What is Infrastructure Optimization?

CIOs need an IT infrastructure that can help advance rather than impede business. Close alignment between business and IT objectives can help organizations deploy solutions that empower people to reach customers more effectively, harness critical business insight, and collaborate across boundaries. Ensynch helps business and IT decision-makers implement IT infrastructure solutions as a foundation to amplify the impact of their people, manage complexity, protect information, control access, and advance the business.

In order to measure and help customers optimize their IT infrastructure, Microsoft has developed three Infrastructure Optimization models, based on experience with enterprise customers as well as industry and analyst work. The purpose of these models is to map a customer's level of optimization and then build an effective plan to help them optimize their IT infrastructure—enabling them to realize the full value of their investment and achieve their key business solutions.

Core Infrastructure Optimization Model

Starting with a strong, but flexible and scalable core infrastructure is key to enabling business results. The core infrastructure optimization model defines five capabilities that are required to build a more agile IT infrastructure: 

• Identity & Access Management – Describes how customers should manage people and asset identities, solutions that should be implemented to manage and protect their identity data (synchronization, password management, and user provisioning, to mention few), and how to manage access to resources from corporate mobile users, customers and/or partners outside of a firewall.
• Desktop, Device and Server Management – Describes how customers should manage desktops, mobile devices, and servers as well as how to deploy patches, operating systems, and applications across the network. It also includes how customers can leverage virtualization and branch office technologies to improve their IT infrastructure.
• Security and Networking – Describes what customers should consider implementing in their IT infrastructure to help guarantee that information and communication are protected from unauthorized access while at the same time provides a mechanism to protect their IT infrastructure from denial attacks and viruses while preserving access to corporate resources.
• Data Protection and Recovery – Provides structured or disciplined backup, storage, and restore management. As information and data stores proliferate, organizations are under increasing pressure to protect that information and provide cost-effective and time-efficient recovery when required.
• IT and Security Process – Across the 4 Core IO capabilities, it is imperative to follow best practice guidance on how to cost-effectively design, develop, operate, and support solutions while achieving high reliability, availability, and security. While rock-solid technology is necessary to meet demands for reliable, available, and highly secure IT services, technology alone is not sufficient; excellence in process and people (skills, roles, and responsibilities) is also needed.

Business Productivity IO Model

The business productivity infrastructure optimization model defines three capabilities that are required to build a more agile IT infrastructure:

• Collaboration – Describes  how customers uses workspaces and portals to provide a productive collaboration environment where IT can define processes and standard solutions that can be customized to meet specific Business needs  and can be extended to provide social computing capabilities,  integration with Line of Business applications and federated relationship with other organizations
• Unified Communications – Describes how customers should manage and secure their messaging infrastructure to protect users from viruses, SPAM, malware coming from other users while collaborating and/or doing business. As structure and un-structure data converge with other type of communication like voice, presence and conferencing; this capability provides a framework on how IT can leverage their infrastructure to provide new (or improve) IT services that simplify how people work together
• Enterprise Content Management – Describes what customer should consider implementing for web authoring, Forms, documents and Web content management, record management that streamline the management of content and process
• Enterprise Search – As information (structure and un-structured data) is growing at fast speed, the ability to provide a robust enterprise search solution is critical to allow users to make the right decisions based on the corporate knowledge collected by their users. This capability describes how customers should integrate this information with standard search capabilities that integrate different formats, data sources and Line of Business applications from a centralized and standard infrastructure that leverage a current set of standard business productivity solutions.
• Business Intelligence – Reporting, analysis, and performance management capabilities that can improve business insight by allowing IT defining standard reports, analysis and data transformation that can be exposed and accessed by users in a rich user interface and based on roles to assure that information is available to people with the right set of permissions. (this is jointly owned with the application platform team)

Application Platform Optimization Model

The application platform optimization model defines the following capabilities:

• User Experience – This capability defines how User experience should be included as part of design and development of applications to improve usability of applications while provide a richer interface regardless of what platform the application is being developed for (web, rich client applications, smart devices and more).
• Development – Addresses the needs of ITDMs and developers working alone or in teams looking to rapidly deliver high quality, secure applications that connect business processes to meet business needs. Microsoft's Application Platform offers the best integrated software development platform to manage the application life cycle, increase team collaboration and productivity, and improve software quality. It provides an integrated server with a single data store and built-in collaboration and quality tools for the entire development team together with a common development framework for Web services, rich client applications, smart devices, and more.
• Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Process – Business Process Management technology integrates heterogeneous systems (Enterprise Application Integration or EAI) and between organizations & trading partners (B2B), and manages processes (Business Process Management or BPM) that span people, partners, and software services. BizTalk Server provides these capabilities, along with easy administration & management functionality "in the box", enabling business of all sizes to build and deploy business process management solutions that drive increased efficiency, growth and competitive advantage.
• Data Management –Describes how customer should consider when implementing an integrated data management and analysis software that enables organizations to reliably manage mission-critical information and confidently run today's increasingly complex business applications.
• Business Intelligence – Microsoft's vision for BI is to improve organizations by providing business insights to all employees leading to better, faster, more relevant decisions. Microsoft continues to invest heavily in the business intelligence. Key investment areas across Microsoft for BI include performance management, collaboration, visualization, analysis and reporting, data mining, data integration, data warehousing and development.

How Ensynch Helps

Ensynch brings extensive Infrastructure Optimization knowledge and experience to your organization. We succeed by properly assessing current-state IT maturity in each core capability. From understanding how to support your basic IT needs, to complete design, implementation, and support of complex IT environments, Ensynch will ensure the right people, the right process, and the right technology combine to increase your organization’s business agility and bottom line results.

Request more information about how Ensynch can help you increase operational efficiency and achieve true business agility.