As the “Prologue” in the last issue, I wrote that the Gamutsoft Managed Service (= service management service) is a continuous improvement of TVO (Total Value of IT Ownership) and reduction of TCO. We act as your business partner, not just as a service vendor. This month, I would like to introduce you the Managed service concept little bit more.

 

30 years ago, the Computer Center business that provides calculation of employee salaries, benefits, and taxes, or to manage customer database was still prospering. Mainframe computers were rather expensive and many SME’s could not afford to buy their own systems.  A while later, dumb terminals connected to the mainframe center system became popular. As a PC cost went down, the end user computing that lighten the load of mainframe center flourished. The three tier solution followed that, and as internet technology rapidly advanced, ASP (Application Service provider) and Cloud Computing are now very popular.

 

Including the micro chip utilization in home electronics, IT has now become absolutely imperative in our daily life and businesses. We cannot compete with others without IT, i.e. a very critical tool to streamline not only for R&D and production lines, but also to improve employee’s productivity and efficiency. If you could agree with this, under this financial crisis, isn’t it further more important and necessary to invest more to the IT for improving the overall company productivity in everywhere possible?

 

This February, Gamutsoft made a small customer survey. Nearly a half of the surveyed customers, 89% of them are fortune 500 class multi-national companies, say they have no significant impact to their IT projects or budget in this economic winter.
 

In contrast, the customers who said there are IT people layoff and shrink/suspension in projects may be facing, I guess, either a) financial situation of their company is really a disaster and may fall into bankruptcy unless they stop spending money, b) it may be silly but their HQ (in Europe or US) directed them to evenly cut everything - every BU (business unit) - including IT at a certain percentage, or c) due to insufficient effort in the past, there are still areas to cut the wastes and/or fat off, e.g. to be able to reduce money spending by longer use of existing IT equipment even after full depreciation if they are good enough.

 

Even picking up a PC as an example, its performance requirements should differ depending on BU and employee’s job category. In some departments where the PC performance directly impacts their productivity, a high performance PC is desirable so that the technology refresh should be in every 3 years. But if the BU end users rely on the server performance to do their job, their PC could be just a so-so one and even a 4 year old PC may work OK.