CAIRO,
Egypt, 11th May, 2015:
For small organizations in Egypt, there are some obvious advantages of buying
all or most of the IT infrastructure requirements from one technology
provider. Some of these advantages might
include removing integration difficulties, simplifying project implementation and
might as well be reducing the cost. For large organizations, however, this rule,
if applied, might bring undesirable results especially in IT where technologies
keep changing. Large organizations
should follow a more advanced approach when selecting the required technology
and focus not only on the technical side or the initial costs but also on the
total cost of ownership and the return on investment. Obviously, this requires advanced resources
that perform technical and commercial analysis.
Manish Bhardwaj, Sr. Marketing Manager, Middle East &
Turkey at Aruba Networks says with the introduction of wireless technologies
and its massive market adoption, the reliance on one technology provider that
could deliver the wireless and wired technologies together becomes even more
difficult. Actually, the ‘one
vendor-provides-all’ approach has decreased tremendously ever since the
introduction of wireless technology.
This is largely due to the different architectures of both wireless and
wired infrastructure, that each has its own different approaches and
philosophies. Research firm Gartner said
in its recent report titled “critical capabilities for Wireless and Wired LAN
Access Infrastructure” that about half of end-user clients actually deploy
wired/wireless solutions from the same vendor.
Gartner said that this is often due to mismatched refresh cycles,
pre-existing relationships, and preference toward best-of-breed approaches
and/or cost ramifications.
In the same Gartner report, end-users might select one
technology provider when they want wired technology, but when they decide to
have wireless technology, they will find that the same technology provider
might not have what it takes to fulfil their infrastructure requirements.
Practically, organizations will be more successful in
benefiting the most from IT technologies when they put more emphasis on the
“selection process” rather than the technology or the technology provider
itself. It starts with properly identifying
the IT infrastructure requirements that will bring benefits for the business by
categorizing them based on the must-have, the good-to-have and not required
categories. Then aligning the gathered
and categorized requirements with available technologies. A similar process
should also be done identifying and qualifying the technology provider and
associated contracts.
Doing this process in a systematic and precise way increases
the chances of having the right technology and the desired business benefits,
while at the same time reduces the amount of error and the amount of personal
preferences that could cause undesirable results, loss or catastrophes to the
existing business.
