Reducing the cost of IT services. Providing access to the Internet

I want to publish a series of articles on reducing the cost of IT services for large and medium-sized enterprises. Although the government is trying to convince us of overcoming the crisis, I think this topic will be relevant for a long time.

Perhaps the published information will seem elementary and someone has long used the methods described here. Unfortunately, I had to collect it bit by bit, to read a lot, to communicate with friends, to think about steps and their consequences. I would be very happy to discuss, the limits of optimization are difficult to achieve and together we can get closer to them .

It is clear that we need to achieve the minimum cost of providing any service to our company. And of course, do not forget about optimizing the IT staff of employees. I believe that the state should be optimized at the very end of all the activities carried out before this, as for its assessment it is necessary to have the services provided with the minimum cost. Well, more about that later, but now we will start in order.
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How to start your analysis? C IT budget!

Usually, budgets are already broken down by items, although this breakdown is done to plan the revenues and expenses of the company as a whole, and not just its service. Therefore, it may be necessary to collect information with more necessary detail. Optimization should start with the largest articles, tracking their relationship with others.

I want to start with the section “Communication services” - this is landline and mobile communication, Internet, content of communication channels, etc.

Delicious leave for later in this article to discuss the cost of the Internet.

For enterprises of large cities, where the cost of the Internet is small, the above-mentioned item of expenditure is probably not large, but outside of them this topic is relevant.

The situation as it is :
We have a company with several remote divisions, each of which needs access to the Internet. Each division concludes its own contracts with various providers, on favorable terms for them.
How will it be :
It is necessary without disturbing the continuity of the service, to reduce costs and get additional bonuses from the activities carried out.

Reducing the cost of any service is possible due to its centralization and increased use. But how to do that?

I propose the following solution:
1. We take the Internet from one provider in a single point.
2. All of our enterprises and divisions are tied up in a VLAN (many providers have this service), and through it we give businesses access to the Internet.

Let me give you small calculations.
In my case these are the following numbers:
1. The average cost of access to the Internet:
- 2 Mbit / s - 15 thousand rubles. per month
- 6 Mbit / s - 25 thousand rubles. per month
- 10 Mbit / s - 35 thousand rubles. per month
- 20 Mbit / s - 45 thousand rubles. per month
2. The average cost of organizing a VLAN for a single enterprise is 10 thousand rubles. per month for 10 Mbps.

In the graph below, we see how the effectiveness of this solution increases, depending on the number of organizations participating in the project.

With 10 divisions, we obtain a reduction of costs by 16.7%, with 30 by 23.3% ...
Of course, this calculation is specific to my region, it will be different in your regions.

The following positive and negative aspects of this solution should be noted:
Pros :
- reducing the cost of providing access to the Internet to enterprises and divisions of the company.
- closing internal traffic (e-mail, workflow, corporate web resources, etc.) within a VLAN, we reduce the load on the Internet channel and its bandwidth is much lower. Estimated about 70% of the traffic is traffic within the company and not going out.
- ensuring a higher level of security.
- administration and monitoring of the entire IT infrastructure included in the Company.
- gives a huge advantage to the further maneuver on the development of the centralized information space of the Company (well, of course, everything depends on your IT strategy).
- a more stable solution for the continuity of service provision, since the areas of responsibility of each participant are narrowed. We have a single reliable provider of both the Internet and VLAN. For the continuity of service, employees of one enterprise from the Group of Companies are responsible.
- the presence of such centralized systems gives an additional advantage in negotiations with providers and so on. Firms to reduce prices for their services, since now they are taken in one place and in large volumes.
Cons :
- mutual settlements between enterprises and divisions within the Group of the Company for consumed services.
- the need for the redistribution of highly qualified personnel from various enterprises in the center, or the redistribution of responsibilities for administration.
- availability of redundancy as the main channel of access to the Internet, and priority VLAN channels.

To implement this project, it is necessary to make a lot of assessments, each company depending on its geographic location, the availability of providers is unique. It is necessary to correctly select and calculate the central point of Internet access, it’s good if this is the parent company, if not, then difficulties arise. Perhaps at this point it is advisable to have a main server platform of the company? There are of course a lot of questions, the answers to which each company should look for independently ...

Further, if there is interest in this topic, I want to share ways to reduce costs for other services provided by the IT department. These are fixed and mobile communications, the use of reference and legal systems, the purchase and repair of office equipment, the purchase and maintenance of software, the optimization of the IT staff of employees, their functions, etc.