Press Releases
Research reveals server administration and management is creating a massive drain on IT time
[20-02-2006]
Patch management and back up cause the biggest headaches for IT managers
London, February 20 2006 – According to research released today, 50% of IT departments in UK businesses are spending approximately 20% of their time on server administration, while a further 41% said it swallowed up between 20-40% of their IT department’s time. The research was conducted by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Morse, the technology integration and services company, with 100 enterprise IT managers surveyed. In order to help alleviate the strain caused by all this administration work, Morse is launching a range of managed services which will help businesses identify and selectively outsource key server administration and management tasks, freeing up IT managers and their staff to concentrate on more strategic activities.
"It’s no secret that server management is a time consuming and mundane task, but servers are the backbone of any businesses and this means it is absolutely critical that they are well maintained in order to keep the business running," said Andrew Wycherley, managed services business manager, Morse. "However, what needs to be decided is how efficient it is for IT staff to be spending such a large proportion of their time on server administration tasks. If administration is eating into a significant portion of the IT department’s day, it can really hinder their ability to focus on other work which would hold more value for the business. After all, other people in the business don’t care how servers are managed as long as they can access the applications they want, when they want. We will be working with IT managers to see how they can take advantage of our management services to reduce the time drain server administration and management is creating."
Server administration is an ongoing task with IT managers having to undertake a variety of activities including constantly monitoring servers, regularly patching them, backing them up and administering user accounts. IT managers also have to contend with the fact that their organisation has a variety of servers each with different operating systems and running different applications. As a result, IT managers need several staff with a mix of different skills and knowledge in order to manage these administrative tasks.
The research shows that all of these factors combined make server administration and management a real headache for IT departments. When asked which server administration and management tasks IT managers rated as top of the list for giving them grief, 35% said it was patch management, while 28% claimed that server back up caused them the most nightmares. 23% nominated administering user accounts and 14% said that server monitoring was the most likely server administration or management task to have them reaching for the painkillers.
"Any one of these administrative tasks could easily be outsourced with minimum disruption to the business and still allow the IT department to have control," continued Wycherley. "These sorts of activities are ideal to outsource because they are all so fiddly and time intensive. For example, the ever growing number of patches that IT managers need to research, test and deploy is creating a nightmare for even the most efficient IT department, while constantly administering user accounts means there’s little time left over for any other activities. On top of this, there are often other strategic tasks that need the attention of the IT department, but at the end of the day there’s only so much the IT department can accomplish if they’re stuck doing administrative tasks as well."
By selectively outsourcing parts or all of this administration and management activity, IT managers can sleep soundly at night knowing that their servers are being monitored and looked after 24 hours a day. In addition, by outsourcing to a specialist, businesses can increase the security and reliability of their systems as the specialist company can dedicate their time to managing the servers and take care of any problems that arise.
Under the managed service, Morse will work with IT managers and their departments to help them through the decision process by analysing such things as installed server capacity, service windows, performance levels, and problem and resolution rates. Based on this, Morse will then make a recommendation on which server management tasks will be ideal to outsource. Through a range of partners Morse can then take on the management of activities such as remote monitoring, remote management, hosting applications and managed applications, freeing up IT departments to focus on other more strategic IT work.
Morse will offer four service options; remote monitoring which will include 24x7 coverage, remote management covering SAP, Exchange, Citrix and Web applications, hosted applications which includes migration strategy and management, and managed applications including patching, alert and incident management.