Businesses and organisations whether SME’s or Corporates or Govt sector are growing increasingly dependent on IT for everything from e-commerce, to working with partners, suppliers, to streamlining and automating internal business processes. Organisations are critically dependent on the networks, systems, and applications that empower their business. Where ICT Infrastructure was deemed important, now it is seen as strategic and absolutely essential to the business. The requirement has over the period changed to necessity.

We have seen a rapid emergence of business applications that are completely reliant on the IT infrastructure. As these applications have become integral an part of transacting business between corporate enterprises (for eg, CRM, extranet and intranet, online conveyancing for UK law firms, Online booking facilities for Hotel industries and Online ticketing for Travel and tourism to name a few), their customers and their partners, the requirements for faster turnaround times, high performance and application availability have become critical business priorities.

These changes in the market have increased the complexity, difficulty and importance of fault management, availability, and performance management of the services and the underlying applications and infrastructure required to deliver those services. Since the business critical operations and applications used by customers have now moved to the Internet infrastructure, there is low tolerance for poor and delayed service.

Users' levels of expectation are now higher than ever. Although the term may be a cliché, we truly do live in 'IT age' where the competition is just a click away and instant gratification is expected. Customers and employees are demanding higher than ever service levels for availability and performance of critical business services.

The job of the CIO is now more crucial than ever. They must ensure smooth operation of the entire Internet infrastructure — networks, systems, applications, and always-on services. They must deliver always-on service, peak performance, and have an almost prophetic ability to detect and correct faults before services are impacted. And should they fail, the risks, exposure, and potential repercussions can be devastating.