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What's Hot!!
What are the developments in network/systems management to which our readers should pay the most attention? Nolle: There are two issues; policy management and jurisdictional management. Policy management is important because it lets buyers set policies to govern future network behavior, rather than enter reactions to current behavior. That's what buyers wanted all along. Jurisdictional management has to be defined first - it's the ability to present a management view that is suitable to the interest of the user. Most companies have multiple consumers of management data, but only one system to provide it. That system is targeted at the network professional, who's only one of the consumers. The real power in networking is the end user, and a management system targeted at the end user would have to be more service-oriented. Bradner: There are two big problems with the current generations of network management 'tools': they don't tell you when your users are going to be upset with the service they are getting; and they are mostly toys for gurus. I expect to see management systems coming on the market in the next year or two that understand that users have a very confused understanding of what the 'network' is. They see a collection of services, some local to their desktop and some remote. It is unlikely that the user thinks all that much about the connectivity tissue between the services and the user, unless you are doing a real bad job of managing the net to begin with. I expect that we will start to see network management systems that understand what the network is from the user's point of view over the next year or two. Hopefully these new systems will understand that not every corporation can find enough gurus to run their nets and make the systems a bit more people-friendly. Gibbs: Distributed directory and naming services and technologies that recentralize data processing, such as back-end Web server applications and applets that window into remote server-based processes. Watch the likes of Digitivity, Microsoft with Visual InterDev, and the Java camp. We also need to watch the increased decentralization of offices and the growth of telecommuting, and increase the focus on information content and knowledge management. Heckart: Portable operating systems like Java and now Inferno could make it possible for lots of non-intelligent, non-networked devices to be intelligent and networked. From your watch to your smart card to you-name-it, these technologies combined with affordable anywhere, anytime communications will lay the foundation for the communications age to come. Service providers and end users alike need to be focusing on network integration. Whether this is over IP, frame relay, ATM, or cans-and-strings, the integration of voice, fax, and data over the same network will save billions of dollars a year. Internet voice and fax, alliances between PBX and data network equipment vendors, and voice and fax over frame relay and ATM all need to be seriously considered and evaluated. Will your PBX be LAN attached or will the data route through the PBX? How will you consolidate and operate the combined network? The savings are worth the trouble of exploring these questions. Briere: I think the advent of Java into management systems is really revolutionary, given the expansion of Java-speaking devices. You can manage a network from a cellular phone outfitted with a browser, today. That's a far cry from the Sun SparcStation approach a few years ago. Imagine being able to walk off an airplane and go to an airport kiosk to check on the health of your network - pretty amazing. With multinetwork access into the home, you'll be able to have your network management alarms come through to your TV set, as soon as we get better resolution there. Kearns: The Internet is becoming less U.S.-centric every day. Readers need to watch the UN General Assembly to understand what could happen. Directory services is the most important technology decision facing our readers right now. They need to make some decisions and lobby their vendors to fall in line with them. Mobile computing/telecommuting will affect a majority of our readers within the next 3 years. You'd better have a plan in place to deal with it.
Nolle: NT has already taken over the world, but the Unix players don't know they're dead. The stories on NT's weak spots are important, but the most important feature of any operating system is that users can relate to it. They relate to NT better than to any other server or multi-user platform. Go ahead and send snotty e-mails, Unix fans; I'm only telling the future, not making it. Gibbs: The anti-MS camp waving the Java flag is in high gear and that indirectly weakens the NT story. NT 4.0 is, without doubt, a great OS but it doesn't fit every IS need anymore than NetWare or Unix does. I'd place NT in a dominant position but not the flat-out winner. Kearns: NT is well on its way to reducing Unix to a niche market as an application server. Its still a long way, though, from dominating the NOS market and may never get close, since Microsoft appears doomed to never understand networking. Its a desktop company and will always be a desktop company.
Nolle: I'm not convinced there's really a Year 2000 computing crisis. I saw a TV commentary on the issue that contained just about every piece of misinformation that could be assembled on the topic. Chicken Little said the sky was falling; it wasn't, but everybody remembers old Chicken Little and nobody knows who said the sky WASN'T falling. Moral: hype gets ink. Gibbs: Only as a reflection of the general Y2K crisis. I suspect that many network management systems will show signs of problems but I don't think it will be anywhere near as bad as the mainframe world. Briere: Yes, what are IBM and all the other systems integrators going to do in 2001? Bradner: Getting reservations for New Year's Eve? There is not all that much of a Y2K issue in Internet technology and applications, a few things are showing up but so far they are minor. That may not help your state of mind all that much if the other kind of ATM won't give you your money because you have not used your account in 99 years. Kearns: Well, we did just hear about a problem with JavaScript, so there are probably a number of problems hiding in places that no one has looked as yet.
Nolle: The big question is not on overhyped topics but on why any topics are overhyped. Are we heading for a tabloid technology press? Controlled circulation pubs are printed because advertisers believe they influence buyers. Is 'entertained' or 'titillated' a substitute for 'influenced' in this sentence? Gibbs: A general observation about how the press treats market issues: We have a tendency to report as if each new paradigm and technology will sweep away the existing solutions and problems overnight. This flies totally in the face of the market's intrinsic inertia and existing momentum: Those who have no truly pressing need will stick with whatever workable solutions they have while those who have problems to solve will gravitate towards solutions that the market has proven and are known to be low risk. If anything, pragmatism is underhyped while novelty is overhyped as if it were proven to be useful. Briere: It's funny, you asked almost all LAN type topics and hardly any WAN ones, unless the network crisis question above was one. I think you should ask something about voice, data, and video integration across the WAN. Do we need to move to change our planning for this now that viable integrated offers are moving towards the market? I'd say that users need to be looking at each site and application for its needs, and the WAN of the future/today needs to be able to mix and match at will . You need to allow remote home office users to come in on IP-based voice and video and transit out via circuit-switched gateways, in some instances. You need to allow access to fax mailboxes via IP as well as circuit switched. The intermingling of the Internet and the circuit-switched WAN is going to be an interesting line to walk for most managers going forward, as the Internet and other data services like FR and ATM will start competing for a lot of the traditional WAN traffic, especially fax. Kearns: What will be the outcome of the Netscape vs. Internet Explorer battle and how would the right or wrong choice impact the user and the intranet? For the foreseeable future, savvy users will use both. Its content providers who could force the issue. Bradner: You seem to have hit most of the over-hyped topics just fine.
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