By Robert Johnson

Most companies need their key business applications running around the clock since customers, employees, and other constituents need access at any time. Maintaining an “always on” network is no small task. To minimize downtime and frustration, the infrastructure must be constantly monitored and the team must have ready problem solving strategies in place. Managing a solid infrastructure requires skilled IT people, effective processing, and advanced technology.
This article examines the economics of an “always on” IT infrastructure using in-house vs. external resources and the pros and cons of each alternative.

The “Always On” Business Imperative

Customers want to buy products and services, manage their accounts, and check order status at any time. Employees must communicate with customers to service them as well as collaborate with colleagues to meet business and market demands.

For example, university students, faculty and staff want access any time to course registration, on-line courseware, student records, and other systems. Bank customers want round the clock account access to check balances, pay bills and complete other transactions. For obvious reasons, hospitals need immediate access to clinical and pharmacy systems, patient records and other key systems.

Having an IT infrastructure that’s “always on” is a necessity for most companies, regardless of industry sector or size.

Atrion believes an “always on” infrastructure must be:
• stable (e.g. high network throughput for both voice and data traffic)
• secure (e.g. prevents intrusions and data losses)
• efficient (e.g. lowers the cost and effort to manage network and systems) and
• compliant (e.g. alerts when changes impact regulatory requirements).

The Cost of Unplanned Downtime

Unfortunately, most companies experience more unplanned downtime than they want. Achieving uptime of 99% is impressive but that 1% downtime is 87 hours per year! Studies have shown that unplanned downtime costs at least $45 per hour for each of your employees. According to a 2008 Standish Group study, downtime costs for a company’s ERP system is $350 per hour. A 1000 person company that experiences unplanned downtime of 1% would be impacted with at least $3.9 million in lost revenues, unhappy customers, lower productivity and grief!

Reducing Unplanned Downtime with In-house Resources

As noted above, a high performing network infrastructure requires monitoring, managing, and ready problem solving. The “always on” infrastructure must also be proactive in optimizing the network. In order to carry out these actions, in-house resources must be effectively organized and channeled.

Monitoring the infrastructure involves detecting and validating faults, then isolating them. This begins the problem resolution phase. In many cases, a company will need vendor technical support to get back up and running. Working with a vendor that’s responsive and highly competent will greatly shorten the problem resolution phase. Tracking problems with a trouble ticket system will eliminate extra time and effort.

Proactively managing and optimizing the infrastructure includes activities such as tracking assets, archiving configurations as well as changes particularly for regulatory requirements and bandwidth optimization.

As noted above, to accomplish these tasks on a 7x24x365 basis requires having skilled IT people, effective processes and advanced technology. Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

For the people element, a company will need moderate to high levels of network & systems expertise along with strong problem solving skills. We estimate that to hire, motivate and retain such people will cost approximately $75k per year (which includes benefit and overhead costs). The network engineers must be willing to cover 2nd & 3rd shifts and weekends, especially for critical unplanned outages. There’s also the need for

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