Productivity and efficiency are the targets every enterprise must hit to survive. This is evident in the uptick of automated infrastructure management (AIM) solutions brought to market over the past couple of years, writes Jim Young.

In the latest CommScope Global Enterprise Survey, nearly one third of the respondents indicated that AIM was a strategy that might help them hit this goal.

The enduring economic pressures have increased the stress placed on operational efficiency and productivity for enterprises. Intelligent AIM systems can help drastically reduce the time to establish connections and implement changes to the physical infrastructure, resulting in serious efficiency gains within the IT and facility management departments, as well as potentially huge productivity gains across the organisation.

Energy savings continue to be an area of focus and a quarter of respondents to the survey indicated they are actively targeting an average reduction of 19 percent in energy consumption. While many different solutions target energy savings intelligent lighting, building performance management systems and DCIM solutions are generating a great deal of interest.  Again, automation of resource management is a key to conserving resources while removing administrative overheads.  A win-win for facilities managers!

Energy Management policies are well worth the effort of design and implementation.  Maintaining these policies requires dynamic tracking of assets and applications. An AIM solution provides the missing link – automatically keeping track of where assets are located even as they are moved and changed over time.   In short, the AIM knows exactly what is connected, how it is connected and where it is located.  This accurate real-time connectivity information is provided by AIM and integrates with the energy management platforms maintaining optimised energy consumption. Following energy management policies automatically will deliver optimal results with the least effort possible.

Enterprises also look to AIM to mitigate risk.  We still see a huge percentage of outages caused by human error and the survey tells us at least 11 percent of all network changes need to be redone due to human error. Errors might be caused by incorrect documentation or patching. Whatever the reason, these errors can lead to costly service downtime and increased administrative costs. According to the Uptime Institute and Aberdeen Group, the average cost of downtime is indicated somewhere between US$100,000 and US$300,000 per hour, making risk mitigation a vital area to consider.

AIM gives automated and up-to-date documentation of the physical network infrastructure, an automated change management process including work orders, scheduling and step by step patching instruction at the rack. This eliminates costly errors – like the aforementioned 11 percent of all Moves Adds and Changes – and provides a reliable audit trail to help curb the auditing overheads.

After several years cancelling or postponing IT projects, many companies now find themselves in a situation where the projects must be delivered to safeguard the business continuity and underpin growth. Today, projects given the green light are scrutinised and prioritised according to their positive impact on productivity, risk mitigation and general return on investment (ROI).

AIM solutions are helping to deliver these strong, tangible benefits, ensure very attractive ROI and relatively short payback periods.  Physical infrastructure to operate an IT network might be seen as simply an unavoidable cost. AIM positions an enterprise’s traditional passive network infrastructure to provide daily operational benefits throughout its 20 year+ lifetime – is it part of your strategy yet?

As Director – Data Centres for the CommScope Enterprise Solutions Division in Asia Pacific, James Young provides leadership to a broad based technical team providing engineering and technical support for SYSTIMAX® network infrastructure solutions in the region. The teams’ responsibilities include pre- and post-sales activities, BusinessPartner training and auditing of SYSTIMAX installations in support of the warranty program.

James has been involved in sales, marketing and operational roles for communication solutions working with Tyco Electronics/AMP, Anixter, Canadian Pacific and TTS in Canada. James has gained extensive experience in the sale of OEM products, network solutions and value-added services through direct and indirect channel sales environments. His sales experience includes electronic transmission components, telephony systems, network systems, LAN infrastructure products and fibre transmission system products.

Prior to joining CommScope in Canada, he was responsible for the promotion of network infrastructure products for Tyco Electronics in Eastern Canada. James has also garnered substantial experience in OEM and Channel marketing as well as network operations as Assistant Director of CP’s computers and communications group. James graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Western Ontario and is a Registered Communication Distribution Designer (RCDD).

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