Infrastructure Consolidation

The proliferation of point products continues to drive up the cost and complexity of IT security and systems management. IT administrators and security analysts struggle to deal with disparate management processes and incomplete reports on the health and security of their computing environment. This has a significant productivity impact and results in a frustrated and overworked IT team—as well as the increased risk of missing critical information about servers, desktops, and laptops.

Additionally, these point products often require significant hardware and software expenditure to support them.  For example, many require several dedicated servers on the back end (for reporting, database, middleware, etc.) as well as additional software licenses and maintenance contracts. Because many lack integration, it’s left up to the customer to try to manage how to optimize and consolidate these back-end resources.

IT Operations and Security Challenges

  • Achieving a consolidated perspective on the current status of endpoints—without looking at three, five, or more different management consoles
  • Managing the back-end server infrastructure for disparate security tools such as antivirus, endpoint firewalls, security configuration management, patch management, NAC, and DLP
  • Creating high-level reports to management, auditors, and other key stakeholders that include all aspects of IT operations 
  • Keeping IT staff trained on multiple management platforms, consoles, and administrative techniques
  • Maintaining end-user satisfaction and compliance with help desk SLAs in the face of complicated and time-consuming administrative tasks and troubleshooting

The BigFix Approach

For any organization, security and systems management consolidation can provide huge cost-saving rewards.  Thanks to its distributed intelligence architecture, the BigFix Unified Management Platform is scalable from 1,000 to 250,000 endpoints with minimal dedicated hardware requirements; one $5,000-$10,000 server manages up to 250,000 endpoints. BigFix administrators enjoy full control of the computing assets at their fingertips and are typically capable of handling the work of several administrators using traditional solutions. Regardless of the number of managed devices, with BigFix a single FTE can manage across the entire systems and security management lifecycle.

Additional cost-savings benefits of the BigFix Unified Management approach include:

  • Quiet helpdesk. Well-maintained computers suffer fewer outages, security issues, and other trouble-ticket-generating events than poorly maintained machines. Result: reduced demand for help desk services, either in-house or outsourced.
  • Reduced overtime and weekend work. The high reliability of BigFix remediation and system management processes reduces the need to schedule these actions after normal working hours or on holidays, significantly cutting overtime costs.
  • Functional consolidation. The ability to perform a growing list of operational and security management tasks through the BigFix console streamlines these processes and deepens the expertise of the staff who perform them. The BigFix solution also reduces the need to purchase licenses for various kinds of single-function software.
  • Reduced management infrastructure costs. In the BigFix single-agent architecture, managed devices themselves supply the processing power and system resources to support their management. Not only does BigFix not require a redundant, parallel infrastructure of servers and appliances to manage an infrastructure, but this form of self-provisioning also creates a cycle of available resources that scales the solution to manage large infrastructures. In short, the more devices under management, the more resources available to support their management.
  • Hardware inventory reduction. When customers install a BigFix solution, they can identify computers that shouldn’t be on the network and retire surplus and obsolete machines. Cutting the population of computers not only reduces excess inventories of a capital good, but also trims support and service costs.