Indeed, CIOs are being challenged by other ‘C’ level executives to make the corporate bandwidth go further by ensuring the organization’s investment in IT infrastructure is used as effectively and efficiently as possible.
The recent announcement that Microsoft and Citrix are expanding their partnership to work on a joint WAN optimization product, aimed at challenging the dominance of Cisco, has brought network optimization to the fore. However, before organizations can make decisions on optimizing any network, whether that is LAN or WAN, a true picture of what the network is doing must be obtained.
Traditionally, probes have been used to gain insight into network performance and resource usage. However, with today’s web-enabled applications, these probes find it difficult to distinguish between the recreational user of port 80, and the SAP application that uses port 80.
Organizations have previously viewed networks as a ‘black hole’ that swallows corporate funds to ensure all users are kept connected at a speed considered acceptable for the industry sector in which they operate. However, as IT budgets are coming under increased pressure, many CIOs will want to have a greater understanding of network resource usage, and will need tools that allow them to use this resource more effectively and efficiently.
Evidence from a UK-based survey by network security provider SmoothWall found that 61% of employees admitted using personal Hotmail or G-mail while at work, 41% used IM such as MSN Messenger, and 31% had downloaded music or films.
These findings support those from a 2005 survey in the US conducted by staffing agency Accountempts, which found employees admitted to spending, on average, 56 minutes a day (excluding lunch) performing personal tasks such as online shopping, online-banking, IM friends, etc while at work. This use of the corporate network for personal use has an impact on the level of service experienced by applications competing for this resource.
CIOs looking for a cost-effective method of delivering the performance demanded by business users should consider network optimization. By directing resources to those applications that drive business benefit, and reducing resources allocated to recreational activities, organizations can delay spending on network upgrades for purely performance reasons.
With Microsoft now entering the market in WAN optimization as a serious player, we can expect the benefits to be more widely reported, and these technologies begin to gain traction with customers. This market segment will see significant growth over the next five years.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
