Making the net work

The network, it has been said, is the business, and in today's globalised, e-enabled economy, this is becoming more true with every passing day, deal, merger or acquisition. Technology moves forward apace and the speed of business reaches increasingly insane levels. The network is expected to be able to facilitate this, combining businesses, enabling new technology and meeting increasingly savvy users' demands.

Needless to say, budgets aren't keeping up; they never do. The superhuman speed of business doesn't translate to superhuman people, ultimately the beings responsible for managing the network mammoth.

What's the solution? Now there's the million-dollar question. Certainly there's no easy answer, quick fix or one-size-fits-all approach, irrespective of what the vendors, consultants or outsourcers are occasionally prone to say. What there is, however, is an approach to networking that makes coping with the above issues manageable.

"People see the network as a commodity," notes Dimension Data's global CTO and global executive for network integration Ettienne Reinecke. "Just because it's a commodity, doesn't mean it's easy. That's a big mistake people make.

"The second mistake people make is around who is driving corporate IT usage; it's not the IT department. Today, IT is absolutely consumer-driven. People come in and do things whether IT likes it or not. By the time IT finds out, it is too late to stop it. The question is how you turn around and leverage consumer knowledge in a business environment. In a way, it makes it easier - users are well trained. Why delay rolling out unified communications, for instance, when your users are already trained and ready for it?"

While the above may seem marginally philosophical, like everything else in business, IT is about people. The network is there to enable people to work better and faster. Today, it has to let them work better, faster, wherever they are, whenever it suits them and via any device they happen to be using. The philosophy behind network architecture - to enable users or to control users - can have a fundamental impact on just what the network does for the business.

This philosophy will be driven down through the organisation by means of network policy.

Says Duxbury Networking CTO Andy Robb: "Policy drives the whole thing, namely how the network can be used in line with business requirements. Policy should be written in conjunction with HR and management, and must detail who is using the network, how they should be using it in terms of their business function and so on. It should be taken out of IT administrators' hands and be made more of an HR function."

As Robb points out, networking today isn't about speeds and feeds; it's really about controlling traffic. In order to control said traffic, you need to know what it is.

Says Reinecke: "Today, we are at a critical point where, if you do not understand the interdependence of all IT elements and design your infrastructure to support that, you will not be able to support the business with IT.

"You need to realise that all applications are not equal and that, in order to support them, you have to treat them differently. This is where logical architecture, or virtualisation, comes in. You need to abstract it somehow to design your network architecture; and the easiest way we've found to do that is to categorise by traffic."

Simply put, Reinecke suggests categorising traffic into real-time, near real-time and non real-time applications. E-mail is an example of non real-time traffic. Near real-time traffic is that from applications, which can handle some delay, but not too much or they will time out. Real-time traffic is generated by things like voice, collaboration and unified communications tools.

"[Once you've categorised your traffic] you can now design your underlying architectures and decide which features and functionalities to turn on; you can now manage your network. This [approach] also lets you add new applications in a far more controlled fashion," he says.

Just because [the network is] a commodity, doesn't mean it's easy.

Ettienne Reinecke, global CTO, Dimension Data

The interdependence that Reinecke mentions is critical in terms of ongoing network management and maintenance. Small changes can have a big impact if this interdependence isn't acknowledged and, more importantly, understood.

"The trend today is towards server consolidation," Reinecke comments. "This changes traffic flows to and from servers, clients and the data centre. Have people prepared their network sizing, prioritisation and so on to deal with that?"

Your IT staff may all be happily dealing with their different areas of expertise, but do the network's administrators realise the effect that moving a server will have on how well (or badly) your Oracle application performs, for example? And, conversely, do the Oracle specialists realise how their database affects the network and all its users?

People talk about the convergence of voice and data; perhaps they should be talking about the convergence of IT into IT? While this article ostensibly talks about networking, it is also talking about security and identity management systems. And let's not forget physical access control and asset management systems, voice communications or video conferencing facilities.

IT has embedded itself so deeply in IT that the traditional siloed approach to doing business within the IT department and the company as a whole is now your worst enemy. The only way to ride the tiger is to know exactly what it's made of and how everything fits together and impacts one another.

[The network] should be taken out of IT administrators' hands and be made more of an HR function.

Andy Robb, CTO, Duxbury Networking

While the network may not be your core business, it certainly enables your core business. Duxbury's Robb mentions that people talk about convergence of applications, but feels they should also be looking at the convergence of companies. Open standards and interfaces allow policy, for example, to be seamlessly integrated from one network to another, he notes.

In the case of a merger or acquisition where, as Dimension Data's Reinecke points out, your network is your beachhead into the newly acquired or merged company, being able to put policy in place and integrate the two companies on at least a communications and networking level is a huge first step to getting the promised benefits that shareholders are waiting for.

In the end it's back to the same story, which is mentioned at least once in every ITWeb feature: know what you have, where it is and what you are doing with it. In this case, the what refers to traffic, although usually it refers to data. The why is obvious - if you don't know what it is, you cannot manage it. The how has been detailed above, and when is any time you're looking to get more out of your network with less money, and a possible upgrade on the horizon.