IT Roadmap

Is Your Network Ready to Enable the Virtual Office?

Teleworking is on the rise, creating new challenges and opportunities for enterprises committed to the promise of borderless networks.

Consider a few projections and estimates:

• Number of teleworkers by 2011: 112 million
• Percentage of employees that work outside the corporate HQ: 90%
• Average amount saved per year on fuel by employees who work one day at home: $500
• Average commercial real estate savings per year for a full time teleworker: $22,000 

Considering the challenges of the current down economy and the clear savings associated with telework, it seems likely that teleworking will become an attractive approach for more and more organizations in the coming years. It’s certainly attractive to workers seeking schedule flexibility and better work-life balance.  They want to save time and costs on commuting.

While there may have been concerns in the past about the ability of teleworkers to build trust with their colleagues and effectively collaborate, the maturing of technology over the years has addressed many of these concerns. Rich communication and collaboration capabilities – matched with convenience and cost savings – have dramatically shifted the equation in favor of telework.

The question is: What will it take to successfully implement, manage and secure robust networks and IT resources that will support the move to a virtual office environment?

 

One thing that’s clear is that teleworkers, full- and part-time home office workers, mobile contractors, and executives will expect the same rich array of network services – including data, voice, video and various applications – they could expect to access at a corporate office. 

But that won’t be enough. New telework solutions must also meet the requirements of IT. They must simplify the process of providing rich network services to remote locations.  Deployment and integration must be simple as well, making it easy to scale with the demands of the enterprise. Moreover, security must be uncompromising, ensuring traffic controls and identity management can be strictly enforced.

Finally, it’s critical to ensure the business objectives of the organization are addressed. Solutions must drive measurable productivity gains and cost reductions while facilitating greater agility.

Telework has been called a “quiet revolution,” but it’s clear it won’t remain quiet much longer.

Virtualization to Grow to 1 in 4 Server Workloads by Year-End

Gartner is estimating that one out of every four server workloads will be virtualized by the end of this year. However, the research firm argues that enterprises should invest more in the approach if they want to maximize the return they are getting on their IT dollars. 

"More than 80 percent of enterprises now have a virtualization program or project, but only 25 percent of all server workloads will be in a virtual machine (VM) by year-end 2010," Gartner reports. Virtualization, the firm adds, is "the highest-impact issue challenging infrastructure and operations."

Virtualization was first introduced decades ago as a means of managing mainframe technology. More recently, it was adopted as a means of enhancing the usage of x86 servers, which comprise 90% of the server market overall.

Now, server virtualization is actively employed throughout the Fortune 500. IT executives consider it a huge win because they can drive server utilization rates from as low as 10% to as high as 70-80% — producing huge savings in the process.

However, some companies remain reluctant to plunge into server virtualization. They cite security concerns, performance issues and software licensing complications among the issues holding them back from embracing virtualization technology.

Despite these concerns, some research firms remain bullish on the technology's adoption. One firm, The InfoPro, reports that more than half of newly deployed servers are virtual machines and predicts this number will climb to 80% by 2012.

That said, the implication of Gartner's prediction — covering "only" one-quarter of server workloads — is that three-quarters of workloads on physical machines have not been virtualized.

This raises some questions about whether executives are investing their IT dollars as smartly as they might. In fact, Gartner argues that eight of every ten dollars that enterprises spend on IT can be considered "dead money" because it does not contribute directly to business value.  

“We say ‘dead money’ because, while it is keeping the lights on, it isn’t directly contributing to your business growth or enhancing your competitive advantage,” says Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner Fellow. “In today’s environment, any corporate function that doesn’t contribute to growth or competitiveness is ultimately expendable. Your placement of resources is more critical than ever to your ability to deliver the growth and competitive advantage that your CEO is expecting.”

Putting Business Strategy Before Cloud Strategy

The hype around cloud computing is enormous. But the danger for IT decision makers is that they will get swept up in the mania and drawn into making investments that aren't particularly consistent with their business objectives.

