Lucent and Extreme Networks this week will add their voices to the cacophony of vendors pitching policy-based management wares.
In separate ventures, both companies will let network managers determine which users have access to different network resources by setting central policies. Both firms' announcements follow on the heels of similar product introductions from Hewlett-Packard, Cisco and others.
Policy-based network management is still a very new area, with hardware and software vendors just now releasing products to implement the technology. Because they're new, many policy-based management tools provide limited capabilities for only a few brands of network hardware. Lucent and Extreme support Cisco routers in addition to their own LAN switches. Extreme also supports Xedia WAN routers.
Though many tools are limited, "the concept sounds great," says Virgil Palmer, director of telecommunications at Air Products and Chemicals in Allentown, Pa. Palmer says he would like to give Internet cruising a low priority and protect "very sensitive revenue-generating traffic in our call center."
But analysts point out that because the tools available now provide policies for just a few brands of equipment, enterprises with multivendor networks will have to wait until the tools support a wider variety of network hardware. "We seem to be an awfully long way from that," says Dave Passmore, research director at NetReference in Sterling, Va.
Another option is to consolidate an enterprise network around a single vendor's hardware, says Charles Rutstein, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.
Other challenges posed by policy-based management include creating a network directory, which in many enterprises doesn't exist, Passmore says. And even if policy-based management software works as advertised, IT managers are left with the thorny political problem of figuring out which employees or departments get preferred access to the network, he says.
For those who want to attempt policy-based management, Extreme is introducing its Enterprise Policy System, a server software package. Net managers use a Web interface connected to the server software to set policies, such as how much bandwidth users and applications should get across the network. The server in turn sends messages to Extreme, Xedia and some Cisco devices, telling them to enforce the policies.
Previously, network managers could allocate bandwidth on Extreme gear, but had to configure each box separately.
Extreme's server software runs on Windows NT or Sun's Solaris. It will ship in July as part of ExtremeWare Enterprise Manager 2.0, which costs about $10,000.
Lucent's RealNet Rules works similarly. It allows network managers using a Java client to specify policies on server software running on NT and Solaris. The server translates policies into commands understood by some of Lucent's Cajun LAN switches and some Cisco routers.
Lucent's software is expected to ship in the third quarter of this year for $10,000 per server.
Extreme: (888) 257-3000; Lucent: (888) 458-2368
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