INFORMATICS INDIA

CASE STUDIES

____________________________________________________ A CASE STUDY ON

Increasing Operational Efficiencies Through IT Solutions

·         Concerned About Uptime?

·         The Top Four Upcoming Trends

·         The Right Emphasis - Strategic Planning

·         Peer To Peer Computing

·   Changing The Way You Do Business

Concerned About Uptime?

Ok, admit it. You are concerned about uptime. In fact, it is one of your major concerns. If your computer systems aren't up and running, you are experiencing lost productivity, increased costs, lower levels of customer service, reduced employee morale and many other problems too numerous to mention. So what can you do about it? Plenty.

Many organizations start by completing an inventory of their IT equipment. The goal is to identify your Single Points Of Failure (SPOFs). Once you identify your single points of failure, you can do something about them. Look at each component to determine if the failure of that device could cause an impact to your operations. For example, if you only have one hard drive, you have a single point of failure.

Once you have identified your SPOFs, the second step is to perform a criticality review of your equipment, systems, employees, and procedures. Also include your E-mail, operating systems and software applications. The criticality review will identify the impact to your organization should you experience a specific IT related failure. For example, what is the impact to your organization should your Internet line go down or a printer stop functioning?

The criticality review examines time and its impact to your organization. At what point does having your printer down move from low priority to medium to high? Maybe you can last a couple of days without a printer or perhaps even weeks if you have other printers in your office. If Internet connectivity is important to you, and you only have one line, it may be high priority from the first hour of downtime.

The Top Four Upcoming Trends

The one thing that can be counted on is that there will always be change in the Information Technology industry. To manage this change, organizations need to look ahead to the future to make better informed business decisions. The four most important technology trends of the coming decade include Customer Self Service, Software Integration, Wearable Computers and Information Tags.

Customer Self Service

By 2005, estimates show that more than 70 percent of customer service interaction for information and remote transactions will be automated. The demand driving this change is the ability to provide service to customers when and where they need it. A range of new technologies will assist customers without the need for human interaction.

Software Integration

Businesses will be more agile and adapt to change through the use of software that integrates with the Internet. The Web will facilitate must faster software development and integration. Through the use of business processes, organizations can focus on core competencies and increase their operational efficiencies.

Wearable Computers

Over the next decade, more than one half of the U.S. population will carry or wear wireless computing and communications devices. This widespread adoption of wireless technology will provide constantly connected employees and consumers with access to information.

Information Tags

"Information Tags" will be used to identify products and services. The tags will contain information and opinions about a specific item allowing consumers to more easily find, prioritize, and select items. Information tagging will modify consumer buying behaviors and drive new industries focused on advisory and market research services.

The Right Emphasis - Strategic Planning

Instead of concentrating on the technology used within a business, emphasis should be placed on the strategic planning and redesign of the organization. Although technology changes rapidly, people do not as easily change they way they work.

Buying and installing computer systems is an easily managed task. Rethinking and redesigning the way we work to take full advantage of updated IT systems is not as easy.

Knowledgeable professionals recognize that IT is only a tool to help an organization meet their goals and objectives. Concentrating on benefits and values helps companies focus on the bigger picture.

Find out more about networking and security services and how they can help you increase employee efficiencies, reduce costs, enhance your competitive edge, and improve your levels of customer service.

Broadband Considerations

With prices dropping and growing availabilities, analysts project that Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology will overtake cable modems in the number of broadband subscribers. With so many new subscribers, why are so many of the DSL providers in financial difficulty?

Due to the low cost popularity of the new DSL lines, the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) were overwhelmed by requests to add new lines. This resulted in installation dates being pushed back from 3 weeks to as much as a 6 week lead time. As the lead time grew, the rate of installations slowed and many DSL providers were not able to make their installation projections.

Peer To Peer Computing

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) computing allows tasks to be shared across a network. Instead of requiring a large, centralized server, many personal computers are connected together into one large network. This environment allows excess processing capability on selected PCs to be used by network neighbors processing a large task.

The P2P system splits up large computing jobs and spreads them around the network, making use of excess processing capability on adjacent workstations. P2P's biggest supporter is Intel, who is eager to sell more powerful workstations as an alternative to one larger server.

Security and network slowdowns are two issues that need to be addressed in this emerging technology.Find out more about networking and security services and how they can help you increase employee efficiencies, reduce costs, enhance your competitive edge, and improve your levels of customer service.

Business Continuity

Many organizations have found that their prior Y2K planning forms a solid foundation for developing a business contingency program. However, the Y2K contingency plans differ from business continuity plans in one major respect. Y2K contingency plans include the steps necessary to recover from a known scenario with unknown effects. For Y2K, the scenario was the date change from 1999 to 2000. For many systems, this involved a date change from 99 to 00.

Business continuity plans differ from Y2K contingency plans in that they typically plan for an unknown scenario with known effects. For business continuity plans, the effect typically involves the loss of access to IT equipment, the production facility and all resources therein.

Changing The Way You Do Business through

Employee Monitoring And Internet Surveillance Systems

Have you ever wondered how much personal time your employees spend on the Internet? Corporations are finding that while the Internet is a valuable resource for research and other activities, there is a need to control wasting company time while on-line. Advancing technology allows management to monitor the Internet activities of their company employees.

Internet surveillance systems provide corporate management with reports that identify the heaviest individual Internet users. These reports also detail the top Internet web sites visited by department employees and the company as a whole. Some applications provide the ability to monitor activity at the employee level and rank usage into dozens of categories.

Redirecting employees to work related activities increases the efficiency of the employee and frees up Internet bandwidth that can be allocated to other members of the organization.

Find out more about networking and security services and how they can help you increase employee efficiencies, reduce costs, enhance your competitive edge, and improve your levels of customer service.                                                                                                                  TOP

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