Digital transformation and modernization have triggered changes in the way applications and data are managed, triggering new trends such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and mobility. These developments demand multiple providers, integrators and vendors to build and support these heterogeneous infrastructures. This makes for a very crowded playing field. With so many players there are unexpected outcomes including operations failures, costly maintenance and SLA breaches.
At the same time, enterprises have become vendor and service provider agnostic. They want to choose hybrid solutions for the internet, cloud and security, allowing them to react quickly to rapidly changing markets. With complexity and cost high on the CIO’s agenda, we have seen them start to reach out to a new management model, dubbed multisourcing service integration (MSI) and also known as service integration and management (SIAM).
Re-modelling infrastructure management
In this evolving multisourced environment, it is more important than ever for organizations to keep control and visibility of performance. This is time consuming, costly and difficult, especially if organizations lack the necessary in-house skills.
MSI provides a sourcing model for managing and providing a single point of responsibility for services and technologies from multiple vendors. MSI’s goal is to co-ordinate these services and suppliers in a cost-effective way to provide seamless end-to-end service integration and management to support business functions.
MSI addresses many pain points for organizations, including lack of transparency, poor architectural integration, labor intensive reporting, multiple collaboration lines and incomplete understanding of end-to-end performance. All these issues are paramount to controlling operations and ensuring services are delivered on time.
Another appeal of MSI is its flexibility. Organizations can choose to work with several MSIs, chosen for their expertise in certain fields, having one covering IT for example, and the other network and security topics.
With Orange Business’ global MSI solution, organizations can choose different layers of MSI that best suits their business set-up, starting with consulting to form an MSI accompaniment strategy.
Levels of MSI can run from service desk support, incorporating end user request, demand, change and problem management, to coordinating vendor services, right up to managing infrastructures including contracts management. These modifications will provide huge time savings for organizations, allowing them to focus more on their core business.
Orange’s MSI solution has been designed to provide a modular pick and mix approach to organizations’ unique requirements. Orange can be a provider and MSI partner, relying on our ServiceNow tool or just managing the customer’s IT Service Management (ITSM) tools and processes if mature enough. Orange’s MSI team can act as a broker for services, for example, enabling customers’ end users to have a choice in solutions and devices from different providers.
Orange’s MSI solution has been designed specifically to help shoulder some of the contingency and complexity that goes with enterprise infrastructures, thereby reducing enterprises’ costs and optimizing systems and applications.
Case study: drinking the benefits of MSI
Let’s look at MSI in action. Recently, a multinational beverage company was struggling to juggle many processes and vendors. The organization required scalability to satisfy future business requirements. At the same time, it needed to improve its service management model. It called on Orange to realign its service management to reflect customer’s current and future needs.
Following an assessment, the Orange Business’ team created a network MSI including predictive operations to replace the customer’s existing operational model. It consolidated 1 and 2 level support and deployed a one tool for each function option.
Through the Orange MSI solution, the customer benefited from improved visibility on all services for the customer, a simplified SLA framework and a reduced number of service levels, whilst carefully aligning service management to customer needs.
Understanding change
MSI has become a trend because enterprises are working with tighter margins and no longer want to be locked into a vendor. But it is a complex trend that requires organizational change management.
As with any business change, understanding the impact it will have on people is crucial. Different tools may need to be deployed to optimize processes, whilst process themselves will change. IT teams may need to alter the way issues are handled, for example.
As business gets more complex, organizations are finding it difficult to manage their suppliers and get and end-to-end view of provisioning. An MSI model encourages quality, improved performance and innovation, whilst providing improved governance, control and agility. All essential ingredients to business success.
It is important to remember that MSI is dealing with enterprises that are already up and running. Tools, organization and processes need to be carefully assessed before anything can be altered. This isn’t an overnight fix, which is why it is essential to prepare a good MSI strategy through consultancy. This allows for a smooth and gradual transformation to MSI, that will improve flexibility, governance and costs, without disrupting the business effort.
Learn about more about Multisourcing Service Integration with Orange Business.
Bachar Abou Saleh is the Digital Enablement Manager at Orange Business International Consulting Practice, where he is responsible for developing global offers and supporting local teams. Prior to this position, Bachar worked at Orange Consulting for five years as an IT Consultant. Before Orange Bachar was managing XMMX Design, a startup offering websites development and webhosting solutions.