Dexter Siglin

Mar. 19,2020 | Insider, news, Procurement, Maintenance and Support, Market Alerts, Operations, Negotiation, Hardware, Infrastructure

Unlike consumers who have been panic-buying bathroom paper products in bulk over the last few weeks, IT executives have prepared for security threats and natural disasters for many years and have deployed highly resilient solutions with varying degrees of business continuity.  Clients have spent millions for things like network redundancy, contact center contingency planning, remote workforce support, and business application and underlying compute and storage infrastructure availability.

The list could go on.  In fact, there is a whole industry set up to help IT leaders face this business continuity challenge.  What many of those plans fell short in considering however, was the breadth of disruption we are currently seeing, resulting in unprecedented levels of remote work. 

What is unfolding now in real time, is pounds of cure for short fall in the infrastructure and application resources.  Even if the requirements demand immediate action, the risk is that the organizations grossly overspend and lock in much higher cost structures longer term in the pursuit of supporting rapidly changing business requirements for the short term.

You’ve probably been living it and/or heard the stories:

• Employees getting locked out of systems due to VPN overload
• Workers being asked to work in shifts as core systems are failing under the strain
• Mobile networks going down due to provider issues as workers go remote and left without connections (e.g. UK/O2)
• Nintendo facing outages as gaming demand is overwhelming its platform and infrastructure

Companies are straining to meet network capacity demands for remote workers and customers at levels never previously considered.

• VPN access
• Audio and Web Conferencing
• Endpoint security
• Hardware for remote workers
• Application delivery via the web
• Throughput and performance

While there a few companies offering real help with no strings attached, most technology suppliers are simply going to ‘take orders’ at premium prices to facilitate whatever is being asked, regardless of the contractual or commercial consequences to their customers long-term.  Even those supported by existing Managed Service providers will find they are going to start being charged for all kinds of ‘extras’ or “surge” pricing.

We are here to assist you to address urgent needs, but avoid reflexive technology purchasing that may have detrimental long-term effects.  We can also help you decipher capacity needs, address licensing entitlement issues, and consider solutions that will meet your short term needs without penalizing you for the long term as you respond to the need of supporting a large remote workforce at a scale that was never anticipated.

Our professionals are available to help you make good and economical decisions.  There is no reason to overspend.  Contact us for help.