Networking: Survival of the smartest

Networking isn`t one of the most glamorous IT disciplines. It is dominated by people who speak a different language from the rest of us. But these people deliver a service integral to the successful running of any company, providing the channels for business`s entire communication process.

When it comes to ICT decisions, however, business people often forget to include networking in the equation. This can result in "hidden costs" and, in turn, even more pressure being placed on the network element of an ICT department, as it will inevitably be required to do more with less expenditure.

These so-called hidden costs may be one reason behind increases in the networking portion of ICT budgets in recent years - even as these budgets are squeezed.

Another obvious reason for this phenomenon is the rising requirement for, and relative shortage of, bandwidth. This is something South African companies understand better than most in Europe and the US since they are forced to deal with a single operator largely at liberty to provide services at whatever price it deems fair or, as is most often the case, worth its while.

Under the circumstances, South African companies will have to become more innovative about keeping costs down, while at the same time being able to provide better quality of service to employees. Local firms will also have to hope that the newly announced deregulation of the telecoms industry will provide some relief.

At its annual symposium in Cape Town last month, Gartner Research`s president and research director Neil Rickard echoed many of these sentiments, saying networking costs are more difficult to control than ever and, unfortunately, will continue to rise as requirements on bandwidth climb in the coming years.

Rickard said research has shown that cost pressures are the number one concern for companies of all sizes. Furthermore, systems now need added security, redundancy and faster development cycles - but these often end up breaking the budget. "The corporate backbone, which supports many critical tasks, must have special consideration in light of this belt-tightening," he said.

Enterprises are also today forced to make harsh decisions about the level of reliability each location needs to have, rather than the level the enterprise would like it to have.

Gartner has seen a solid trend emerging in the market whereby, after evaluations of the volume and quality of bandwidth that corporate branch offices in remote locations require, more cost-effective connectivity strategies are being utilised.

This will probably mean connectivity methodologies like virtual private network (VPN) technology, implemented across the Internet (generally used for connecting mobile workers to the central network), will be used as the primary method of connecting branch offices to the central network. Some form of fail-over technology like ISDN or analogue dial-up will be used to make up for the slight unreliability of these connections.

This scenario will not end up saving an organisation a great deal of money. Branch offices that critically need access to the corporate network will have to use a more reliable connection, like a leased line, since they would suffer severely from any downtime encountered.

As the adage goes, what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabout. Overall, however, such a strategy will see corporates saving enough on networking to bolster their main network connectivity with increased reliability and performance.

All data infrastructure upgrades should be done with the expectation that they will support IP telephony, and there should be a start to planning for the migration to IP telephony.

Neil Rickard, president and research director, Gartner Research

Heinz Stephan, products and technology director at Comztek distribution, agrees with Rickard`s sentiments on rising demands on bandwidth and the rising spend prevalent in the market. He says bandwidth management is definitely becoming more of an issue for CIOs and IT managers.

"This is not just a South African trend, and it`s not just in the WAN environment either. Companies need the ability to sense whether their network is operating as it should, both on a local area and wide area basis."

He says lately this has been a focus area on the WAN side of the market, since SA doesn`t have huge pipes and corporates are trying to make the most of what they have. "We`re seeing more and more vendors building traffic inspection and quality control features into their hardware."

There have also been advances in provisioning, says Stephan. "As we all know, the network is worthless unless something runs on top of it. Provisioning has become so clever in the past year that the traditional way of provisioning WAN infrastructure has fallen away completely. In today`s terms, anything connected to the network could be talking to something else on the network.

"In line with this trend, Comztek sees more and more adoption of IP telephony going forward. We`ve moved out of the adoption phase and the market is reaching a level of maturity that means most executives are not considering the viability of IP telephony, but rather when, where and how they will use it and get applications to interact with it," adds Stephan.

"VOIP is a perfect example of all the nodes on a network needing the ability to communicate with each other."

And the presence of IP telephony only bolsters the need for monitoring and quality of service provision. "The moment you have something like voice on your network, because it`s a real-time technology, you need the ability to ensure enough capacity is available for it and that a certain level of service is guaranteed.

"Until now, IP telephony has shown slow uptake because companies haven`t traditionally trusted data network vendors with their voice traffic, coupled with the fact that often the benefit of linking voice data to applications in the data centre hasn`t been affordable. This is changing," he says.

Jeff Jack, technology marketing manager of network solutions at Dimension Data, says of the security solutions that are making a huge difference, 802.1x ranks tops. "This technology forces users to authenticate to network instead of a set of resources. This authentication is based on users` credentials; if they provide the right credentials to the network, they get a certain level of service back.

"This type of security is key because one of the biggest threats to the organisation today is computing devices that could be infected with rogue code. 802.1x can be configured to look not only at the user`s credentials, but things like the software patch version the operating system is running and whether virus definitions are up to date," Jack says.

Echoing Stephan`s sentiments, Jack observes that networks are becoming more aware - from the perspective that they`re starting to identify types of traffic and patterns within that traffic. "This analysis allows networks to identify, treat and react to vulnerabilities. The network and the administrators are becoming able to make decisions based on the types of traffic they identify.

"This awareness stretches into areas like not only differentiating ERP traffic from Web-browsing traffic, but also being able to differentiate real-time traffic like voice from non-real-time traffic. In the WAN environment, this is most important, since bandwidth is most scarce and expensive here," says Jack.

"We`re also now beginning to look at an evolutionary approach to IP telephony, where customers can transition to IP telephony at their own pace. This means customers can choose which departments to migrate first, depending on needs and the propensity to adopt this technology."

IP telephony and the networking market in general will benefit from a new technology known as SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), Jack says.

