Innovations in IT Infrastructure Management

Vishaal Shah
The Economic Times (Delhi edition)

New technologies in IT infrastructure have to keep pace with demands from consumers and enterprises. Here is a look at some new advances that are likely enthrall corporate India.

Cloud Computing
Computing is emerging as an extremely viable approach to deliver and access enterprise software and services. One of its biggest advantages is that it leverages the potential of the Internet to provide a global distribution network for an organisation’s infrastructure. Andrew Knott, VP marketing, APAC, Salesforce.com, is confident that cloud computing will unlock pools of innovation since the cost of developing and supporting apps is dramatically decreased.

Application Management
Current economic conditions have brought conflicting challenges for IT managers to lower the operation costs and guarantee higher service levels to ensure 24x7 availability. Eddie Chandhok, president, Global Delivery Organisation, Infogain Corporation, believes, “A well-managed application portfolio can help fuel this transformation while driving business growth.” A flexible application management system helps an organisation achieve business agility by off-loading the costs and meeting business demands at reduced costs.

The Receiver
The receiver is a new lightweight software client that allows IT organisations to deliver desktops and applications as an on-demand service to any device in any location. Souma Das, area vice president, Citrix Systems, India Sub-continent, attributes the popularity of the technology to the fact that it simplifies being connected to work on any wireless device, and accelerates the adoption of new business models.

Open-Source Tools
CIOs are advised to subscribe to the fee-based service agreements to guarantee product support, unless the tools are used only in non-production test environments. While larger vendors have reasonable support structures, some open-source projects are solely supported by the open-source community and without any SLAs. Open source allow companies to customise the application and at the same time does not burden them with high license fees.