networking ICT
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http://dcsuk.info/n/yguf
Customers on the edge in 2012
It’s time to redefine the economics of the Campus network and recognise its importance in delivering flexible capacity, virtualisation,
security, availability and mobility, says Marcus Jewell, Brocade UK Country Manager.
I
t’s always struck me as ironic that in a world as fast moving and transformational as technology, that many of the problems our customers face don’t ever seem to change. Increasing data volumes, virtualisation, security, availability and mobility, remain challenges. As does, ‘how to spend the smallest amount possible to bring performance up to the level needed now without having to spend even more next year and the year after’. And as we all know, these problems aren’t about to go away. Indeed, by the time we resolve them, there is always something ‘new’ that brings them back into focus.
And the focus in 2012 is going to be driven not by the CIO, or data centre demands, or IT managers’ requirements – this year is going to be year of that most challenging client of all: the user. ‘Quality of Experience’ is beginning to have a bigger impact on the IT landscape.
We have all heard it said that IT is no longer in the hands of the IT department. Increased use of mobile platforms (think smartphones and tablet devices), cloud services that provide access to applications and data storage solutions set outside the corporate firewall, and demand for new applications at speeds the IT department just can’t deliver, are driving a cultural change that has significant implications for the network. Users are increasingly empowered by technology to determine how, when and what IT services and solutions they use – with or without the IT departments consent or knowledge.
VARs and Systems Integrators (SIs) are increasingly being asked to help customers’ IT and network teams respond, and for the past few years the focus has been on making the data centre more flexible,
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www.dcsuk.info I May 2012
scalable and resilient so that deployment of services and applications can be brought back under IT management control. The potential risks of users downloading and accessing systems and software without IT approval do not need to be gone into detail here. Ensuring IT staff can deploy business driven changes across the network quickly and simply, while guaranteeing uptime, access, and resilience in the network to cope with increased data, and greater fluctuations in demand at shorter notice, has been key. And this trend will continue, with on-going adoption of virtualisation and Ethernet Fabrics. After all, the data centre is the heart of the IT infrastructure – and customers need to get their foundation fixed before trying to build any kind of effective solution on top.
The problem is that much of the ‘new’ technology currently in vogue – such as cloud, unified communication, collaboration tools, video conferencing, mobile platforms and so on – are all about the user experience. And the user rarely (if ever) sits in the data centre. So if the data centre network is top notch, but the Campus network isn’t, the user is likely to find the kind of problems the IT department has spent time and money on fixing at the data centre end are still prevalent. Loss of connection or inability to connect, poor quality
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