"In a nutshell, SIP is an industry standard for voice signalling, similar to what http is for the Web. This will allow for presence-type information, like the ability to be away, busy, out to lunch, etc - much like the functionality on instant messaging today. This will allow the user and the network to route calls based on the recipient`s presence. It means at any one time only one number will be dialled and the network will route the call most appropriately," Jack concludes.

Another trend evident from the Gartner symposium is towards business devices becoming more multi-modal and supporting multiple networks.

"We`ve all seen how notebook computers come standard with multiple manners of connecting to other devices," Rickard notes. "It`s quite common for notebook computers to come with a wired LAN port, a wireless network card and a modem today. This functionality and the need for access from multiple locations, with different connection qualities and performance levels will see an evolution in terms of applications` ability to be tailored so that mobile workers can access the network and carry on working, regardless of the constraints," he says.

"Moving forward, significant application work is required, but the network and devices will also play a key role in facilitating improved productivity and mobility. The key will be in removing the silos that currently exist between wired and wireless networks, allowing users to communicate in whatever form they choose, through the network with the appropriate connectivity, appropriate bandwidth and appropriate cost," Rickard continues.

However, it doesn`t stop there. "The other silos that have to be removed are between the forms of communications. Today e-mail is input through a keyboard, voice mail is spoken and an instant message is sent from a PC. These silos will be merged at the application and device level [and] multi-modal devices will allow users to send an e-mail from their phone, message someone from their personal digital assistant (PDA) or initiate a call from a PC executing a business application."

Getting back to security, Stefan le Roux, account manager for enterprise at Symantec SA, says his company believes the biggest news in the security space at the moment is what it calls "client-less VPN".

"This service is delivered through a rack mountable appliance that allows a client computer connecting into the network to do so securely and without any specific VPN software loaded.

"This is revolutionary since one of the biggest problems businesses face in providing secure VPN tunnels is keeping the client software up to date. Essentially, the moment a client computer connects to the network remotely, a VPN tunnel is pushed down to them from the appliance," Le Roux continues.

"This means that, at any one time, a single machine is exposed to the outside world."

He says customers are finding this technology new and exciting, since it can do massive things from a security perspective in the wireless space. "It also allows for a secure tunnel to be opened across the airwaves, cutting down on those types of security breaches.

"In general, the appliance space is becoming hugely important to Symantec. This is because the market is changing and customers are looking for one device to manage all aspects of their security strategy. They want integration across all disciplines of security and with an appliance with which they need not go through integration pains. The integration is already there and very little needs to be done by the corporate," Le Roux concludes.

Focusing on mobile workers, Hillel Shrock, director of new business at Internet Solutions, says there is definitely a pent-up demand for always-on, potentially mobile technology.

"While business people want this functionality, there are not enough connectivity options to satisfy their needs. SMS and GPRS are overpriced, fixed broadband doesn`t provide for mobility and the mobile broadband value proposition has not been met due to inadequate performance and lack of sufficient coverage.

"While Sentech`s concept is exactly right, the company has had a tough time rolling the solution out. When it does come right, the analogue dial-up market will come under severe pressure," Shrock says.

It`s no secret that much of this bears on the fact that the South African market has struggled with a single exclusive provider, which has stifled and choked obvious demand. "Things like Sentech being licensed, WBS claiming to be able to provide a mobile broadband Internet solution and the local mobile telcos starting to look at 3G services, show promise of this proposition coming true. While all of these options can deliver the dream, obstacles like cost of bandwidth and the relative non-ubiquity of mobile devices will provide challenges," Shrock explains.

Also helping deliver the dream will be the hotspot or public wireless LAN market. "This technology speaks directly to that vision of being mobile with good performance connectivity. While it seems that hotspots can deliver the performance, it will take time for them to become more ubiquitous.

"All of these technologies are complementary from the perspective that, for example, GPRS can provide connectivity for accessing information from a phone, hotspots can provide cost-effective services for us on a laptop, and Sentech or WBS`s solution can provide for access outside of that."

Ultimately, mobile technologies will be grouped into "functionality sets" that suit different users in different circumstances.

In line with growing demand for bandwidth, Gartner says that between 2004 and 2008 enterprises will increase bandwidth between 40% and 100% annually.

Companies need the ability to sense whether their network is operating as it should, both on a local area and wide area basis.

Heinz Stephan, product and technology director, Comztek distribution

"By year-end 2008 all enterprises, except those [that are] very conservative, will have to offer at least 256Kbps per employee. Enterprises that do not control undesired video use will need to install four to seven times more Internet access bandwidth per seat by 2008."

Rickard says enterprises must know the current and future bandwidth requirements of applications. "They must draw up and implement a policy for the intelligent use of bandwidth. Apart from models, enterprises should use network monitoring and management tools to support planning and contract negotiation. Intensive users need more bandwidth than most enterprises accept."

And what of the networking technology the market regards as the most over-hyped at present, namely IP telephony?

"By 2006, most enterprises will have sufficiently implemented IP telephony infrastructure to start deriving dramatic new business value from their applications and actually begin to change the way their business communicates," Rickard says.

He believes that by 2005 at least 50% of the vendors of IP telephony products in Western Europe will fail to survive market consolidation and shake-out.

Making recommendations for the coming year, Rickard says corporates should build applications with the expectation that they will be accessed from a multitude of devices across a variety of different networks.

"Furthermore, all data infrastructure upgrades should be done with the expectation that they will support IP telephony, and there should be a start to planning for the migration to IP telephony. Manage vendor consolidation through proactive contingency planning and contract escape clauses; combine voice/data responsibility; shift mobile and procurement into the CIO`s organisation, and source more from external providers while keeping deep understanding of networked processes and solutions," Rickard concludes.