|
|
In the bleak economic climate of today, businesses the world over are
tightening belts, laying off workers and reviewing strategies to reduce
costs. But this cost reduction is not guided by an all out approach to cut
expenditure everywhere. Cost reduction is also being achieved through
investing in cost reducing agents. Remote Infrastructure Management
(RIM) through IT is one such area which promises cost reduction through
increasing spend in a targeted manner. In this era of distributed
computing, ICT equipment can be located anywhere in the world to
provide support anywhere else in the world on a 24X7 basis. In countries
where manned infrastructure management is an increasingly costly affair,
enterprises are enhancing service and performance levels while reducing
costs through technologies that have improved infrastructure efficiency
and management. The global Remote Infrastructure Management
industry has grown at more than 80 percent CAGR from US$2 billion in
2006 to US$6 billion in 2007 to US$7 billion in 2008. RIM is part of the
Infrastructure Management Service (IMS) which Forrester estimates to
have a market size of $111 billion and Gartner places it at $80 billion.
Companies in Europe and US are planning to reduce up to 60% costs in
their IT management. According to the research firm IDC, this year will
also see the revival of software-as-a-service (SaaS) as market focus
shifts from capital expenditure (Capex) to operating expenditure (Opex).
IDC noted that major vendors such as Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard
and IBM, are already actively promoting the concept to their customers.
Outsourcing and managed services will be more resilient against any ICT
spending cuts because they are typically long term in nature and driven
largely by cost savings.
As enterprises move towards intelligent physical infrastructure and
assets, the opportunities for RIM service providers will multiply. This
integration of digital and intelligent physical infrastructure offers the
capability of monitoring, regulating, shutting down and fixing bugs in
infrastructures by remote login from any part of the world. Human
intervention at the site is required only in cases of a loose wire fault or
physical damage. By requiring lesser number of people, RIM drastically
cuts down costs which make it increasingly attractive in otherwise
increasingly costly business environs. Analysts believe that RIM, as an
independent industry, could unleash the next largest wave of opportunity
in off-shoring, similar to that provided by the Application Development
and Maintenance (ADM) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)
industries in the late 1990s. IDC estimates the market opportunity for the
software, servers, technologies, and services to manage the world's
converged IT and physical infrastructure to be $122 billion by 2012.
As has historically been happening in this part of the world, we notice
opportunities when the neighborhood is deafeningly abuzz with activity. It
is also the time when the entry barriers have become too high for the
new entrants to get a foothold who are destined to become scavengers
rather than hunters. History is again poised to repeat itself in the case of
RIM opportunity. Just as India was well positioned to reap windfall gains
before the eventual IT bubble burst, it has gained a strong foothold in the
RIM market across the globe. Several critical facilities in the US, UK,
France and China – to mention a few – are being monitored and
maintained by Indian engineers out of Noida, Bangalore, Gurgaon and
Chennai. The present harsh economic environs when companies are
desperately looking for cost cutting solutions, India is well primed not just
to provide the core competence, but is also gearing up to meet the global
demand of human resource for RIM systems. According to a recent study
by Nasscom, India stands at an opportunity to realize 26-28 billion dollars
by 2013 with a CAGR of over 30 percent. In the last 15 years, the Indian
IT industry has latched on to opportunities thrown up by the global IT
spenders. Initially, it was project-oriented onsite work followed by Y2K,
then the BPO buzz, then off-shoring, and now it is IMS. Not only that we
had been missing opportunities, we also had not been smart enough to
learn lessons from such slips. Had we realistically analyzed the Indian
success, and our utter failure, in exploiting the Y2K opportunity, we could
have availed the subsequent ones. In this global village of a world,
problems of one market segment are opportunities for those on the
lookout. The current economic meltdown with its multitude of problems for
many, also has opportunities for the smart ones. IMS, and particularly
RIM, is full of opportunities not just during the currency of the global
economic crisis, but far beyond it. Only one has to be looking in the right
direction.
|
|
|
|
2009
|
|
|
|
|
