Network Management Reduces IT Support Costs

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For the SMB¹, we believe "Network Management" must provide all the elements required for desktop and laptop support in one easy-to-implement package. Also critical are AntiVirus Protection, and Network Security. (¹"Small-to-Midsize Businesses", defined as <251 computers, regardless of number of employees.)

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A small investment in Network Management can enable SMBs to significantly improve the reliability of their critical PC resources without requiring them to spend an inordinate amount of resources on management tools and IT staff. What's the Return on Investment?

Most often, outsourced network consultants can set up and deploy the entire system in less than a week's time (assuming, for example, a 25 node network at a typical small business employing 75 total), and can thereafter maintain and support your network - servers, desktops, laptops, and other devices - with only a fraction of the time and cost previously spent on break/fix, troubleshooting, and administration.

Most importantly, you can rely upon your computer systems to be available to do what you need them to do, when you need them to do it.

The core of Network Management for the SMB is Computer Associates' Unicenter Desktop Management Suite (UDM). Unicenter is used by 99% of the Fortune 500 to manage their networks. Computer Associates has taken four key applications from Unicenter, and made them available to the SMB on a subscription basis for the unbelievably low price of $30 per node per year, with a 25-node minimum.

UDM Empowers Your Organization With:

Complete PC Asset Management - maintain consistent configurations across the network and provides IT support staff instant access to the information needed to quickly troubleshoot problems. Integrated software inventory and metering tools enable companies to control their software expenditures and ensure compliance with license agreements.

Data Backup and Recovery - automate the backup processes, and restore backed-up data with a click of a mouse. This helps eliminate the tremendous exposure of unprotected data and the productivity losses that exist at many organizations because of inadequate PC backup practices.

Streamlined, Secure Software Delivery - distribute applications, upgrades and patches from a central location, which can significantly reduce the cost of PC ownership while ensuring optimum performance, and protecting from viruses and hackers. Administrators can define distribution policies and pre-schedule downloads for off-hours to avoid work interruptions. All files are pre-scanned for virus protection before distribution.

Full-Function Remote Control - enables support staff, internal or external, to instantly take control of users' systems to instruct them and resolve problems remotely. These remote control functions can also be used by telecommuters to access non-Web applications via their office desktops. Built-in chat and file transfer functions further enhance support and remote computing tasks.

It 's very important for an organization of any size to maintain control over users' desktop configurations, since unintentional variations in those configurations can easily result in a wide-range of time-consuming and productivity-eroding technical problems.

Adding InoculateIT AntiVirus provides true enterprise-grade protection against viruses, trojans, worms, and malicious code. It is administered from a central admin console, and provides for absolute control over users settings. It runs realtime, without any noticeable processor overhead, and has zero-downtime updates.

For management of external internet threats, Info Packaging supplies, configures, and maintains your firewall and VPN/RAS. We also offer External Vulnerability Scans and Assessments, at very reasonable rates, and recommend that these be repeated on a regular basis, as Best Practices for external network security.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT

The average costs of ownership of a business computer has been in the headlines for years. Recently, Fortune Magazine quoted the annual cost of PC ownership at more than $9,000, The Economist at $6,400, The New York Times at $13,000 and Business Week at $8,000. The most frequent source of these numbers is the Gartner Group, who will oblige with estimates ranging from $7,138 to $13,000.

How do you minimize these costs? The answer is really quite simple.

LOCK DOWN YOUR USERS' COMPUTERS!

They are the company's computers, not the employees'. You should control what software they have installed and use on a daily basis. They should know what behavior you expect of them, and prohibit them from doing, while using corporate resources.

You should be notified automatically if they violate your policies. You should be confident that they all have the latest AntiVirus signature files and are running real-time protection. Your support staff, whether in-house or out-sourced, should not have to waste time fixing laptops which were broken by unauthorized installation of AOL 7.0.

Our proactive approach to IT Management, based around Unicenter Desktop Management Suite, will require an initial investment on the order of $300 per machine, based on $50 per year in software licensing costs for UDM and InoculateIT, and one week's consulting time to deploy the software solution to 23 user machines and 2 servers.

At this level of investment, your break-even point is a savings of 3 minutes support time per week for each machine. (Calculated thus: Assumed IT support costs of $100/hr, blended rate of in-house and out-sourced technicians, $300 investment / $100 actual support costs per hour = 3 hours savings will offset entire investment; divide by 52 weeks = 3 minutes per week.

Our experience has been more on the order of saving a very conservative 1 hour per month in support time for all machines. Savings, then are 25 x $100 x 12 months = $30,000 per year. ROI = $30,000 / $7,500 ($300 x 25 machines) = 400%. Back to Top

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