The rapid emergence of cloud services, Internet of Things and mobile innovations have given rise to a strong dependence on data-driven applications, which in turn, places a heavy reliance on the uninterrupted availability of infrastructure services. IT is thus faced with improving service quality and reducing costs in an ever-changing and complex environment.
Amidst the business imperatives of high performance, end-user experience, end-to-end visibility and simplified IT management, what exactly is the enhanced business value provided by service availability?
Service Availability is Primarily About Business Value
It calls for a change from the belief that service availability is not primarily about technology, but about business value. Organizations need help to translate the technology and metrics of service availability into tangible business sense. How can service availability be looked at in terms of real-time productivity and fiscal gains or losses? How can it be understood as a representation of success and failure, or their impact?
This requires looking at the various aspects of business value in service availability – its value proposition, its value enablers and specific measurement areas.
The Deep Dive into Business Value
Let us look at the details of a few key value propositions and their corresponding enablers and measurement.
#1 – Reduced frequency and duration of crisis management calls
Improved visibility into failed infrastructure components is the value enabler that can be measured through cost reduction figures of crisis resources.
#2 – Optimized hardware and software assets
This results in realizing the full value of the investment and can be measured by the hardware and software expense costs incurred.
#3 – Improved network bandwidth utilization
Real-time traffic analysis can help defer annual network upgrades. Cost savings on network bandwidth subscriptions is its measure.
#4 – Improved productivity of operations and service desk
Integrated and real-time fault and performance management, automated management tools as per ITIL best practices are clear value adds. Cost reduction in labor in these two functions clearly measure the business value.
Additional business value arises from reduced costs and improved business service availability for revenue generating customers. These can be measured by cost saving and revenue loss protection figures respectively.
CIOs are today concerned about demonstrating the business value of IT, and containing overall costs. With the compulsion of an ‘always-on’ and adaptable infrastructure that can pay its way, providing exceptional service at high availability is the highest value it can provide business.
