In its simplest form, remote database administration is a person or a team administering a database  from one location while the database is physically located somewhere else in the world. For over 10 years now, application development work has been outsourced. As this gains greater acceptance, it is no wonder that one of the newest trends in the industry is to extend that outsourcing to your database administration needs.

Is remote database adminstration right for you? It is if you are struggling with one or more of these issues:

·         Struggling with hiring and retaining DBAs

·         Fast growth/ rapidly growing IT infrastructure

·         Recurring performance issues

·         Cyclical business

·         Many remote locations

·         Database upgrades and patch management

·         Stability and reliability issues

·         Multiple database platforms

·         Predictable monthly costs

·         No in-house DBA

·         Mission critical requirements

Using a remote DBA definitely offers many benefits like reduced costs, 24×7 uptime and a very high level of expertise. The decision however also depends upon which vendor you choose, as each of them follow their own methodology and engagement process. The most crucial factors in excelling as a vendor is to follow a proactive philosophy with respect to monitoring the systems continously.

To know more about Remote DBA practices at NetEnrich, attend our webinar on October 2^nd, 2008 at 10am PST.  Register today using the below link: http://www.netenrich.com/web/666290461/

Virtualization is probably one of the hottest trends in technology today with a focus either on platform or resource virtualization. Platform virtualization refers to a single server which hosts one or more virtual guest machines. Often referred to as Server virtualization.  Virtualization efforts can be expanded to include system specific resources such as storage and network resources. This can be done within a host server or across multiple servers known as resource virtualization.

There seem to some very evident benefits to this process considering that you’ve evaluated your company needs carefully. Starting with operating system portability and server consolidations, virtualization also helps in helping with new disaster recovery scenarios. Other benefits include increased server utilization, improved service levels from IT organizations, extending life of legacy systems, increased security, decreased hardware costs and reduced facility costs etc.

In expert opinion, seems like large database servers or application virtualization types servers like Citrix that use their own techniques for virtualization might not really be good candidates for virtualization.

However it is imperative to craft an implementation strategy before undertaking a virtualization project. For example what is the reason, what is the business value, how much will the project cost, what are the risks and contingency plans, what is going to be the scope of this implementation, the ROI figures, maintenance considerations and optimization strategies.

We will uncover some of the finer details of these in our upcoming white paper on virtualization best practices. Stay tuned….

Definitely, it has been felt that there has been little innovation projected by SaaS hosting and enablement companies to date. Many hosting companies have yet to explicitly acknowledge SaaS as something that requires more than ping, power and pipe (3P). Others that have are just starting to formulate plans around SaaS. Apparently folks like Rackspace, NaviSite, Peer1, 7Global, Attenda, and ServePath that have self-identified as “SaaS hosts” in recent history focus on professional services around SaaS as well as highlighting why their 3P is better than others and how it will help reliability for SaaS offerings. Even companies with deeper SaaS focus like OpSource haven’t gone the extra mile to truly have huge industry impact (although they have done more than most). Little has been done to address core enablement needs required by SaaS vendors, and SaaS enablement as an initiative has basically been dealt with as a new tab on hosting companies’ corporate websites that do little more than decorate old services with SaaS marketing.

Although hosting companies are usually written off as lacking innovation, these companies have made substantial investments in setting up their highly tuned infrastructure. They also have experience as a provider of outsourced needs. The issue however is for them to be able to grow beyond the 3ps to uniquely differentiate themselves.

Interesting perspectives from Mural Ventures weblog which says that the SaaS management and enablement space is becoming crowded with new entrants advancing at the speed of light. Gone are the days when companies like Opsource and Navisite had a stronghold over this industry with their USPs.

According to Mural Ventures-”Current estimates from various sources are that there are 5,000 SaaS providers or SaaS-related vendors currently, and more being created/funded by the venture community every year, so the size of the SaaS Hosting market is increasing”

Considering that a lot of Managed Service Providers are now getting into SaaS hosting, the market is definitely getting competitive. But then aren’t there are some key differentiators which makes a provider better? Also isn’t there a mechanism for the ISVs to measure up one provider vs another and make the right choice.

Let’s explore this in a little more detail….

Undeniably building and maintaining your own data center is more than a full time job. It places severe strain on your already limited resources and drives the focus away from core strategic IT initiatives.

