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Network managers getting apps savvy

By Denise Dubie , Network World , 01/23/2006
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The walls between IT groups are crumbling, and network professionals report that responsibility for optimal application performance is shifting to them.

Distributed IP networks and complex real-time applications have forced a change. Now network managers need to be in the know from the start about application performance, helping developers understand what will work on a network, spotting poorly performing applications before users feel the effects and delivering LAN-like performance over the wide area to remote and branch offices.

"There are two kinds of network people in my mind: the ones that are just out of college and have all their certifications; and those that know the company's network, the applications that run on it and how to marry those two together," says Larry McBrayer, network architect for SaraLee Technology Services in Mason, Ohio. "That's the difference between a contracted resource called in to troubleshoot a specific network issue [and] a corporate employee that knows the net, the business' apps and how they should be working together."

McBrayer says his application performance duties expanded when his organization installed Siebel software and couldn't get it working as desired. He used a combination of network tools from companies such as Network General and NetQoS, as well as application and system management products from BMC Software, CA and SolarWinds to better track down application performance problems. Ultimately it took a lot of tuning and tweaking by the network team to help the application team work out the kinks in the Siebel deployment.

"It's very cumbersome to explain Sniffer traces to an application developer," he says.

The more companies explore service-oriented architectures, deploy VoIP or consolidate data centers to serve up applications from a centralized point to remote offices, the more network professionals are going to be called on to improve application performance, experts say.

"An intelligent or application-aware network places new demands on network managers," says George Hamilton, director of enterprise computing and networking at The Yankee Group. "They now have more responsibility for applications than just determining whether the network is the source of the problem. . . . The nature of enterprise applications is such that network managers must be involved in their performance."

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Partner Content

NetScout and analyst Jim Metzler have teamed to deliver a series of IT Briefs on Network and Application Performance Management leveraging research from NetScout’s nGenius & Sniffer users.

www.netscout.com

Metzler on CIO Priorities

The top five CIO priorities based on a survey of NetScout users revealing CIOs' top priorities and what they think they should be. Also includes interviews with CIOs of large organizations.

Read the Report

Metzler on Application Delivery

How to eliminate the stovepiped or siloed nature of application delivery from both an organization and a technological perspective.

Read the Brief

Metzler on Network Troubleshooting

Overview of network troubleshooting that provides an assessment of where we are, and where we need to be relative to the complexities of today's IT challenges.

Read the Brief

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RE: Network managers getting apps savvyBy Clyde on September 4, 2007, 5:13 amgood article

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