If the network is like the human body (and it is), the question now becomes how to embrace the inevitable forces of change and harness the possibility and power of co-evolution. There are critical questions to ask related to the mechanics of change that drive co-evolution:
- What is the environment doing?
- What are the capabilities to respond?
- How can the effects of demand and the effects of change be measured?
- How can demand and supply be met in an optimal manner with minimal waste?
From a process point-of-view, harnessing co-evolution requires a conscious effort to understand the change and make it an ally, because ultimately change is driven by the business environment. Processes such as the following become necessary:
- Demand Management– what are the business problems today (constraints, cost, on-line brand perception, client experience, timing issues, opportunities missed) and how all of this is affected by the infrastructure, while understanding how the infrastructure contributes to these problems.
- Supply Management- what are the true capabilities of the network infrastructure in terms of capacity throughout on a typical and extreme business day. Where are the impediments and waste, bottlenecks, missed opportunities to be more flexible
- Instrumentation– how is resource utilization tracked, is it granular enough, does it measure:
- Latency for the most critical transactions (the time it takes to travel through each of the application layers),
- Peak threshold times, (how long is the peak, how big is the peak, how often do the peaks occur)
- Response times for critical transactions (are they frustrating the user, are they consistent?, are they correlated to the peak?)
- Granularity- are the intervals small enough (seconds, minutes) so that a true picture of the bottleneck periods can be determined
- Self Healing and Repair- can resource failure be detected, spare resources be provisioned and can projections be made about impending failures
It is obvious that these process and capabilities are the foundations for creating an intelligent network. There are more processes and each requires some explanation. They will be discussed as these blogs continue. If these tasks seem daunting, just remember that handling problems that come as a shock, and then explaining them to senior executives provides a much worse feeling. Remember the world class athlete: they are relatively few, excel on the world stage, and for the most gifted, there is the Hall of Fame. After all there is no need for the Hall of “They Tried-but…”.
Sheppard Narkier
Chief Scientist and co-Founder
Adaptivity
sheppard.narkier@adaptivity.com
