Looking for the Perfect Host

Today, Aug 2005 by Worthy, Susan

Outsourcing Digital Asset Management

For some companies, hosted IT services are an end in themselves - a deployment alternative that avoids the infrastructure costs or related in-house IT staff necessary to manage an enterprise system. For others, hosted solutions are a means to an end - a way to gain critical capabilities quickly while they build out their infrastructure, or a proof of concept to help them refine their requirements and demonstrate ROI. Either way, hosted IT services offer significant advantages to companies with constrained IT resources (both in terms of staff and budget).

When choosing an enterprise digital asset management product, a system that is available on both a hosted and installed basis provides "best of both worlds" flexibility. But this benefit can only be gained if the system is fully browser based, with full user functionality and consistent user experience - whether it's hosted or installed. Furthermore, customers need to make sure they have the option to seamlessly transition from a hosted to an in-house solution to accommodate changing business models without interruption.

The functionality - without the difficulty

When it comes to hosted services, it is critical for the solution to pass every test of functionality, security, availability, and scalability. Hosted services are designed for quick deployment, persistent performance, and rapid ROI. The service provider should assume the burden of maintaining and upgrading the system, providing the expertise to manage and operate it, and taking responsibility for security and availability. These represent real labor investments that companies may prefer not to make themselves.

Yet even if a company ultimately wants to have the solution in-house, opting to start with a hosted service still has numerous advantages. For one, it can help IT teams build the business case for resource allocation by demonstrating the solution's effectiveness and ROI potential. This prevents the delays that can occur while struggling to achieve buy-in, which can result in significant losses and missed opportunities. Another key advantage is that it enables a "pay as you go" pricing model for pilot projects. This allows a company to begin with a small project to refine requirements and processes before launching the deployment on a larger scale.

Once implemented, the customer should have complete control of the system through a non-technical, Web-based interface. The system should easily accommodate the addition of new users, metadata definitions, other rich media assets, expanded storage, and other administrative changes. And internal system administrators should be able to make these changes independent of the hosted service provider.

Secure, flexible, scalable & available

Hosted services should be available as a standalone service, or able to be integrated with existing enterprise applications, either inside or outside network firewalls. Hosting facilities should feature high-level security including 24/7 monitoring, CCTV surveillance systems, and even biometric entry scanning to ensure maximum protection for valuable customer data. Considering that rich media files are often very large in size, confirm that the vendor has technology to support high bandwidth for maximum performance, including redundant lines and multiple points of entry. In addition, consider only a vendor that will provide uptime guarantees and offers an infrastructure with redundancy at every key level to ensure automatic recovery in the event of a component or software failure. Furthermore, the provider should offer a level of bi-coastal redundancy that provides additional protection in the event of a regional disaster or other catastrophic event. Although this level of redundancy, availability, and security would exceed those of a typical in-house implementation, they can be a big benefit of a hosted service.

Case in Point: A dose of value for pharma company

A global pharmaceutical company sought a more efficient and cost-effective way to launch new drugs in the marketplace. The solution needed to be faster than the current modes of postal and courier services in delivering thousands of launch-related documents to hundreds of corporate marketing units worldwide. The company decided to adopt a hosted service on a prooi-of-concept basis to assist with the upcoming launch of two product brands.

The provider developed a custom online portal and marketing content management solution for the drug launch, which served as an easily navigable repository of all documents, presentations and files. An intuitive browser interface was designed to enable authorized users to securely access and publish a wide range of materials anytime, from anywhere. The hosted solution was so successful, the company decided to continue on that basis rather than bringing it in-house. The company gets the functionality it needs without having to expend the IT resources necessary to support the system. Today the company has 11 brands live on the system and hundreds of users across 70 countries, and global marketing programs for new drugs are up and running on the system in less than two weeks.