Infrastructure support is a critical piece for any IT organization to assure that the IT environment will match business requirements. Despite this fact, the IT challenge is always to “do with less” to answer the request to squeeze IT budgets.

According to Patrice Chéret, Managed Services and Cloud Business Development Manager at Dimension Data, there are 4 key elements to take into consideration in order to optimise the IT infrastructure support model:

1. Shortage of internal expertise. For many IT organisations, it is a daily challenge to maintain the IT infrastructure up and running by people having the right skills. The technology is evolving very quickly and IT organisations have not enough time to follow this evolution. Using shared skilled resources from an IT service provider can lower the total cost of support. These resources can be used for reactive support but also for proactive services to prevent any infrastructure failure.
2. Proactive support. To correctly support an IT infrastructure, reactive support is not enough. You need to prevent failures. Proactive support services aim to minimise the average time to repair faulty equipment and increase the Mean-Time-Between-Failures (MTBF).
3. Multi-vendors support. Most IT environments today have infrastructures containing multiple technologies with multiple vendors and with multiple support contracts. Managing such complex ecosystem can result in support inefficiency and money loss. Companies want people to spend more time making the business better and less time simply insuring the business runs as usual.
   However, not all ICT service providers are up to the task of services and contract aggregation in equal measure. Firstly, you need your service aggregator to have a high-level of expertise across a broad range of the vendors you have. Secondly, the service provider needs to have the systems, processes and infrastructure to deliver the services consistently around the world. Thirdly, the service provider needs to understand your environment. The more in-depth that understanding is, the less time it would take to solve problems.
4. Right-sizing. Not all the components have the same criticality in the client’s environment. By following a right-sizing strategy for all devices, our experience shows that organisations can save as much as 20% on support services without degrading the service quality. Therefore it is very important that your service provider understands the principle of right-sizing support contracts and can offer you the flexibility of service levels that you need, to match the criticality of your environment. Support and maintenance services are not so much about devices and contracts as they are about delivering a business outcome.

These four elements can help you to lower the total cost of support. With this approach you will deliver a simpler, more consolidated and more proactive overall support environment.

Dimension Data’s Uptime Maintenance and Support services, combined with our contract aggregation capabilities and Insite monitoring services, provide a portfolio of flexible service products and options to ensure that your ICT estate is properly covered. These services offer you predictable costs and a framework for efficient resource allocation, while protecting your business from risk and the unwelcome expense of downtime.