Whether the price of an IT product or service is high or cheap is a subjective concept. For a manager of a large listed company, one million euros is a little and for an IT expert who procures a single tool, a lot. If the previous IT system has costs € 2 million, a competing € 1 million system looks affordable. Still, the acquisition is not always possible. You’ve probably heard the explanation often: “Can’t fit our budget.” The business world works well with annual budget routines but also argues that it emphasizes short-term thinking and precisely the importance of price.
The allocation of the annual budget to the organization is like a weekly allowance for a child – Use it, and no one shouts after.
If the IT acquisition and savings are for a fixed asset, such as a data center rental, the price of a device or license, or a service contract, the decision is easy to make. For some, squeezing costs and strangling suppliers is even a daily job. It is significantly more difficult to challenge the old operating model and make a calculation of the payback times of the investment.
Example. We have prepared a proposal for the housing association’s general meeting to switch from district heating to geothermal energy and solar electricity. Excel looks good in numbers, and shareholders are more concerned about the visible effects on the yard and the environment. The price tag is hard, but the assumed payback period is in the company’s interest. We do not get significant benefits by filing the annual budget by a few percent or by bidding for current suppliers. Still, we are not at the forefront of leveraging new technology. There are a lot of references. However, disruptive innovation was needed, the government’s interest in the long-term benefits, and efforts to clarify the issue.
Invest in the feasibility study and calculate the current cost
The first step in a network automation development project is to calculate the volumes and costs of enterprise NetOps. An example of the table is the work related to the maintenance of about 2,500 network devices and 200 sites (switches, WAN routers, firewalls, load balancers, WLAN controllers, access points, SD-WAN hardware) and one small data center environment. Remember, every company and operating environment is different. The pace of change and cyclicality of companies is also different. What is common instead is that the IT fault is almost always assumed to be a network problem. Thus, there is a considerable number of events.
Image – Calculation helps to observe the cost of manual operation and routine work.
The example, the potential for savings over three years is significant. After this clearing phase, it is the turn of the bidding round, and the product, service, and implementation price can mirror the benefits.
Are the resources saved used for new business development activities, or are purely cost savings sought?
The need varies. Similarly, how are the costs formed, and in whose budget are they reflected? Are the resources internal, or are they purchased as a service? The issue and interest in the topic are one of the responsibilities of the responsible owner. In the world of services, few suppliers spontaneously propose how to halve billing. An annual budget also guides the supplier, but it is a sales budget. Here, too, the geothermal case as an example is excellent. Despite advances in energy technology, I have not been contacted by the current supplier to halve the housing association’s heating costs. The owner should be awake and be active himself, as interests often do not coincide.
Eight characteristics of the need for network automation?
In Finland, the IT service provider is responsible for monitoring the services and managing the change in the service. In some situations, using a separate network monitoring system is justified to achieve a better status and to monitor service levels. However, monitoring software is ill-suited for documentation and for monitoring the effects of configuration change management. Remember, 80% of the problems caused by change management.
Monitoring software vendors have listed eight characteristics of the need for network automation in addition to monitoring software:
- Maintaining documentation and CMDB is slow and expensive, consuming resources.
- Challenging monitoring of change management and its effects (even those no one has done)
- Too many software, the purpose of which is unclear except for a single expert
- Service Desk Level 1 almost invariably escalates a potential network failure to the next expert level.
- There is a lack of know-how for the next step in a problematic failure situation
- Experts take too long to find the problem (hours or days)
- Routine tasks, repeated running undermines job satisfaction.
- Visibility to occasional problems that have been reported but left themselves is lacking.
Lead with knowledge and automate routine work
Developing and managing computer networks without dynamic and automatic documentation is like navigating in the dark with a paper map. Troubleshooting without a digital twin and network automation is slow, expensive, and old-fashioned. Also, read the blog, “The digital twin is the most impressive reform of network management.”
Hannu Rokka, Senior Advisor
5Feet Networks Oy