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For six years, Lee Dordal has been
the director of systems and technology for AgriBank, a wholesale lender
based in St. Paul, Minn. He manages all aspects of technology in the
business, including keeping 17 regional banks and 300 remote offices
connected. In an interview with Associate Editor Raymond Peckham, Dordal
describes the changes in networking he has seen and provides a glimpse on
how he plans to continue managing change in the future.
How has
your company’s network changed?
The significant changes have been around mostly the infrastructure and the
business application design and deployment. We went from the monolithic,
where everybody has the same wide area network, to a collection of different
wide area networks that we pool together at our central site. That includes
VPNs, MPLS, frame relay and a few point-to-point circuits. So, we end up
with a very high performing, but disparate collection of networks. For the
time being, that appears to be our future.
We have started to find that Web-based applications that use these networks
are a significant part of the success of the application. So, while they tie
together, those two changes have converged on us and have made us focus on
the area of networks more than we maybe would have had to a few years ago,
in particular the area where our remote offices had client-server
applications and could, for the most part, function without a network
connection for a short period of time.
What caused
this transition?
It is cost, essentially. At one time, it was more cost effective for us to
have a single contract with a large vendor and have them deploy across a
whole network. That was for a period of about five years, and then that
trend disappeared.
Does the new
network model Produce new management challenges?
Sure. We suddenly became more of an integrator in that level of
infrastructure. That is where some of the tools have helped us. We contrast
that with the era when we had a single provider, when we could look to them
to provide us with reporting and a fair amount of the management. In this
model, we are really handling that role.
We have not had to ramp up the number of staff, but we have invested a fair
amount in training with key infrastructure equipment vendors and the key
network management folks–to make sure we understand the various options that
are available to us in terms of configuring and supporting a network.
What does
the future of your network look like?
It is very likely to change. In terms of the reliability of networks, years
ago we used to worry about that a lot. Today, once we have something in
place, it really is quite reliable. On the other hand, there are
complexities involved.
The initial setup of some of the VPN stuff is fairly complex. The VoIP has
proved to be somewhat of a challenge to implement, and a little bit of a
challenge to manage, so that is like a new set of skills. So, we quit
worrying as much about the network breaking and now worry more about how we
are using it.
The various wireless strategies are lurking out there. We have a number of
organizations that are very interested in taking advantage of wireless
wherever they possibly can. But we are also in the banking business–we have
to be very secure–so we end up spending some time in that arena. Coming
available is a nationwide wireless service and we are very interested in
that. That will once again change our approach and skill set.
What is one
of your management challenges?
It is a challenge for us to move from the marketing hype, or taking the
product as is, and actually implementing it and making sure that it works.
Sometimes, there is a small gap there, between what we think it is going to
do based on our early information and how it actually works.
We try very hard to pilot a product carefully first. We try and talk to
other folks who are using it at as deep a level as we can to understand
their experiences, and we try to develop a very tight relationship with the
vendor.
SPEAK OUT!
Share your insights and comments to
rpeckham@comnews.com.
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