Wednesday, November 15, 2006
By Steve Harriman
NetQoS VP Steve Harriman is attending the Gartner Enterprise Networking Summit this week in Las Vegas. It's the first time for the event since the industry downturn in 2001 and NetQoS is exhibiting there because we feel that the role of Networking has been elevated in importance to the point at which it warrants an executive focused event. And, Gartner events are always very educational and well-attended. It's the right place to be.
It is worth noting that one of the key themes of the first day is that Network professionals should move beyond the plumbing and be part of the solution to the application delivery problem. The idea that network professionals need to look at response time and focus on end-to-end performance is a message NetQoS has been trying to spread. Here are a few details from the first day keynote to put this into context:
Continue reading "Notes on the Gartner Summit in Las Vegas, Part 1" »
Friday, October 27, 2006
When it comes to understanding network performance, exploring the following basic definition will help many people find their way deep into the heart of this subject:
Network performance is a process to ensure efficient use of network resources, while minimizing the impact of resource contention.
Continue reading "Understanding Performance Management" »
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Way back in 1995, Network World used the economic metaphor of inflation to report The Cost of Network Complexity. While 1995 might be considered the Paleozoic era of networking -- Windows NT was barely two years old -- and the technologies have since rapidly evolved, still the inflation metaphor holds up today.
"The cause of economic inflation is too many dollars chasing too few goods, diminishing the buying power of the dollar. In the case of network complexity inflation, we have too much network infrastructure being chased by too few network wizards. Net service quality (the currency provided by the support staff) declines because it is spread across too many service demands.
"When this occurs, there are two means of bringing service quality and service requirements back into balance: reduce the number of factors contributing to the complexity [NPD Editor's note: That's not going to happen.] ... or increase the size of the support staff to handle the increased complexity. [Nope, that's not happening either]"
Flash forward to today and it's clear that infrastructure tools have progressed over time, making enterprise networks more reliable in the process. However, increased reliability doesn't necessarily mean better performance and it doesn't necessarily mean a better experience for the end-user. Today users commonly expect a ubiquitous and instantaneous network. They want it now, anywhere at anytime.
Therefore, network engineers aren't getting much sleep!
Here are three big trends that have increased the volume and complexity of wide area network traffic, made monitoring application performance a necessity and sleep for network engineers a luxury:
Continue reading "Three Big Trends Affecting Network and Application Performance" »
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
According to Neal Weinberg at Network World magazine, Gartner analysts Mark Fabbi and Bob Hafner argued that IT and network engineering departments will “waste an estimated $100 billion over the next three years by overspending on network products and services.”
He [Fabbi] expanded on that premise this week to argue that network execs should only buy what they know they will need for the next two years, rather than buying more than necessary, just in case network requirements grow. More often than not, "just in case never comes," Fabbi said.
Continue reading "A waste of $100B" »
