Trends
Employees bogging down
networks
Network Optimization
Recreational use of enterprise network
resources is soaring. Employees’ instant
messaging, downloading of music and
video, and visiting social networking
sites and news/sports sites are
impacting the performance of
business-critical applications–despite
the fact that most organizations have
policies in place to limit recreational
use.
A study conducted at the recent NetQoS
annual network performance-management
technology conference says such recreational
use is a problem on more than 60 percent of
networks. The survey canvassed the views of
more than 150 network engineers, managers
and IT directors within large enterprises,
strategic integrators and government
agencies who attended.
“While focus in this area has typically
been dedicated to employee productivity and
IT security, recreational IT use, and
particularly the increasing popularity of
bandwidth-heavy Web 2.0 services, is now an
important network-management consideration,â€
explains Steve Harriman, vice president of
marketing at NetQoS.
According to the survey, recreational use
is consuming an increasing proportion of
network bandwidth, with 73 percent of
respondents saying that more than 10 percent
of network capacity is consumed by
employees’ recreational use. More than 50
percent of respondents have seen an increase
in recreational use over the last year, with
55 percent of those networks experiencing an
increase of more than 25 percent.
Alongside growing recreational use, other
trends causing performance issues include
the increasing complexity and volume of
application data, IT convergence,
consolidation, and the rising number of
remote users accessing the corporate
network.
Two companies that are taking steps to
improve the delivery of applications across
their WANs are Tyco Flow Control and Global
Marine & Aviation. Tyco Flow Control has
installed Blue Coat ProxySG appliances to
optimize its WAN by securing and
accelerating critical business applications
between its international offices. Global
Marine is using Expand Network’s Compass
Platform to optimize its network for
application acceleration, file sharing and
disaster recovery.
Tyco Flow Control faced overall
productivity issues because the company’s
WAN connections were saturated, and latency
had become a significant performance issue.
In addition to solving response time issues,
the company wanted to lower its operational
costs by optimizing its bandwidth usage.
Blue Coat’s appliances helped reduce
response times to download files and e-mail
attachments by as much as 400 percent. In
addition, the company’s WAN links now only
consume half as much bandwidth.
Since applications are key drivers of
Global Marine’s business, the company needed
to roll out an optimized ERP system for its
day-to-day business requirements. One reason
Expand’s hardware was chosen was its ability
to cut down network latency, while
accelerating standard and custom JAVA and
HTTP applications.
“Today’s complex WAN traffic poses a
real challenge for organizations,†says Jim
Metzler, vice president of Ashton, Metzler &
Associates, an IT consulting group. “No
matter what an organization’s policy on
recreational use of IT resources states,
network professionals still need the
capability to manage WAN traffic to ensure
optimal application delivery.â€
iPhones to Test Networks
Wireless
Now that the iPhone hype has settled down,
network administrators can start to
strategize on how to manage the newest end
devices on their networks. According to Matt
Bancroft, CMO of Mformation, managing and
securing the iPhone presents a number of
challenges.
According to Bancroft, industry data shows that the more complex the mobile
device, the more costly it is to support. Today, the average support call for
smart phones lasts 45 minutes, at a cost of $63/call (Source: Strategy
Analytics).
With 4GB to 8GB worth of memory, security is a major concern for the iPhone, he
says, which can expose corporate data to both hacking and theft. While many
businesses have banned the use of iPods in the workplace, the iPhone is
billed–and priced–as a corporate business tool. Companies should be prepared to
incorporate the iPhone into their security and management policies.
On another front, Bruce Kushnick,
chairman of Teletruth, a carrier customer
advocacy organization, and executive
director of New Networks Institute, a market
research firm, cautions, “Before you buy an
Apple iPhone, you should read the ‘fine
print’ in AT&T’s wireless service contract.
Most reporters have been praising Apple’s
new phone. Yet, it is clear the reporters
missed the main issue. This is a wireless
phone and broadband service, and an AT&T
control issue–not a techno-toy issue. And
the fine print and tricks of the wireless
trade are downright offensive and need to be
addressed.â€
ShoreTel Tops Again?
Convergence
ShoreTel is tops again, at least in the
latest ratings of IP PBXs from Nemertes
Research. The report calls ShoreTel’s
operational start-up costs the lowest among
the four vendors included in the survey of
300 IT professionals–Cisco, Avaya, Nortel
and ShoreTel. Notably excluded in the report
were Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent and NEC. A
recent study conducted by Communications
News, however, shows a different
picture.
“For small rollouts, Cisco is more than
three times as expensive as Avaya, and more
than four times as expensive as Nortel and
ShoreTel to operate,†the Nemertes report
concludes.
Only 36 percent of those who evaluated
Cisco chose to buy a Cisco voice-over-IP
(VoIP) solution, the report adds, while 75
percent of those who looked at ShoreTelchose
to buy a ShoreTel VoIP solution.
Communications News recently
surveyed 122 subscribers, mostly IT and
executive managers, on their voice network
choices. The favorites for VoIP and other
telephony gear among the group are Cisco,
Avaya and Nortel.
When asked which vendors they considered
the leaders in enterprise voice network
products, Cisco was named by 76 percent,
Avaya by 50 percent and Nortel by 49 percent
(multiple selections allowed). ShoreTel came
in ninth, with 7 percent, behind AT&T,
Alcatel-Lucent, Siemens, 3Com and Mitel.
