Handing Over Remote ControlHoward BaldwinWhat are the best practices customers should consider when setting up remote data-center management?
Collaboration
The aforementioned Web-based portal can be an asset for sharing metrics, but sources stress that it should not take the place of face-to-face communication. “If you think you’re going to save $3 million annually using labor-rate arbitrage,” warns Bendor-Samuel, “clip that back to $2.5 million to pay for time and travel for face-to-face communication.” “Our clients make onsite trips to their service providers in India, not because they need to, but because they need to get to know each other. The more complex issues in life aren’t handled in a report. They’re handled when people have trust in one another’s judgment.” Bendor-Samuel feels this is crucial not just from a management standpoint, but from a true collaboration standpoint. It’s not just problem escalation; it’s the coordination of issues such as hardware investments, based on the service provider understanding the clients’ business — how it changes seasonally or based on marketing promotions. “This is a people business,” he insists. “How do you build and sustain relationships when you no longer have the benefit of proximity?” Improvements over a Period of Time That kind of collaboration — the sharing of knowledge about business, rather than just transactions — should ideally manifest itself in improvements in the working relationship over a period of time, and clients should think about those metrics as well. “We think about business-level agreements in addition to service-level agreements,” says Larry Lozon, VP, Data Center Services, EDS in Dallas, TX. “Rather than looking at the pure up-time of the underlying system, look at the success achieved in getting the process done.” And the more the service providers know about your business, the more basic work you can offload onto them. “It frees you to be more predictive and productive,” says Lozon. “Instead of looking at what’s happening within the data center and what might be causing it from a technological standpoint, you can start thinking about what the transaction patterns are telling you about what might happen next with your business and customers. That’s the essence of innovation and differentiation.”
About Author
Silicon Valley-based freelancer Howard Baldwin first edited a story about outsourcing in 1999 |
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