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Network Evolution- How to Harness Change

If the network is like the human body (and it is), the question now becomes how to embrace the inevitable forces of change and harness the possibility and power of co-evolution. There are critical questions to ask related to the mechanics of change that drive co-evolution:

  • What is the environment doing?
  • What are the capabilities to respond?
  • How can the effects of demand and the effects of change be measured?
  • How can demand and supply be met in an optimal manner with minimal waste?

 

From a process point-of-view, harnessing co-evolution requires a conscious effort to understand the change and make it an ally, because ultimately change is driven by the business environment. Processes such as the following become necessary:

 

  • Demand Management- what are the business problems today (constraints, cost, on-line brand perception, client experience, timing issues, opportunities missed) and how all of this is affected by the infrastructure, while understanding how the infrastructure contributes to these problems.
  • Supply Management- what are the true capabilities of the network infrastructure in terms of capacity throughout on a typical and extreme business day. Where are the impediments and waste, bottlenecks, missed opportunities to be more flexible
  • Instrumentation- how is resource utilization tracked, is it granular enough, does it measure:
    • Latency for the most critical transactions (the time it takes to travel through each of the application layers),
    • Peak threshold times, (how long is the peak, how big is the peak, how often do the peaks occur)
    • Response times for critical transactions (are they frustrating the user, are they consistent?, are they correlated to the peak?)
    • Granularity- are the intervals small enough (seconds, minutes) so that a true picture of the bottleneck periods can be determined
  • Self Healing and Repair- can resource failure be detected, spare resources be provisioned and can projections be made about impending failures

 

It is obvious that these process and capabilities are the foundations for creating an intelligent network. There are more processes and each requires some explanation. They will be discussed as these blogs continue. If these tasks seem daunting, just remember that handling problems that come as a shock, and then explaining them to senior executives provides a much worse feeling. Remember the world class athlete: they are relatively few, excel on the world stage, and for the most gifted, there is the Hall of Fame. After all there is no need for the Hall of "They Tried-but...".

Sheppard Narkier

Chief Scientist and co-Founder

Adaptivity

sheppard.narkier@adaptivity.com

 

Very True

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Sheppard, agree with the analogy of network to human body and looking forward to the additional blog entries. One aspect of this analogy that has always resonated with me, because of my industry most likely, but the idea that you need to 'exercise and train' the network (and your body) for maximum performance. This aspect certainly fits under a few of your bullet points.

--Kyle

True but..

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What if your conscious (the top manager) doesn't understand, is lazy, thinks it is too costly or too much work, etc?

This is a good article but, I think, it takes granted that someone wants really manage the change and sees the benefits? See the obesity, the attitude against preventive health care, why so many love prepared food instead making fresh, how much they really know or care, etc. Maybe the explaining to senior executives should be done first, maybe then, if they agree, it will be easier?

The funny thing is that I still have a paper from 70's where all these (and other) points were under capacity with a title "The capacity planning to do business"? We did put it together in our monthly "user group" meetings. And yes, we also took granted that our senior executives would understand - sorry, they didn't, some never!

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About Tony Bishop and Sheppard Narkier

Tony Bishop is CEO, Adaptivity. He'd previously served as SVP and chief architect of Wachovia's Corporate Investment Banking Technology Group, where his team earned numerous awards for its SOA and utility computing infrastructure. Tony has 19 years' experience and is the recipient of 40 under 40 Most Innovative IT Leaders, Premier 100 IT Leaders as selected (by ComputerWorld in 2007) and a member of Wall Street Gold Book 2007.

Sheppard Narkier is chief scientist and co-founder of Adaptivity. Prior to that, he was head of software portfolio management and IT governance for the Wachovia Corporate Investment Banking Technology Group. Sheppard has more than 29 years of experience in the IT industry. He focuses on cost-effective IT systems and is an acknowleged expert at reusable components (frameworks, programs, architecture), the realtime enterprise, SOAs, messaging and legacy system integration.

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The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.

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