After the success of software and business process outsourcing, infrastructure and network

management services (NMS) are said to be the next big wave to hit the Indian market. Already
Indian IT skills have had a resonating affect across industries and with network management
services it is well on its way to get transformed into the control center for global networks.

The economic revival has given corporate houses some room to expand their IT infrastructure
and network. Therefore, the task of a CIO or the in-house network manager becomes more
complicated as the management keeps a tight control and asks for the returns on investment
made in network expansion.

"On a network the basic pipes and equipment are in place. There are applications running on
them too. But as number of users grow and pressure on the network increases, network
management would become critical," As more and more business- and mission-critical
applications ride on the networks defying the geographical boundaries, companies cannot afford
to withstand network outages and application failures. "The dependency of business processes on
WAN infrastructure is increasing. To provide better availability and reliability of networks to
support businesses, organizations would
need network monitoring and management
systems,".

By Research, companies are losing almost

3.6 percent of their annual revenue due to
network downtime. Gartner says the RoI
on applications running on networks gets
reduced by almost 25 percent due to lack
of effective network and system-
management procedures.

Key Drivers
• Centralization of network operations for better control and effective operations
• Need for real-time monitoring and alerting of network availability and performance
• Asset and configuration management of all network devices
• Automation of activities to reduce manpower dependency

The NMS market is in its nascent stages and often network management is being bundled with
integration services or is part of the overall contract. "Network management is part of a facility
management contracts. As large networks are established to connect large number of facilities,
pure management companies would come up, and this market would grow in the coming days,"

Trend
The market has moved from mere network and infrastructure device management to end-to-end
network management. "Management services have moved from being crisis management to
becoming a specialized field. Earlier when device or facility management was the main job, the
complexity level was less. Now it demands expertise and focused approach.
The management service provider is not only expected to react and resolve the problems, rather
he should be able to predict the problem well in advance. The buzzword is to identify the
problem even before it happens and reduce the number of trouble tickets. As the market grows
and organizations integrate their management requirements in their policy, standalone integrators
and piecemeal management solution providers have less chances of survival.

"The standards and certifications are already in place and awareness level towards such services
is increasing. The need is to incorporate better tools for alerts and have better processes to handle
situations,".

Factors Affecting NMS

• Globalization
• Componentization
• Internet
• User accounting and security
• Speed of business
• Emphasis on RoI

There is also an increasing realization that with limited in-house manpower, on-demand scaling
the processes is difficult. There would be times when utilization of network capacity would be
less and would require less people to monitor it. Organizations cannot cut or increase manpower
with fluctuating demand. "Professionals by nature are restive. If you do not give those challenges
and upgrade their skills with time, they tend to get bored and look for other avenues. The
management is free from these problems, if the NMS is outsourced..

The NMS service provider is not tied with one corporate and utilizes its manpower and expertise
to serve multiple business houses. They are in a better position to interact with equipment
vendors and technology partners to get latest trends and also insights into future technologies.
This helps in constantly upgrading their skills and also keeping the customers educated. As a
service provider maintains a pool of talent catering to different customers, he can shift workforce
from low-demand to high-demand areas. This takes care of capacity scaling too. After the
business process, network management outsourcing is the big thing companies are looking at.
And as in any outsourcing decision, here also bosses are skeptical about the credibility and
ability to handle the network and whether to do remote or within campus outsourcing.

Advantage India
India has already established itself as a leader in software and IT services. It is looked at as a
preferred outsourcing destination in back-office processes, technical support, e-learning, etc. The
country has the required skilled and cost-effective manpower. The success stories of outsourcing
from India have established the trust in India's companies and its workforce. Add to all this
economic stability and policy support. A mix of all this is working the dynamics in favor of
India. The ITeS and IT sector have provided the ecosystem for the management services to grow.

Good and reliable international connectivity is slowly converting India into a nerve center of
infrastructure and network management. The magic has worked equally for foreign companies as
well as domestic ones. MNCs like IBM, EDS, CSC have established their base in India to serve
their customers leveraging on the local advantage.

Features of Good NMS

• Fault management: Detection of equipment failures
• Capacity management: Planning of infrastructure evolution
• Configuration management: Administration of configuration changes
• Security management: Control of access and content violations
• Accounting management: Chargeback of network resource usage
• Unlimited scalability: Built-in intelligence to handle scalability issues
• Remote management: Distributed network should be managed from remote location
• Portability: With mergers and acquisitions gaining momentum, it would be better to develop portable solutions for
managing network infrastructure
• Extensibility: Open standard platforms over which custom applications can be built
• Auto correction: Self-correcting measures in case wrong configuration of the system
• Easy user Interface: Functionalities for business users rather than networking professionals
• Multiple grouping: It should allow the network to be grouped into various geographies to account for time zone
differences, various distributed networks to take into account possibility of sharing information from extranets

While Indian banks have been the front-runners in outsourcing network integration and
management, other sectors like manufacturing, services, and telecom operators are slowly
catching up. In fact, the network and infrastructure deal between Bharti, IBM, and Ericsson is a
landmark where even the connectivity service providers are looking to outsource their non-core
activities.

NMS vs Telecom Operators

Some of the telecom operators have also been offering management services. But in most of the
cases, they are limited to managing the link or the connectivity to customer premises. In the past,
telecom operators were not even bothered about managing, as they were limited to providing
connectivity, and the customer's team managed the rest.

Customers need to appreciate the differences that exist between provisioning bandwidth and
connectivity, and running of network operations. They are two very different activities and it
takes specialist service providers to run network operations. "Telecom operators are more
focused on selling bandwidth and providing connectivity to the customers. We work with
telecom operators on many turnkey projects and we have our roles clearly defined and there is no
conflict,". Just as leased line management services are an integral part of network management
services, the role played by service providers is moving towards vendor management with
telecom operators. There exists a bilateral arrangement among service providers to reduce any
overlap and they work according to their core competence.