Flexibility Driving Infrastructure Mgmt Service Growth

Vikram Watave, VP-Infrastructure Management Services, Patni, talks about Infrastructure Management Service in its entirety.

Please talk about Patni’s Infrastructure Management Service (IMS) set.

Our first offering is called Remote Infrastructure Management Outsourcing Plus Plus, where we do a service-level based outsourcing for customers. The second offering is ADM++ where infrastructure is a part of it because a lot that is done in infrastructure is related to production support or operations. Due to this, application support and infrastructure has started blending together. Customers are now looking at the stack and looking for a solution to manage the application, which could be either ERP or Web based. The customer is also looking at services to manage the database below the application, the OS and the network, basically the whole nine yards, which has led to the emergence of application management services.

Which factors lead enterprises to opt for IMS?

Infrastructure has been outsourced traditionally. One thing that was always on the mind of anyone, who wanted to start a company, was that the ownership of the infrastructure wouldn’t be borne by him/ her but would be leased out. This led to the concept of a utility model with regards to infrastructure and it stuck on for very long. The big players who manufactured hardware owned this entire industry as they were also providing the communication part of it and they owned the industry for a considerable amount of time.

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Infrastructure outsourcing is not new. However, what changed were the models that big players were offering customers, which were for a period of 5-10 years, which were in a sense locking the customers, which ultimately led to the loss of customer flexibility. This is when most Remote Infrastructure Providers (RIM) came into the picture because they offered flexibility to the customer. In these offerings, customers could own the hardware and the software, decide their technology cycles, decide their CAPEX budgets and all of this was available while not getting locked in with a single provider. This has been the main reason for infrastructure outsourcing.

How has the recession affected this market? Are companies looking inward?

Companies are definitely looking inward. Today’s cost pressures revolve around servicing business functions irrespective of having lower service levels. It’s almost like a disaster situation where it states that the basic continuity of the service needs to be maintained and kept. If customers think that way, then they are looking inward. Some large MNCs might also turn to their captives in low-cost geographies to look after their infrastructure requirements. However, I don’t see this as a problem but as an opportunity.