|
An example is the recently introduced Business Continuance SafeGuard 30m series, which enables the automatic recovery of Microsoft clustered applications in less than 30 minutes when recovery sites are more than 186 miles apart. Future RTI solutions will include:
Standardization of infrastructure components for lower-cost business and IT operations.
Dynamic provisioning and virtualization of infrastructure resources.
Automation of infrastructure management to reduce costs and improve service levels.
To determine when and where to apply virtualization, the company first maps the customer's business process, using tools such as Proforma's ProVision, and then applies business activity monitoring tools to see, for instance, how many SAP transactions are being used to take new orders. Using the 3D-VE methodology, Unisys then superimposes the model created of the company's infrastructure. This helps determine whether an increase in sales orders necessitates an increase in processing capacity for handling inventory tracking, which would affect networking and server workloads.
"Instead of focusing on, 'My server hit a certain threshold so I better add more capacity,' it's driven by business activity and business process," says Marv Chartoff, Unisys' CTO of outsourcing and infrastructure service.
For server virtualization, Unisys uses VMware and Intel-based servers, such as the Unisys ES7000 server line. Its Tier-1 partners include EMC for storage and Oracle for grid computing.
Users applaud the use of virtualization."Unisys owns the servers and other computing assets that the city of Minneapolis uses. Unisys is evolving its servers toward a more virtualized environment. That should enable us to realize greater efficiencies and deliver improved service to citizens," says Bill Beck, deputy CIO, city of Minneapolis (see related story ).
Unisys also considers security one of its strong points, given its event and correlation engine. The engine collects incident data from multiple points on the network, puts that data into a rules engine where it's correlated and analyzed and detects breaches that otherwise might go unseen.
Beyond the products
Of course, assessing an outsourcer's technology underpinnings is only the first step in selecting which firm best suits your new data center needs. And that, experts agree, depends on which outsourcer can best match its technology to your business processes.
"The technology in this area has become almost a commodity," Kaplan says. "What the vendors are trying to differentiate on is in how they're solving customers' overall needs."
That was the major decision point for ABN AMRO. "All of the vendors have similar [product and marketing] concepts that they've demonstrated," says Tom de Swaan, CFO at ABN AMRO. "We were more concerned about how they met our needs in terms of service-level agreements and price points."
Brandel is a freelance writer in Newton, Mass. She can be reached at marybrandel@verizon.net.
Learn more about this topic
Outsourcing managers' group touts ethics code10/03/05
India's Karvy diversifies into outsourcing9/28/05
Outsourcing requires careful planning07/20/05
New data center awards05/23/05
Out with ASPs, in with Software as a Service suppliers03/23/05