The Average Inc. could do quite a lot to improve the ways it uses technology in order to reduce risk, ensuring business continuity, and to cut unnecessary cost. If Average Inc. needs to improve its use and management of its ICT infrastructure, then that means most real companies do as well.
QUOCIRCA BRIEFING March 2008 Average Inc. Contacts: .and how it can improve its use of information and communications technology (ICT) Quocirca +44 1753 754 838 The Average Inc. could do quite a lot to improve the ways it uses technology in order Bob Tarzey to reduce risk, ensuring business continuity, and to cut unnecessary cost. If Average bob.tarzey@quocirca.com Inc. needs to improve its use and management of its ICT infrastructure, then that Dennis Szubert means most real companies do as well. dennis.szubert@quocirca.com Clive Longbottom Average Inc. has a single HQ with about nine branches. Its main IT clive.longbottom@quocirca.com resources are based in its data centre at the HQ. Fran Howarth This is a business continuity problem waiting to happen. An outage of the HQ, fran.howarth@quocirca.com for whatever reason, will leave most employees with nowhere to work and, even if they can set themselves up remotely, no IT to access. Louella Fernandes louella.fernandes@quocirca.com The data centre has no backup power supply and a mix of underutilised Rob Bamforth servers. rob.bamforth@quocirca.com Much time is spent managing servers that are only used to about 15% of capacity. Average Inc. knows this and has started a virtualisation project, but it is early days. BRIEFING NOTE: There are servers in all its larger branches, which local staff with limited IT This briefing has been skill are expected to manage. written by Quocirca to address issues faced by Not only does this take up valuable time for branch-based staff, but there are companies with regard to often outages and backups are not guaranteed. ICT. Across its locations, Average Inc. has a jumble of printers, scanners and The report draws on Quocirca's knowledge of faxes from many different manufactures. the technology and This is expensive to manage as there are no real economies of scale when it business issues faced by comes to buying consumables and employees waste lots of time fixing devices companies and is based on primary research carried when they could be carrying out more productive tasks. out in this area. Average Inc. sees a lot of benefit in enabling its employees to work remotely As always, Quocirca is but this is done in an ad hoc manner. grateful to those who take part in such research There is little standardisation of the devices used, the way remote network access without which these is procured and the security of access. There is much that Average Inc. could do reports would not be to reduce cost and risk of remote access to IT for its employees. possible. Conclusion: Average Inc. is reliant on technology, but there is much it can do to ensure critical resources remain available at all times and are not a cost drain. Only when it gets these issues under control will it get full value from its technology investments.
An independent briefing by Quocirca Ltd. www.quocirca.com Average Inc Page 2
Average Inc. (or Ltd, GmBH, BV, Pvt, SARL) organisations using a web-enabled interface accessible over the internet, to allow: Of the six billion or so people on Earth there is probably no one that Suppliers to check inventory. exactly matches Mr Average. Customers to check order status. However, it is still possible to gather PCs in all branches and HQ run a mix of Windows the facts and describe what that XP and older Microsoft operating systems. single person might look like. The Most IT management is carried out remotely by same is true of companies. third-party experts, but local branch office staff are This report describes the average relied on to do their own backups, which, as far as company and how it makes use of information and anyone knows, are done to tape and stored onsite at communications technology (ICT). It goes on to examine some of the risks companies face through bad the branch. There is no checking the validity of practice and the remedial action they should take. backups or rehearsing for recovery. There is no standard for printers, scanners and fax It turns out there is quite a lot Average Inc. can do to machines and some of the branches and HQ improve the way it uses technology. By definit... [download for more]