According to a recent CIO survey, the no 1 priority of CIOs today is to align IT with business goals. If that is the case and you are spending most of your time managing facilities and real estate due to the increasing demands of your data center, clearly there is a dis alignment with your core IT strategy. With everything on the CIO agenda why manage data center issues such as space, cooling elements and power when outsourcers can do it better?

The Association for Data Center Managers (AFCOM), an organization that provides education and resources for professionals, predicts big changes looming for facility managers, based on the results of a recent member survey. If their forecasts come to pass, managers will face some serious challenges in the years ahead: Power failures, service disruptions and a shrinking talent pool of technical staff are some of the key predictions AFCOM made based on recent member survey responses.

Many businesses are growing so quickly that by the time they’ve finished one data center, they’re already out of capacity. Outsourcing can provide a powerful alternative to quickly grow without the capital and resource commitments inherent in building your data center. This can help to contain the cost pressures which are faced in tough times.

And then ofcourse there are the ‘green data center’ concerns considering that environmental issues have starting taking a major place in company strategy. Data centers today have to continually battle with challenges of cooling and power. Isn’t it a better idea to let the outsourcer worry about this since they are dealing with these concerns constantly?

What are some of the other benefits of outsourcing?

Well, a highly available team, scalability to address changing requirements, better solutions for space, power and cooling, services and solutions to meet the business requirements sooner, increased service levels, fully trained technicians onsite, a code of conduct for all contractors and all of them assigned to account teams.

And then there is co-location. Which means that you house your server and equipments along with that of other companies. This offers you the ability to upscale or downscale depending on the growth of your business without making repeated capital investments. The cost savings with co-location range in the order of 20-70% along with other fringe benefits.

Clearly the benefits outweigh any reason to have an in house team. All outsourcers follow some best practices and processes that can achieve economies of scale and respond to needs of their customers more quickly.

In our next posting, let’s analyse the ROI differentials between owning vs outsourcing a data center.

Happy reading!

The CIO magazine blogged about - “How to make your data centers more efficient”.  Some very interesting pointers on how the IT department can cut operation costs while running their data centers. 

Moot question however is what would be the ROI and cost differential in running your own data center vs. outsourcing it to a delivery partner?

It might be worthwhile to assess whether one really needs to own a data center before commiting to an upgrade.

More on this soon….

Welcome to the NetEnrich blog!  To introduce ourselves in a nutshell,

We help you to keep your core business critical applications and IT infrastructure running 24/7. This frees up all your valuable IT staff to focus on more strategic projects, while we take care of your mundane routine tasks. By doing this we reduce your IT costs by almost 30-50% making you operationally efficient by 10x. This seems like a substantial saving considering that about 50-80% of IT budget is spent on operations and maintenance.

We offer RIM (Remote Infrastructure Management) enterprise services in a shared services model for server, network, desktop, application management, remote DBA services, virtualization, apptone services, IT sustenance and optimization, data center management. We have recently entered the SaaS domain by providing enabling and hosting capabilities for SaaS related service offerings by our customers.

Recently we migrated 13 critical business applications to SaaS model with production support for one of our largest customers. As I already mentioned NetEnrich deploys its VPMG technology and skilled experts to help its customers remotely manage the performance and availability of business-critical applications on a 24/7 basis.  There are 2M subscribers that generate about 10M emails per day interacting with these high traffic on-demand applications for our client today. We intend to make more rapid strides in the SaaS domain over the next few years as SaaS service offerings become more ubiquitous.

We currently have two active NOCs (network operating centers) in San Jose, California and Hyderabad, India. And we are in the process of adding another one in Japan. Just recently, we received some new investment from a Japanese RIM company which provides us a great opportunity to make headway into the Japanese and European markets.

So we and our success is driven by flexible and predictable engagement models, a perfectly state-of-the-art technology, best-in-class resources to provide the highest quality of service and best practices for delivery, reporting and auditing that we have arrived at after years of experience.

Stay tuned for more success stories from NetEnrich as we continue to make bigger strides. And of course if you want to know more about our services or if you’d like to set up a meeting with us, visit us at www.netenrich.com  or email us at info@netenrich.com.

Happy blogging!

Welcome to the Netenrich blog