Why we need to automate WAN management

Insightful analysis by consultants Steve Taylor and Jim Metzler, plus links to the latest WAN news headlines

In most cases, when IT organizations think about increasing the availability of the WAN they think of implementing fault tolerant network devices, diverse routes through the network and fast failover protocols. Relative to improving WAN availability, those steps are necessary but not sufficient. As we pointed out in a recent newsletter, in many IT organizations ineffective change and configuration management is the primary cause of a network outage. With that in mind, the next two newsletters will look at what steps IT organizations must take to improve WAN management.

A key step is to automate tasks that currently are highly manual, repetitive and time consuming. In particular, implementing automated change and configuration management should improve the overall quality of those processes and hence increase WAN availability. However, there is another reason to automate management functions. Today the typical IT organization consumes as much as three quarters of its resources maintaining the status quo. This percentage has been increasing over time and unless significant steps are taken it will continue to increase as more functionality is added to the infrastructure. As the percentage of IT resources that are consumed by maintaining the status quo increases, the ability of the IT organization to provide new value added services demanded by the business decreases.

Another key step towards implementing better WAN management is to reduce the number of WAN management tools. This is definitely an example of where less is more. In particular, in many companies each component of the IT organization has its own unique set of management tools. This approach complicates troubleshooting because invariably each group within IT then also has a slightly different view of the environment and this can lengthen the time it takes to agree on the likely cause of a problem.

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In most cases, when IT organizations think about increasing the availability of the WAN they think of implementing fault tolerant network devices, diverse routes through the network and fast failover protocols. Relative to improving WAN availability, those steps are necessary but not sufficient. As we pointed out in a recent newsletter, in many IT organizations ineffective change and configuration management is the primary cause of a network outage. With that in mind, the next two newsletters will look at what steps IT organizations must take to improve WAN management.

A key step is to automate tasks that currently are highly manual, repetitive and time consuming. In particular, implementing automated change and configuration management should improve the overall quality of those processes and hence increase WAN availability. However, there is another reason to automate management functions. Today the typical IT organization consumes as much as three quarters of its resources maintaining the status quo. This percentage has been increasing over time and unless significant steps are taken it will continue to increase as more functionality is added to the infrastructure. As the percentage of IT resources that are consumed by maintaining the status quo increases, the ability of the IT organization to provide new value added services demanded by the business decreases.

Another key step towards implementing better WAN management is to reduce the number of WAN management tools. This is definitely an example of where less is more. In particular, in many companies each component of the IT organization has its own unique set of management tools. This approach complicates troubleshooting because invariably each group within IT then also has a slightly different view of the environment and this can lengthen the time it takes to agree on the likely cause of a problem.

In our next newsletter we will discuss lights-out IT management. We use this phrase to refer to the automation of both problem identification and problem resolution. In the meantime, more information on the topic can be found at The Mandate for Lights Out Management.

Read more about lans & wans in Network World's LANs & WANs section.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Jim Metzler is vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates.