Network Management Structures: Centralized or Local?

As Unified Communication (UC), mobility, WebRt, and other emerging solutions migrate into the mainstream, executives are revisiting their network and communication organizational structures. Beyond basic choices around centralization or localization, these management structures vary widely, with business requirements, in-house talent and skills, company culture and subjective instincts all playing a role.

Geographic requirements are one basic consideration. Network services, IP and UC require a presence at every location and sometimes at partner locations. Enterprise application, server, data center and other infrastructure teams, meanwhile, often only have physical services at a relatively small number of locations. As a result, network and UC organizational models may not be a good fit for a centralized application team and data center structure.

Local business conditions also play a role. Enterprise mobility solutions must address special, localized needs in many regions – particularly the European Union – to adhere to privacy laws and country-specific regulations. For example, mobile devices within a country domain are managed on a per-user basis rather than as a single application instance in a single data center, and businesses often opt to bill for network and mobile services in local currency to provide tax offsets (e.g. Value Added Tax). These can require in-country specialized knowledge of inventory, carrier and provider billing practices, as well as internal legal and local relationships. This specialization can also be useful when leveraging regional carriers for SIP, Internet and mobility for financial benefit.

About the author

Mark joined in September of 2012, bringing with him, extensive knowledge and experience in Network, Infrastructure, Telecommunications, and Call Center Solutions. Mark has over 20 years of experience managing, architecting, operating, and deploying telecommunications applications, call center solutions, and networking technology for global enterprises such as Citigroup, Mattel, and American Airlines.