Given these risks, Randy Heffner, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, is encouraging his clients to step back and take a few breaths. "Cloud is an important development in the landscape of computing options—to the point that most organizations will one day use cloud or cloud-like offerings—but there's no guarantee that cloud is right for your organization right now," he says.

While he recognizes that IT decision makers may be tempted to create their own "cloud strategies," he is discouraging it. As he sees it, enterprises can lose focus on what's important when they develop strategies around technology as opposed to business.

What's more, he sees "numerous tradeoffs" between cloud and traditional computing approaches. "Nearly every cloud solution has a functionally equivalent non-cloud alternative, so to maintain focus on your business, it is best to build your strategy around the business decisions to which each type of cloud offering is directed," he contends. "This approach fosters more level-headed consideration and comparison of cloud and non-cloud options, and it establishes a stronger foundation for a long-term evolution toward cloud and cloud-like options as they mature."

Heffner encourages IT decision makers to develop their business approaches around three major architecture strategies: computing infrastructure; application platform; and solution portfolio. 

"Rather than developing a siloed strategy for cloud, a business approach will integrate analysis of cloud and cloud-like options into each of these three strategies," he says. "Rather than asking architects to create a cloud strategy, CIOs should direct them to enhance existing strategies. This will include the development, within each strategy, of plans for evolving over the long-term as cloud offerings mature. This reframing away from cloud strategy is much more than semantics. By centering analysis and strategy on business problems and decisions," he explains, the IT decision maker:

• Frames the full range of business criteria by which to compare cloud and non-cloud options.
• Moves analysis away from theoretical definitions of what is and isn't "pure cloud," allowing more cogent analysis of cloud-like, hybrid, transitional, and traditional computing options.
• Allows clearer matching between the economic and risk profiles of a wide range of computing options and the business and financial dynamics of different business scenarios.

Heffner offers specific advice with regard to positioning cloud offerings in relation to concerns about infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and software as a service. But the bottom line is that IT must ensure the technology cart does not get in front of the business horse.

Improve Customer Interactions with UC Plus Virtualization

Customers demand easy access to information—through self-service Web portals as well as from customer service representatives. Customer-focused organizations can improve customer interactions dramatically by integrating communications systems with customer information.  

Data center virtualization, in combination with unified communications systems, improves customer interactions, provides customer service agents with real-time access to up-to-date customer data, offers intuitive self-service options, and protects availability and security of valuable customer information.

Data center virtualization is the unified “back-end” for a Unified Communications platform. Virtualized data centers offer ubiquitous, always on access to critical customer information. The seamless integration of applications and data services within a virtualized IT infrastructure enhances any customer service or call center operation.

Take a look at 4 Advantages:

• Always On: Virtualized application services assure that customer service applications are always available to self-service customers or customer service agents. There is no need for expensive redundant data centers or failover operations, since the virtualized infrastructure is inherently redundant.


• Up-to-Date: Virtualized data services assure that customer information is always up-to-date and in sync regardless of access methods (e.g., web or CRM) or application instance.  Customers and service agents enjoy real-time customer information from any access point.


• Ubiquitous response:  Whether a customer is signing in from New Delhi or New York, virtualization enables them to be routed to the most efficient resource to meet their information needs.  Call-center agents are also routed to the most efficient processor within the virtualized infrastructure assuring optimum performance and response times regardless of locale or current application/information workloads.


• Reduced Cost: The cost of providing customer information application services is dramatically reduced, thanks to a reduction in CapEx and OpEx  costs  associated with the procurement, appointment and ongoing management of a virtualized IT infrastructure.

When combined with a Unified Communications platform, data center virtualization empowers customer call centers or self-service customer applications to deliver the information needed quickly, reliably and in real time, wherever it’s required.

Do You Have a Mobile Workforce Network Strategy?

