The information infrastructure of every big company is highly developed and highly complicated. IT infrastructure, vendor OEM, and upgrade budgets vary by industry and size but can reach tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Telecommunication companies spend vast sums on their networks, rights-of-way, electronics, spectrum, maintenance, rents, local taxes, and so on. But how can you estimate the efficiency of these investments? Is it really necessary to purchase new equipment? How will new equipment implementation or an existing equipment upgrade affect a company’s business processes? What effect will IT investments have on the company's profits? How capital expenditures affect operations costs or network quality and what will will be the ultimate result on profits considering related factors such as customer churn? How do you answer these questions? A company’s IT infrastructure cannot be developed by trial and error. IT infrastructure is a complicated hardware and software system. Its proper operation depends on multiple factors: topology, single nodes capacity, software installed, servers and workstations configuration. Its algorithms cannot be described with electronic tables or analytical formulas. Our approach to answering these questions is to develop a comprehensive simulation model and use it to test the effect of Inputs (changes, configurations, and strategies) on Outputs (communications quality, install cost, operations cost, customer impact, profitability). Such a decision support system can identify downstream penalties and counter-productive interactions. It can develop an appropriate short term strategy while adhering to an optimum long-term evolution roadmap.

Simulation models in the telecommunication field are used to solve a wide variety of problems at different decision making levels: from IT department head up to the highest company management. Furthermore, the IT infrastructure model can be combined with other models of a company, e.g. market models and/or production models, that allow you to make an even higher-quality forecasts.
 

Simulation models are most widely used to solve the following tasks:

• Analysis of the need and efficiency of informational infrastructure investments

• Estimation of the IT upgrade effect on a company's business processes and financial performance

• Forecasting of the company’s IT infrastructure effect on a customer’s service level

• Designing structure and behavior of LANs and cellular communication networks

• Balance capital and operational costs with a lifetime analysis