* Q&A with a network management expert
This month, my events colleagues will be on the road with the first of this year’s Network World Technology Tours. Jim Metzler, vice president of Ashton, Metzler and Associates, will lead a tour entitled “Network Management/IT Automation and the Agile Enterprise: Tools to Bridge the Gap.” The interactive event will discuss the competitive pressures that are putting your networks to the test and help you prepare for the 12 months ahead.
Before embarking on his tour, I caught up with Jim and quizzed him about the management challenges that net execs are facing and how those issues can be addressed. Here is our Q&A:
Q: What is meant by an “agile enterprise”? How does an organization become an agile enterprise?
A: An agile enterprise is an organization that can respond in real-enough-time to threats and opportunities in the environment. An organization becomes agile by continually enhancing its key business processes. IT in general, and IT management in particular, are important components of how companies enhance their business processes.
Q: Which key management areas should network execs focus on in the next 12 months and why?
A: Applications management and configuration management. Applications management is important because it gets to the key value that IT provides to business unit managers (BUM). In particular, the vast majority of BUMs do not care about networking. They do care about the applications that they use. Hence, one of the best ways to show value to the BUMs is to do a good job of managing what they value – applications. Configuration management is important for two reasons. One reason is that bad configuration management leads to over half of the network outages. The second reason is that configuration management is labor intensive, and hence expensive.
Q: How is configuration management changing?
A: A number of network organization have recognized that over half of the network outages are due to inadequate change management processes. These organizations have begun to enhance their change and configuration management processes. In many cases, this includes introducing automation of all or part of change and configuration management.
Q: How should net execs manage applications that are owned by the business units?
A: Very carefully – as this is a difficult political and technical problem. This is also an area where a network exec will not be successful trying to be all things to all people. To get started, choose an application that is important to the company, but also one whose owner is willing and interested in working with the networking organization. The next step is to establish reasonable objectives for the performance of the application. Include in these performance objectives the particular performance objectives for the network. Next, deploy a tool that can both monitor the application, as well as identify the cause of any performance problems. Finally, build management processes that focus on using the information gained by monitoring the application to respond to problems before they affect the user.
Q: Which management area represents the biggest challenge for net execs and how can they address these challenges?
A: Business Service Management. Just when you thought that application management was tough (and it is!) along comes Business Service Management (BSM), the goal of which is to manage key business processes. The challenge, and the opportunity, presented by BSM is that it brings the network closer to the key business processes. The difficulty, of course, is that this is brand new territory for 99% of network executives. The best way to get started with BSM is to choose one process where the process owner is interested in working with IT. Do not set expectations too high, and assign one or two individuals who have both technical and business skills to the project.
Q: What will net execs learn at the seminar that they may not have expected to learn?
A: Web services. Currently Web services are a hot item for applications developers, but not network execs. This will change quickly as the use of Web services takes off. If you are an application developer, Web services promised to make your life easier. If you are a network executive, Web services will make your life notably more complex.
The network management tour begins March 22 and ends March 31, stopping at Denver, Chicago, New York and Boston. For more about the event and how to apply to attend, hop over to: https://www.nwfusion.com/events/networkmanagement/index.html
** Last issue, I talked about the TRAIN Act and some of you wrote in asking for more information. Unfortunately, the act has not yet passed and so you won’t be able to apply for tax credits for your 2004 training as you prepare your taxes. If you want to follow the status of this act as it makes it way through Congress, click here. And if you’d like to read the full text of the bill, click here .
