Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization model (IOI)
Help agencies do more with less
Agencies squeezed between rising costs and tightening budgets sometimes resort to reductions in IT services as a way to save money. But users suffer when Help Desk hours are cut, software updates are deferred, and support staff is cut.
But what if there was a way to reduce costs while actually gaining the ability to improve service levels, tighten security, and increase reliability?
Such a strategy exists, says Lance Horne, specialist team unit manager for Microsoft's federal government presale engineering program. It is based on clearly identified steps to optimize an organization's computing infrastructure—that is, the hardware and software platform that supports user applications. With this strategy and assistance from an experienced Microsoft team, forward thinking organizations are implementing tools and techniques that drive down costs and dial up efficiency. By standardizing, automating, and more tightly controlling the IT infrastructure they manage in this way, these organizations are finding they can save hundreds of dollars per desktop each year.
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The cost of infrastructure
Desktops and servers, with their operating systems and communication layers, consume 30 to 45 percent of a typical IT budget. By attacking those costs in a systematic way, IT organizations can free up resources to clear backlogs and address new initiatives.
To do so, IT managers must first accurately assess their organizations, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities, and then implement tools and strategies with the highest verifiable return on investment (ROI). To help, Microsoft now offers a four-tiered Infrastructure Optimization Model (IOM). IOM helps organizations diagnose the level at which their infrastructure is currently functioning and prioritize the actions and investments that will get infrastructure components to a higher level of performance.
Saving money through optimization
Microsoft's Infrastructure Optimization Model defines four levels of maturity in the computing platform, each of which has specific and identifiable characteristics.
Basic | Systems are complex and incompatible. Most IT resources are reacting to problems, just trying to keep things running. With few standards and automated tools, support is labor intensive and expensive. |
Standardized | IT departments are more centralized and effective, but systems remain complex, incompatible, and expensive to maintain. Pockets of standalone systems reside in business groups. |
Rationalized | IT and business groups develop strategies and define IT policies, which are enforced through technology. Through standards and careful engineering, applications work together with improved compatibility. |
Dynamic | Business agility takes priority over cost savings. IT systems are highly automated, flexible, and respond quickly to changing business conditions. |
A recent study of 31 public and private sector organizations ranging in size from 1,500 to more than 13,000 desktops illustrates the potential cost savings of infrastructure optimization. By progressing from the Basic level through the Standardized level to the Rationalized level of infrastructure optimization, those agencies saved an average of more than $500 per desktop per year. And the results are replicable. An IT department with 2,000 desktops to support can reduce its costs by over $1 million dollars annually just by "everaging some of the tools and technologies and best practices that are widely adopted in the industry," says Horne.
Moving up the ladder
Progressing from one optimization level to the next—and realizing the benefits of each improvement—should be done in an orderly, incremental way. Organizations can move from a Basic toward a Standardized level, saving an average of $232 per year per desktop, by making such common-sense improvements as:
| • | Defining a standard image for the desktop. |
| • | Automating software distribution. |
| • | Implementing a comprehensive security program with a centrally managed firewall. |
Advancing from a Standardized toward a Rationalized level, and saving an additional $281 each year per desktop, typically involves:
| • | Standardizing on a single operating system. |
| • | Implementing a single directory. |
| • | Locking down the desktop. |
| • | Automating password resets. |
The place to start here is with standardizing and locking down the desktop itself. "We've done that with a number of different customers," says Horne. "The immediate payoff is that you've got a well known and tightened technology surface. You're able to patch those operating systems and those desktops effectively. You're able to deploy software updates to those desktops efficiently. And you’re able to reduce the touch in terms of IT labor that's involved in getting those desktops to the users that need them."
Tools to get the job done
Microsoft offers its customers a set of readily available tools to support infrastructure optimization across platforms. Individually, each of the following can be used to leverage one or more of the practices that results in a higher level of optimization; used together, these tools create a powerful integrated solution for rapid and extremely productive improvement:
Windows Server 2003 Active Directory is key to controlling access, granting rights and privileges, distributing software, and configuring firewalls. Implementing Active Directory should be the first step of any agency that wants to optimize its infrastructure management.
Systems Management Server supports IT managers in standardizing the desktop and restricting non-sanctioned software. It also aids in deploying patches and is especially effective when partnered with Active Directory.
Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft SQL Server create a foundation for integrating data, applications, and services across the enterprise. The consistent interface they provide reduces complexity and simplifies support.
In addition, literally thousands of developers and business partners build applications that tightly integrate into the standard Microsoft platform, offering agencies the widest variety of effective, off-the-shelf solutions for almost any business need.
"It's always more cost-effective to utilize technologies that integrate with the components that form the core of your infrastructure," notes Horne. "Microsoft technologies are made to integrate with each other very easily and to bring ROI around much more rapidly than force-fitting disparate components from disparate vendors into an environment."
Assess, then act
Leading edge private-sector companies such as Intel, Siemens, and Arcadis have deployed Microsoft products to move up the Infrastructure Optimization Model, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Government agencies now have the same opportunity to deliver stronger, more reliable computing to their users at significantly less cost.
An experienced Microsoft team is ready to help your organization to:
| • | Assess your current level of optimization; |
| • | Identify the benefits you can achieve by moving up the Infrastructure Optimization hierarchy; and |
| • | Develop an action plan tailored to your priorities. |
Contact your Microsoft customer support representative to learn how you can get started.
For more information
Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization Model
Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization blog