As enterprises struggle to perform and succeed in today’s fast-paced, hyper-competitive marketplace, they are challenged to ensure that their increasingly mobile workers are well supported. Instead of treating mobile workers as one group and assuming they all have the same needs, your enterprise can provide exactly the support needed by evaluating mobility needs based on specifics.

This means you need to know who your mobile workers are. Before launching a mobile workforce network strategy, it makes sense to begin by profiling the different workers based on their jobs, roles and the information they need to get their work done.

Here are some key profiles that Cisco research has identified:

• Road Warriors. These tend to be executives, outside sales reps and consultants. They may spend more than 80% of their time away from the office traveling or at customer and partner locations. They heavily use email and voice, but tend to have a lower use of back-end business applications.


• Campus Mobiles. These might be IT support staff, healthcare workers, teachers, manufacturing and production staff, or retail associates and managers. They may spend 60% of their time away from their desks. They rely on mobile communications within their campus. And they have heavy, often continuous, application use.


• Corridor Cruisers. You might find these people in marketing, human resources, finance, R&D, IT,  plant and facilities management and maintenance, safety and security staff roles. They typically spend more than 20% of their time away from their primary office desks. They are known for heavy application access and voice services use, but moderate e-mail access.


• Field Force. These are supply chain, fleet, delivery, logistics, public sector and safety, and case workers. They tend to spend most of their time outside the campus, often moving to multiple sites during the day to complete tasks. They rely on specific application access, but are known for light e-mail usage, and moderate voice usage.


• Teleworkers. These tend to be customer service rep¬resentatives, IT help desk workers or inside sales. They primarily work from home. They exhibit continuous and heavy application access in addition to e-mail. They may also be voice-intensive depending upon job duties.

Having profiled these workers, you will be in a much better position to identify what mobile strategies and solutions are most likely to be appropriate to your enterprise. You can turn mobility into a competitive advantage by using it as key driver of business value.

Virtualization Offers More than Scale

Explosive growth of data and processing requirements is driving the need for a new architectural approach to IT infrastructures. The approach of mapping single servers to specific applications simply cannot meet the increasing demands for resources and dynamic response to business needs. Data center virtualization is the solution.

Virtualized architectures offer scalable and cost effective processing platforms. However, that just scratches the surface. Beyond the obvious benefits of scale, virtualization offers:

• Agile response:  Dynamic businesses require quick response. Thanks to virtualization, IT teams can respond to new user and business demands for applications, services and more. Changes in applications, workflows, software revisions, desktop configurations and more are straightforward to deploy and immediately available across the entire infrastructure.


• Reduced capital and operating costs:  Virtual platforms deliver new levels of utilization and performance. Servers that were once 30% utilized reach 80% plus within a virtual infrastructure. With this increase in ROI, costs for power, space and capital are reduced. Management costs are also dramatically reduced, allowing IT staff to focus on innovation and next generation services instead of day-to-day system and resource management.


• Business Continuity:  Virtualized architectures offer affordable alternatives to traditional redundant data centers. Virtual resources act as backup resources across the infrastructure, enabling planned and unplanned downtime with minimal, if any, impact on service delivery.

Virtualization isn’t a new concept. Service providers offered virtualized access to outsourced applications and services nearly a decade ago. Today, a wide number of vendors offer virtualization software, off-the-shelf hardware components and networking solutions that enable an IT staff to integrate and create a virtualized data center.

But the benefits of virtualization are not all in place, yet. The movement to blade servers and storage appliances improves overall ROI while simplifying management. Reduction to costs is important – but there is more to come.

The ultimate benefits of virtualization will come from an automated, ‘lights out’ approach to delivering IT services. Early tools for automation are being deployed by a number of independent vendors. The rewards from virtualization will continue to increase as these tools come to market, are improved and refined, and as they reach ‘standard’ levels for interoperability.

Still, for the near-term, the best approach to data center virtualization is to work with partners who are experts in the design and deployment of virtualized infrastructures.

It’s clear that the time for virtualization is now. The opportunity to improve results from reductions to capital expense, ensuring business continuity and improved agility that enables IT to quickly meet business needs are definitely within reach.