Questioned about which companies offer
the best price and support for voice network
products, respondents again put Cisco at the
top (46 percent), followed by Avaya (34
percent) and Nortel (34 percent). ShoreTel
again came in ninth with 9 percent.
Finally, when asked which companies they
were most likely to purchase telephony
products from in the next year, the top
three again were Cisco (32 percent), Avaya
(17 percent) and Nortel (14 percent).
ShoreTel was mentioned by just 2 percent of
those polled.
Customer data: still not
top priority
Security
With more than 150 million data records
exposed in the past two years, organizations
face serious challenges in securing
sensitive data. A recent survey by the
Ponemon Institute underscores these
challenges. The survey also highlights an
organizational disconnect between the
realization of the threat and the urgency in
addressing it.
The Ponemon Institute, in a survey of 649
respondents that was sponsored by
Application Security, found that
organizations are wrestling with how to
protect data from misuse by external and
internal forces while expanding access to
the same data to drive business initiatives.
Highlighting these challenges, the survey
reveals that:
- Forty percent say their organizations do
not monitor their databases for suspicious
activity, or do not know if such monitoring
occurs.
- “Trusted†insiders’ ability to
compromise critical data was cited as
the most serious concern.
- Customer/consumer and employee data rank
third and fourth, respectively, in regard to
organizations’ prioritization of what must
be protected.
“Unless organizations directly protect
their databases, everything else they’re
doing for data security is on shaky ground,â€
says Toby Weiss, president and CEO of
Application Security. “Responsible
organizations are increasingly seeking to
enhance security, mitigate risk and address
key compliance concerns as part of a
comprehensive approach to addressing data
governance within their existing IT
infrastructure.â€
Now they are ‘virtual’
workers
Remote Computing
The number of “virtual†workers and
telecommuters is growing substantially,
according to Nemertes’ latest poll on the
subject. The study, based on five months of
in-depth interviews with 120 IT executives,
finds 62 percent of participants are
planning to increase the number of their
branch office locations, and on average,
branch offices will grow 11 percent in 2007,
up 8.9 percent from 2006. Driving the growth
of the branch office is global expansion,
employee attraction and retention, merger
and acquisitions, cost savings, and
environmental concerns.
More than 80 percent of companies are
“virtual workplaces,†meaning at least some
of their employees work away from their
supervisors and/or workgroups. “On average,
organizations classify 27 percent of their
employees as virtual,†says Robin Gareiss,
executive vice president of Nemertes
Research. “The message from upper management
indicates the success of the virtual
workplace depends on three factors–IT
infrastructure, ability to manage and
ability to perform.â€
Survey participants indicated that, on
average, 17 percent of employees
telecommute. The study found that growing
revenue was the leading business driver,
along with improving employee productivity.
“The decision to allow or even to promote
telecommuting depends, in large part, on the
vertical industry or job function,†Gareiss
says.
There was a correlation between an
organization’s IT culture and its propensity
toward becoming a virtual workplace. Those
who defined their IT organizations as
“bleeding edge†tend to have the smallest
number of branch locations, but the largest
percentage of growth in their branch
offices, and the largest number of virtual
workers.
Short Takes
County Communications
Smith County, Texas, is
using a new countywide communications
network based on
Avaya Communication Manager
telephony software. Avaya S8720 and S8500
Media Servers and Avaya G250, G350 and G650
Media Gateways run the software and power
communications for each of 25 county office
buildings. “For the first time, we now can
forward calls and messages, pick up voice
mail remotely and even have office calls
ring on an employee’s cell phone when they
are away from their desk,†says
Harvey Tanner the county’s
CTO.
Security Improved
The nation’s 13th-largest school
district, Fairfax County Public
Schools, is stepping up to the
challenge of securing user identities and
simplifying access to technology resources
for its 164,000 students, their parents and
almost 22,000 employees. The school district
chose several
Novell identity and
security management solutions to
automatically provision and deprovision
users, manage user passwords and data
access, monitor security incidents, and
deliver audit metrics and reports. “In our
previous system, it took hundreds of
employees to manually manage and secure user
accounts, while still ensuring adequate
access and the flexibility to scale with
population changes,†says Ted Davis,
director of enterprise information services
at the school district.
Mesh in Virginia
Radford, Va., has
deployed hundreds of
Proxim Wireless ORiNOCO
AP4000 mesh access points as the
communications platform for Radnet, the
city’s new wireless network. “The final
choice of Proxim mesh equipment was based on
price, performance, functionality, feature
set and reliability,†says Patrick
McHugh, VP operations, for
integrator Designed Telecommunications. The
city selected Proxim because, among other
reasons, its Wi-Fi mesh products feature a
dual-radio configuration that increases
system capacity by allowing one radio to
focus on Wi-Fi access and the other radio to
perform mesh backhaul duties.
DWDM for Library
The Library of Congress
is using
Level 3
fiber-optic links to provide the underlying
infrastructure to the National Audio Visual
Conservation Center (NAVCC). The NAVCC
supports the preservation and digitization
of the national copyright collection of
films, television, radio and recorded sound.
Under the terms of the multiple-year
agreement, Level 3 has installed and will
maintain the connectivity that extends the
Library’s DWDM network. The Library of
Congress is the nation’s oldest federal
cultural institution and serves as the
research arm of Congress. It is also the
largest library in the world, with more than
134 million items on approximately 530 miles
of bookshelves.