In July 2009, NIIT Technologies teamed up with leading Analysts the Butler Group to co-host an event that also featured presentations from NIIT’s client, AXA.

With Managed Services now becoming an increasingly popular variant of the outsourcing model, organisations are adopting it to derive the cost-saving benefits of outsourcing, alongside a host of other advantages in the current challenging economic environment.

Remote Infrastructure Management Services (RIMS), one of the most commonly adopted Managed Services, maximises the cost-saving advantage at exactly the point where a great number of organisations feel the pain of fixed asset costs, skills challenges, and technology investment pressures.

Alan Rodger a former IT services practitioner with extensive experience in the Managed Services arena, talked about how the RIMS approach fitted a broader range of organisations than full outsourcing, and highlighted the cost advantages of remote delivery. “With operational expense elements of technology becoming out of control, RIMS shifts these costs out of the enterprise” Rodger said.

Satish Syal, head of Managed Services Business at NIIT Technologies presented the new paradigms in the Outsourced Managed Services segment. Syal talked about how businesses needed to build more efficiency into their IT operations and structure their technology organisations to support the business for growth during the downturn using RIMS, as it addressed 75-85 percent of the tasks remotely. “Financial drivers are arguably some of the most influential as businesses look to reduce the costs associated to managing and supporting their IT resources. In addition to cost savings, enhanced quality of service, reliability, resilience and efficiency are some of the well-cited benefits that NIIT’s customers are enjoying today” he stated.

Benjamin Scheuber, Senior Vice President Head of Platform Services at AXA Tech Services Switzerland AG talked about how NIIT are providing Managed Services through the AXA Tech SmartTasking programme.

All three presenters agreed that Managed Services were well aligned with today’s business environment, in which unknown challenges had to be met immediately, and the flexibility to meet changing levels of demand was critical to avoid unnecessary costs. Back-office processes are those where cost is typically concentrated, and as RIMS most commonly supports these functions it is a key approach to delivering the shift in alignment that is often urgently needed.

Lessons on RIMS

• How Managed Services can be aligned to the current business environment across business sectors

• Why RIMS was one of the key means of achieving the benefits of Managed Services across most types of organisations

• How RIMS in particular could accelerate adoption of an outsourced solution

• How RIMS, and Managed Services generally, could address the issues that organisations would face post-downturn

• How an organisation’s IT opportunities could increase with RIMS