(MSPAlliance) – Tuesday, May 2, 2006 – IT infrastructure has become increasingly decentralized with new technologies such as automated provision and remote monitoring, but a far-flung IT infrastructure costs more in the long run. The largest cost is complexity, as the greater number of applications, suppliers and data centers associated with decentralized IT means higher costs. Other drawbacks included more support and maintenance personnel to pay, more asset and license management snafus, less control over IT expenditures and less bargaining power with vendors.
Broadband, remote monitoring tools and other advancements have allowed applications to be separated from users by continents and still perform well, with less of a need to have hardware in the same location as the user. Other costs, however, still need to be addressed from a distributed IT infrastructure.
Chief among these more hidden costs is compliance, such as the fact that Sarbanes-Oxley audits are more expensive in a distributed IT environment than a centralized one. There is also the problem of standardization, with different business units controlling their own IT environments when companies should have everyone using the same software applications in the same way. The longer a company waits to centralize its IT infrastrucutre, the greater the costs, both hidden and obvious, will be.