In our experience, this threesome must always be in balance. How does this relate to managing remote sites? Here's an example: In calculating remote-branch support costs, you consider the obvious extended infrastructure expenses, but also conduct a risk-assessment analysis, including a review of failure points and how downtime will impact the business. You may find that after reaching a service-level agreement, driven by the business costs of downtime, the budget is inadequate to support the project. Time to send up a flare.
[Lesson learned] Things aren't always as cheap as they appear. A company decided to implement VPNs across the Internet for all its remote locations. The driver was WAN cost savings. Sounded great on paper, until the first ISP network outage. With no backup network, the company was dead in the water. Management fumed that IT had failed to assess the probability and cost of downtime, or to propose ways of mitigating the risk. Providing such information up front would have spared everyone a lot of trouble.
People are always the most expensive component of any IT endeavor. The decision of who to use and where is a difficult one--76 percent of our poll respondents said availability of local technical support is their biggest challenge. When determining personnel needs for remote sites, consider:
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