Fast Track

Making a business stand out

Sanjay Sharma

Enterprises have to contend with many critical business challenges. Companies are growing in an organic manner as well as through mergers and acquisitions, and are including new locations and infrastructures into their fold. There is a mix of global and local IT initiatives that result in different technologies being deployed at various business areas in an organisation. Companies have to comply with new regulations which create demands on the IT infrastructure, but budget allocations remain flat.

“In such a scenario it’s a good idea to use the power of IT to introduce efficiency at various levels in the organisation. The use of IT can help reduce costs, improve service levels, manage risk, and ultimately increase profitability,” says Sanjay Sharma, Chief Operating Officer at Apara Enterprise Solutions.

Enterprises should use the concept of infrastructure lifecycle management to create a value-based information infrastructure. It should be followed by a number of business processes and activities.

The process of infrastructure audit and assessment will help identify and assess gaps and bottlenecks in the information flow. Information consolidation can help identify resources and availability requirements. These can be followed by information protection that will help identify users, their roles, and sensitivity of data. The information flow should then be accelerated with the help of edge optimisation and secure messaging technologies. Finally, the entire information infrastructure should be managed and monitored with the help of strict service level agreements. All these solutions and processes should be independent of any particular platform or product, with scalability as the key focus.

The use of this infrastructure will allow an organisation to optimally use IT as a business differentiator. It will help to attain and sustain market leadership, build a platform for value-enabling services, and optimise operations along the value chain.

— Soutiman Das Gupta