Answer 5 Questions to Ensure Your Network Supports Virtualization

Implementing data center virtualization and virtual server networks isn't as simple as install and done. One of the pivotal components is your network infrastructure. Although virtualization offers significant benefits when it comes to server and desktop deployment, management and utilization, the network requires some updates in business networks to be most effective at supporting the increased demands of virtualization.

Network optimization is critical in virtual environments.  If networks are not properly architected, with the required tools for management, virtual infrastructures can result in less efficiency and more cost. Something every IT department is tasked to avoid.

Following are 5 Questions to answer when planning network support for a virtual infrastructure:

• How will the change affect staffing requirements, and what will be the cost of added complexity, such as increased downtime to accomplish the migration?


• How will you manage your virtual network? While there might be fewer physical switches and routers, a virtualization strategy often means more logical, virtual devices that also have to be managed. Many traditional networking tools may not spot problems unless specifically created for a virtual environment.


• How will you simplify network management? Does your tool allowing IT professionals to interact with a virtual network in much the same way that they would interact with a physical network, such a product should make supporting server virtualization similar to what they already do.


• Can you scale to manage more and diverse devices? Moving to data center virtualization almost always decreases the number of physical servers, but the number of virtual storage servers, for example, can more than double. [International Data Corporation]


• How will you automate network tasks? Virtualization doesn't affect what network managers do, per se. But it does increase how often management tasks must be performed, while requiring more advance planning for capacity and network load balancing. Automation of these tasks is a key to improved efficiency.

Most experts agree that network planning is one of the most critical aspects of any Data Center Virtualization project.  That’s why having a partner that understands how business networks and virtualization work together is critical to success.

Don't Forget About Your Network

The uptake in data center and server virtualization requires that IT rethink their data center networks.  Virtualization requires a new approach  - and perhaps a new vendor choice.

Network optimization is a key issue when it comes to virtualization.  Why? Because virtualization increases server utilization, which in turn increases traffic - creating I/O congestion from the edge devices all the way into the data center.  Within the data center, network demand is geometrically increased as virtualized workloads are distributed across multiple servers. 

Vendors are targeting the network needs of virtualized data centers with a variety of solutions.  These divergent approaches to delivering next generation data center networks can be confusing – and proprietary.  Consequently, choosing the right virtual vendor can be more difficult than ever. 

It’s unclear today which vendor will dominate the virtualized data center network market. What is clear is that IT needs to be smart when selecting next generation technologies:

1. Integrated is better than standalone. Virtualization requires tight integration and scalability between the network and the virtual server architecture.  Buying separate products and knitting them together may be lower cost up front – but will most likely by higher cost in the longer term thanks to the ongoing management overhead to continually tune the products to work together.  Not to mention the finger pointing.  Solutions that are designed to work together from the network through the virtual server architecture will improve initial deployment and ongoing management (and productivity).


2. Avoid vendor lock-in and costly upgrades. As with previous technology advances, proprietary approaches will rule for the first phase of solutions. Each vendor will offer their approach – and over time, will converge to offer open solutions (or integration APIs) to achieve interoperability.  If history repeats itself – market leaders will set the open standards – meaning that buying from an unknown vendor may leave you stranded in your own locked-in world.


3. Double check that roadmap. Ask to see any vendor’s roadmap – as well as for references on their current deployments.  Don’t buy anything without customer evidence of its value.   Ask your network experts to review comprehensive technology roadmaps with each vendor to be sure that vendor is heading in the direction you want to go.

Most importantly – choose a vendor who understands your requirements, your business and can show you successful deployments in customers who mirror your own data center and infrastructure requirements. 

Unified Communications Generates Rapid Returns

Did you know that enterprises are realizing 40-50% savings on their investments in Unified Communications as they lay the foundations for advanced collaboration?

