Better than your average blog

One of the best resources at Network World for network architecture and design is celebrating his second anniversary with us, and it's worth taking a look at the wealth of advice he has created in his blog.

Michael Morris, "a communications engineering manager at a $3 billion high-tech company," is a staple in our Cisco Subnet community, and his blog has become a repository of good advice and interaction with readers.

Morris has been a strong proponent of writing your network architecture down, which as he puts it, is "an amazingly simple concept that few people and organizations do," and yet it can be immensely beneficial and time-saving for your IT organization to have everything documented.

Morris has been advocating the practice since the beginning of his blog, and has explored many different aspects of written network architectures and templates over the last two years, including planning, design, icon usage, best practices, components, and naming conventions. He has advocated establishing an architecture review board and a revision process.

There are two other core areas that Morris writes about, as he mentions. One is the Cisco Certified Design Expert certification, which Morris earned during his tenure here. In fact, he was one of the first in the world to become a CCDE, and shared his excitement in his blog. The other area is the Cisco Nexus, the company's data center switch. Morris was very interested in its release, and actually used it in his data center.

In short, if you are reading this newsletter you should also be reading his blog. Congratulations to Michael on two years!

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.