helped enterprises move are AI based event co-relation, cross domain co-relation, root cause analysis, route analytics, network performance management using specialized tools, network configuration management, VoIP service assurance, storage management, VPN management and application response time management.

Converged networks are still on the rise. Organizations are looking to leverage their existing infrastructure and investment by incorporating new technologies such as voice and video transfers on existing networks.

Most of the enterprises didn't want their network to be outsourced especially when it is a crucial component of their business. Such organizations have developed in-house expertise and managed the infrastructure themselves.

The multiple tools and technologies had allowed organizations to gauge the performance of their networks.  Organizations that moved up the IT maturity model start relying more and more on the IT infrastructure and moved their business ahead.

No single tool can deliver all the needs. Most of organizations contemplated for a managed services partner that can provide customized framework with best of breed tools for managing the network. It should also be able to provide co-relation within the network and also with systems and applications. Datacraft and HCL Comnet had provided framework to tackle such issues.

To achieve high returns on network investment, focus was on operational gains and increase in network utilization factor, rather than capital expenditure. Network management as a solution has done a lot as far as improving the network productivity is concerned.

There are various solutions in the area of network management that provided fairly quick returns on networking investment. These solutions include network fault, configuration, performance, accounting and security solutions from leading ISVs.

Challenges
Apart from the challenges that enterprises typically face from competitors and new business models dictated by the market, three key business challenges that CIO's faced include cost reducation, risk management. And third to ensure that 'infrastructure is always on'.

Addition of complex network technology to keep up with business requirements made it mandatory to ensure that despite the heterogeneity and complexity, the final objective of 'infrastructure is always on' must be achieved.

The key challenges for enterprise are coming in the form of monitoring the network for performance when the networks are becoming more and more complex. Also, controlling and operating at a high QoS for a prolonged period of time, adding innovative and rich value added services in complex networks for additional revenue streams and of course mobility management are some of the other challenges.

A network has little value, if it cannot be managed properly. Some of the best practices that network managers have adapted is using 'Automation' whenever applicable, have a graphical view of the network being managed and use good network management tools to predict and pre-empt potential problems such as network imbalance, data influx etc.

Rahul Gupta
rahulg@cybermedia.co.in