Complex IT Networks – Challenges and Concerns
Contemporary IT environment is becoming increasingly complex and it can be extremely challenging for CIOs to understand and voice their requirements when managing and upgrading their networks.
The contemporary IT environment is becoming increasingly complex and it can be extremely challenging for CIOs to understand and voice their requirements when managing and upgrading their networks, especially voice and data over mobile devices. Until very recently telecom services were largely viewed to be commodities and vendors were selected mostly on price parameters. However, contemporary telecom networks have evolved rapidly to become extremely complex to offer not only reliable connectivity but support integration, collaboration, and conferencing without compromising security and integrity of data.
New Challenges for Enterprises
In more and more business environments it is seen that mobile services are consuming an ever-increasing portion of the budget on technology and act as the principal driver of both the complexity and cost of network services. There has been an exponential growth in traffic of wireless data as well as complications arising out of Bring Your Own Device policies. This is expected to keep on growing at this frenetic rate; estimates range from 50-100% per annum largely on account of increasing use by businesses of voice and video conferencing and hosted applications. With the traffic on both mobile and wired networks increasing there is a constant demand for additional bandwidth and improvements in network management. Both of these represent new challenges for businesses.
The Management of Mobile Technology
One of the prime challenges being faced by companies is that of managing mobile technology. There are some companies that allow users to choose their own mobile devices and reimburse the cost to employees while others prefer to manage mobile service centrally. The first approach gives more flexibility and satisfaction to employees as they are able to get mobile devices of their choice while the alternative limits these options but makes device acquisition more economical and improves data security.
Key Factors for CIOs When Deciding the Mobile Strategy
When deciding upon the mobile strategy, chief information officers (CIO) need to consider the corporate culture as there could be resistance from the new generation of employees to conform to standard practices about technology and devices. They should be careful that their decision supports enablement of business-technology over the long term. Another issue of mounting concern is how to separate the personal from the business data that resides on mobile devices as this has a direct bearing on the legal and regulatory risks that the business is exposed to.
The principal reason why businesses find themselves struggling with the evolution of mobile management policies is because most CIOs do not possess the relevant skill sets to allow them to appreciate the complexities involved in managing mobile networks. Lack of requisite capabilities may also limit their chance to develop them internally. In such a case, the only viable option is to engage competent IT infrastructure and support services vendors like Bay Computing (baymcp.com). Getting a competent IT services support vendor on board is even more advantageous because it can be quite difficult for a business to build a sufficiently capable team in-house given the extremely competitive labor market and the relatively scarce resources, making employee retention somewhat of a horror story.
Ever-Increasing Network Complexity
While information networks continue to evolve rapidly, it can be extremely difficult to establish centralized control. Multinational businesses also need to keep pace with developments in the local environments as far as capabilities, cost, and regulations are concerned. Even when the cost can be curtailed substantially by changing the telecom carrier, it may be counterproductive because of the potential operational disruption. Because of the fragmented telecom services across countries, it is also quite impossible by and large for CIOs to achieve economies of scale by leveraging competition for telecom services across its footprint. Due to the very limited nature of these relationships, it becomes very difficult to plan out unified technical and commercial programs.
