#9 – Balance Redundancy Vs. Resiliency Through Service Consolidation
Have you ever stopped at the store on your way home to pick up something you thought you needed, only to later discover that you already had it, or at least something close enough to get the job done? This wasteful double-spending happens far more frequently in technology purchases, where it is harder to discern the actual overlap between different products, and even harder, still, to figure out the minimal level of service you absolutely need. Many customers end up over-served and not even aware of it, making it a prime focal point for discovering waste.
This technique is executed by marking down how you use all of your technologies, and marking down all of the ways the technology could be used, and then looking for opportunities to consolidate technologies so as to maximize the services you can get from as few products as possible. As an example: there are many solutions that incorporate SDWAN and Firewall features into one single product. If you’ve got an SDWAN router on your network, do you truly need a separate Firewall or other routing equipment? In some cases, you certainly might, but there will be other cases where you find that you can consolidate down to just the single product to serve multiple functions.
The secret to this tactic is the clarity brought about by quantifying the ratio of Resiliency to Redundancy on a device-by-device, product-by-product level. Resiliency has to do with survivability and being able to continue when otherwise impacted, whereas Redundancy has to do with duplication, usually to some level of excess. In many cases, a certain level of redundancy is necessary to achieve a viable level of resiliency. Data backups, secondary circuits, and cold-spare routers are all examples of necessary redundancy. However, if those data backups are kept on-premise, if those secondary circuits are kept on passive/standby, or those cold-spare routers could be set up in a High Availability configuration, then you are carrying more redundancy than necessary for the level of resiliency you gain, and that is where waste or risk occurs.
Only by knowing what each component is capable of, and purposefully selecting what each component actually does, can you be certain that you’re cutting out as much waste, and recovering as much of your spend, as possible.
Of course, if you want the results of this technique without the effort, you don’t have to wait until you have time. Give us a call and we can help.
