Network execs look to mgmt. tools for answers

James Tate and Jerry White have big challenges ahead of them. For Tate, it's figuring out how to set up a bandwidth-on-demand network to 450 buildings from a centralized location within the next few years. White has to decide what parts of his network are underutilized and need to be turned off.

These network executives plan to attend Network World's Performance and Availability Management Seminar series next month to gather information to solve their diverse dilemmas. The executives are looking to hear how tools from companies such as Concord Communications, Hewlett-Packard, Tavve Software and NetQoS let them visualize the network and its gear, and boost quality of service and application performance throughout the network.

Tate, assistant deputy director for telecom at Presidio Trust in San Francisco, says performance and availability management tools are critical for his job. He has been charged with developing a state-of-the-art network that interconnects a collection of more than 2 million square feet of commercial space and 1,200 residences. Tate wants to model the network he is building as a service provider operation, he says. "We want to provide carrier-class access to individual tenants," he says.

To make network adjustments easier, Tate wants to install performance and availability management tools that will increase or decrease a tenant's bandwidth based on his traffic needs and issue reports on how the network and its applications are performing.

White, senior network engineer with global retailer Gap in San Francisco, has almost the opposite challenge. Instead of ramping up his network, White says performance and availability management tools, such as those he's using from Lucent and Micromuse, will help him figure out where he has overprovisioned.

"We thought we needed this bandwidth, that the applications were going to need the bandwidth," he says. Last year, the Gap began an aggressive buildout of its network infrastructure in anticipation of high-end and bandwidth-intensive point-of sale applications that were under development. The company signed three-year service contracts with its carriers and bought high-speed routers from Cisco, along with costly maintenance plans.

But the wide-scale rollout of the POS application didn't happen and the Gap stopped short of its planned expansion to 6,000 stores worldwide. The new applications that did roll out don't use even a fraction of the bells and whistles they featured, including advanced language tools, and therefore don't need as much bandwidth.

Because switching carriers and canceling contracts can cost big bucks, he says he expects performance and availability management tools will help him pinpoint exactly which links and equipment are severely underutilized. n