Recession-Induced Network Innovation
I think it is only a matter of time before ALL of the leading networking players start talking about the (strategic importance of the) network as a way to succeed in an uncertain economic climate. Last week, in “Cloud Computing, Virtualization and IT Diseconomies” I talked about the increasingly intense pressures already building on static network infrastructure, and the underlying need for more intelligence and automation.
These intense pressures are setting the stage for the next technology boom, by creating gaps between what networks can do today and what they’ll need to do tomorrow. I was amazed at how quickly the concept of Infrastructure2.0 spread, including an interesting discussion at F5 Network’s pace-setting DevCentral blog.
These pressures are coming from increasing rates of change, especially in larger networks supporting more devices and branches and processes, as well as with the introduction of consolidation, virtualization and cloud computing initiatives. These new initiatives are introducing even higher rates of change and making it clear that a static network will no longer be a strategic network.
The rest of the article is here at Greg Ness’ personal blog
Thanks Greg for the deep analysis.
These are all good points.
However I would add companies need to take a good hard look at the file sizes they are using, and the effect this has on the network and storage.
For example, do mobile workers really need to send 10 MB powerpoint presentations using HSPA or EVDO service? If it’s mission-critical, the answer is yes, but if you are using the network to send mission-critical information, often straight text is sufficient.
Comment by Greg Meckbach — October 28, 2008 @ 7:22 am
Greg:
I htink there are a boatload of factors that are inducing excessive rates of manual labor in IT. I think Infrastructure2.0 has room for plenty of vendor and practice innovation.
Thx for the comment.
Greg
Comment by Greg Ness — October 28, 2008 @ 5:28 pm