iTaaS - The "Always On" Employee

Bangalore: Its been almost twenty-two years, more than half of my life, in the IT corridor. I still remember having a conversation with my friends back then: what is more important, how humans evolved or what will become of computers in next fifty years? Well you and I know the answer to it, and I leave it the readers’ judgment to decide.

Recently VintCerf was in India and his interview was definitely enlightening to watch.

From many learning, the most inspiring and spirit-boosting one was ‘Failure is an Experience!’ I’m sure not many of us take it in those lines. But then again, to experience, one must think, adapt and implement the thoughts to experience the outcome.

Over the last twenty odd years, I have seen or should I say experienced IT taking many shapes and sizes. It had become the menace of our very organization, a good menace. Back then, we had a workplace called “office” that had four walls, a desk, a telephone and a computer to which were glued to accomplish our day-to-day tasks. Today, the same workplace is at our discretion, our work-place could be the shopping mall, the beach-side, a coffee-shop, in transit at airports, our beds - just before we sleep or when we wakeup to name just a few. With the ever improving IT corridor and with the recent BYOD trend scaling high, the office is no longer a 4x4 square, but the oval shaped globe.

Infinite’s iTaaS (Infinite Tech-Support as aService) was launched in September 2012. Since then it has been well received by its existing clients and new prospects in the global markets. A lot of thought process that was involved to make this happen made iTaaS taste its first success: when we had acquired a client just four months after its launch. So what went through the thought process: a series of sit-down and stand-up meetings that resulted in a simple thought, ‘Communication’! We wanted to bring in a service that could be easily adaptable and implemented. A service that is available no matter where or what device you are using.

The core team of iTaaS had a clear vision: when something goes wrong, the goal of iTaaS is to restore service to normal as quickly as possible with its offerings, while minimizing impact to the business and maintaining quality. The strategy was simple:

•    Help enable growth by improved IT operational efficiencies
•    Help improve margins by decreasing operating expenses for maintenance and supports costs
•    Help reduce fixed and variable costs by business enabled IT innovation

While talking about communication, the challenge we wanted to address was to empower ‘communication’ by making life easier life through iTaaS for business. So what makes iTaaS a unique proposition? iTaaS is a platform, with collaboration of various technologies on a single-sign-on and cloud enabled model. iTaaS cloud service creates a single system of record for all IT processes. It can manage the four primary pillars of IT together: strategy, design, transition and operations. This gives immediate access to information to drive decisions and track the performance of the team. And since it is cloud based service, CIOs can make their decision easier from anywhere and at anytime.

As David Willis of Gartner puts it, “The rise of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs are the single most radical shift in the economics of client computing for business since PCs invaded the workplace." With BYOD we not only see significant savings for an organization on their capital investments, but also improve employee satisfaction. Infinite’s iTaaS solution helps every employee be connected with the IT department of the organization. It’s the “always on” services desk/helpdesk which he can use various engagement modes like SMS, email, Chat, Web-login,  web-phone or normal phone techniques to reach someone that is always available to listen and take appropriate actions based on the incidents. The employee can then track each of these incidents on real time basis and ensure communications is not compromised at any level. Infinites iTaaS is more of a business transformation tool taking IT 2.0 to 3.0 keeping in mind the following:

Social – Leveraging the social community to reduce costs, improve responsiveness, and tie together people, process and technology.

People – With IT 3.0, the artificial usability barriers between people, process and technology are erased.

The Cloud – Users demand their IT resources travel with them wherever, and however they need.
Business and IT are one –Transparency and continuous engagement help IT and the business innovate in ways never thought possible.

Today, there are no projects, but business enabled programs driven to achive goals. In IT 3.0, the relationship between the business and IT is beyond alignment. The two are now inseparable. As a result, IT must be more transparent. And IT must make business engagement a top priority. Infinite iTaaS based solutions just helps to bridge the gap between the Business and IT.

Author: Nilesh Gupta, VP - Infrastructure Management, Infinite Computer Solutions