Here’s how.  When they migrate from traditional time-division multiplexing (TDM) to new Unified Communications platforms, they are embracing a number of capabilities that deliver accelerated ROI.  According to Cisco, there are five core capabilities delivering these impressive gains. They include:

• Full IP telephony deployment: You can achieve TCO savings of 15 to 25 percent by moving site-to-site voice traffic from the costly public switched telephone network (PSTN) to the internal data network (toll bypass). The savings stem from lower operating costs, toll bypass, and the introduction of least-cost routing.


• SIP trunking: Additional TCO savings of up to 12 to 26 percent are enabled by lowering local voice connectivity costs—achieved by eliminating multiple dedicated voice lines in favor of provisioning approximately 80-percent fewer SIP voice channels to handle the concurrent sessions. The high end of the savings range can be realized for very distributed companies such as retailers, retail banks, and other companies with multiple branch-office locations.


• Intercompany media routing: This capability can drive incremental 5- to 10-percent TCO savings by routing business-to-business calls – including rich media collaboration -- over the Internet in a secure, high quality fashion.


• Session management: Enterprises can realize an additional 4- to 8- percent TCO reduction through centralized routing and VOIP management. For a relatively low initial investment, enterprises can capture savings from existing telephony assets and achieve a rapid ROI. When combined with migration to full unified communications, session management solutions deliver even greater savings.


• Mobility:  New mobility capabilities tied to Unified Communication solutions can save enterprises 13 to 20 percent on rapidly rising mobile costs. These solutions reduce airtime charges, lower roaming costs with single number reach, and enable easier dialing and lower costs for international calls.

Given the challenging demands associated with today’s economy, enterprises of all kinds are under pressure to drive out costs and drive up efficiencies. They also are seeking ways to enable collaboration that will enhance agility and deliver a competitive advantage. What’s clear is that these gains are now within reach. To learn more about how Cisco is delivering on this promise, download this white paper.

Develop a Roadmap for Evolving Your Network Infrastructure

Many small-to-mid-size companies evolve their networks in an ad hoc manner. They purchase point solutions with more of a focus to addressing an immediate need than in assessing how future needs will impact the choice. Not only does that increase the complexity of the network, but it can also create obstacles to supporting company growth.

By creating a roadmap for evolving your network, you can streamline the complexity as you set up IT staff to more easily manage to future needs. We’ve asked Keith Grieshaber, our VP of Technology to answer a few questions to help you plan for your network’s evolution.

Q. What are the components that should be included in developing a roadmap for network evolution?

KG:  Understanding the business strategic goals and objectives for the company as a whole will set the stage for a technology roadmap.  Once this vision is understood by the technology leadership team, the roadmap can include the appropriate infrastructure and technology.  Some common components that affect today’s technology decisions include cloud computing, security risk mitigation, acquisition planning and much more.

Q. How does IT best determine the role of their existing systems/solutions when developing a network evolution plan?

KG:  The existing systems fit into one of three categories.  They do not meet the existing business requirements, they only meet today’s business requirements, or they have the ability to carry the business into a future that aligns with the long term goals and objectives of the company.

Q. What are the pressing challenges you’re seeing in for today’s IT departments around network development?

KG:  For a company to be successful in today’s world, it has to respond quickly to our ever-changing economical environment.  The technology infrastructure must be ready to support key business objectives in hours and days, not weeks and months to capitalize of business opportunities.

Another challenge IT departments face is partnering with the right technology vendor. It is important to choose a partner that will take the time to learn and understand your business, and help leverage your existing technology infrastructure.  True technology partners will reach the level of a trusted advisor.

Q. What are some of the issues around mobility that must be addressed when combining wired and wireless networks?

KG:  A wireless network is a fluid environment that is susceptible to outside interference.   With that said, the wireless infrastructure must be designed to continually meet the business requirements of the wireless network while maintaining security, control, coverage, and stability.  Today’s wireless requirements are usually serve three to five business objectives (e.g. guest access, voice, video) and they must be balanced with the appropriate security when connected back to the wired network.