Networking

A Return to Dry Land (and a little bit about cellular coverage at sea)

Just got back from my vacation, and I’m pretty sure the batteries have been recharged, but I’m still trying to get geared back up. I really did manage to disconnect (for the most part) on this vacation, and as I said in my previous post – it is a good idea once in a while.

That being said, I did keep an eye on things while I was at sea, but mostly to insure that nothing major was melting down and also to keep my inbox from being a total mess when I returned. My phone never left the cabin during the trip, but I did check it once a day to clear things out. I left instructions to my staff to mark things urgent if anything earth-shattering did happen, but luckily we dodged that bullet. I’m a huge believer in the philosophy that a manager should be able to disappear without having things fall apart. There is very little that I do where I’m not “backed up” by a member of my staff. The only exception to that are things such as performance review and similar staffing issues.

One of the things which did surprise me during the cruise was the ability to stay connected. Our ship offered a service called Cellular at Sea, and it provided outstanding service for the duration of the cruise. The service works with just about every carrier, and being an AT&T customer I found that I had about 4 bars of 3G coverage in my cabin. The service shuts down while you’re in port, so you’re on your own in picking up local coverage if any is available.

You do need to keep in mind that you’re roaming while using the service, and costs can go up accordingly. This wasn’t a huge concern for me, because I didn’t use the phone for any voice calls. I did bump my kids’ text service up to allow for international text messaging, and I’m hoping that saved me a few bucks. They did limit their use of texting, so I’m hoping the hit isn’t too bad when I see next month’s bill.

iPhone Mania

Holy cow! Is anyone else’s e-mail inbox filling up with news items about the imminent changes to the iPhone? Before Noon today, I received 4 different news articles and newsletters featuring headlines and stories about the upcoming announcements which are still a week away. I can hardly wait for next Monday afternoon to see what the actual announcement itself will bring. The buzz Apple manages to create surrounding their product announcements is truly something to be admired.

Yes, I do think the iPhone will make some significant inroads into corporate IT as a result of the upcoming changes, chief among them the addition of 3G and Activesync. We’ve already got between 5-10 employees with iPhones, and they’re already using them to hit Exchange via Outlook Web Access. For us, connecting them via Activesync makes a lot more sense, and it should add some significant security features such as the ability to perform a remote wipe. However, we are an ad agency, so what makes sense for us might not make quite as much sense for other industries.

Frankly, it will be much more interesting to see what happens in those other industries. Will corporate IT be as willing to accept iPhones on their systems? I’m guessing they won’t be as receptive as we are, but I’m also well aware of how difficult it is to say no to the CEO.

Unified Communications Implementation – Update

We’re making excellent progress on our Microsoft UC implementation. To date, we’ve rolled out Microsoft Office Communications Server and in our main office, and we’ve begun testing with the Communicator and LiveMeeting clients. In addition, we’ve nearly completed the migration to Exchange 2007 and we’re in the process of removing Exchange servers from our remote sites. This week we’re rolling out OCS Mediation servers to our main office and two remote locations. These servers, along with soon to be installed gateway servers, will be the connection between our Exchange server and our phone switches. We’re probably about 2 weeks away from tying it all into our existing phone system.

I’m currently in the process of presenting an overview to our users in order to prep them for what’s ahead. We’ll be doing formal training for the system around the middle of June, but for now I’m just laying some of the groundwork and giving employees an idea of what’s ahead. One of the big reasons we’re deploying Microsoft UC is to facilitate the connection of new phone systems into our existing system. Secondary to that is our plan to once again implement Unified Messaging – this time through Exchange 2007, and also to provide presence information via the Communicator client.

One of my great fears is that I’m introducing too much too fast, and some of the items I didn’t mention above could also take off on us. In addition to those features mentioned above, we’ll also be providing chat capability, the ability to easily redirect phone calls to other numbers, and additional conferencing capability through LiveMeeting. I’d like to roll these items out following the initial implementation of UC, but I know that some of my users will begin to play with them on day one. Other than LiveMeeting, which is a separate client I can choose to leave uninstalled for now, many of the features mentioned above are built right into Communicator.

I’m also a bit nervous about Microsoft’s Mac support. We’ve only recently received an update to Messenger for the Mac which works with OCS 2007, and we’re currently searching for a LiveMeeting client. I’m concerned that LiveMeeting on OCS requires a client and does not provide any web-based conferencing capability. That being the case, it’s not necessarily the end of the world, because out intent all along was to use this primarily as an internal conferencing system. We use Acrobat Connect as our conferencing system to the outside world. However, it would be serious limitation if LiveMeeting didn’t provide a way to include our own Macs.That would hurt.

Paying Attention to Pricing Models

Over the last several days, I’ve gotten pretty worked up over some vendor pricing models. I understand that vendors are attempting to recoup the investment they have in developing their products, but unfortunately the pricing model vendors may choose to adopt can hit you particularly hard. It’s opened my eyes to this particular issue, and I’m going to pay a whole lot more attention to it going forward.

How would we like it if Cisco or HP suddenly decided to adopt a new pricing model for their network switches? What if this new pricing model required that we had to pay more based on the volume of data moving through the switch? This model would be prohibitively expensive for those of us who routinely move big Photoshop files around. It also doesn’t make a lot of sense, because it’s the same switch whether you’re moving around Word documents or Photoshop files. Thankfully, things don’t work that way in the switch world. You purchase the switch you need, and pricing varies depending on the switch’s speed and the number of ports. The pricing model makes sense.

This brings me to a couple of vendors who apply a different model in order to recoup their development costs. For the past several months I’ve been in discussions with Bakbone about their backup products. Bakbone uses a pricing model where you’re asked to pay based on the volume of data you’re backing up. We’ve also purchased network acceleration devices from Expand Networks in the past 12 months. In Expand’s case, the pricing model is based on the amount of bandwidth being accelerated. In both cases, the smaller company which has large storage and bandwidth needs is penalized. The pricing model works a whole lot better if you’re saving and moving Word documents than it does for Photoshop documents.

In the case of backup software, if I’ve already spent the money for the drive space to store my backups, why on earth should I have to pay a software vendor based on how much data I’m backing up? Does the software have to work any harder in order to back up more stuff? In the case of network acceleration, if I’ve already purchased a piece of hardware which is sufficient for my bandwidth needs, why do I have to pay more to accelerate 20MBps than I do to accelerate 10MBps? The hardware hasn’t changed. I’m already paying my ISP for the bandwidth. Isn’t the whole idea of a network acceleration device that I get more bandwidth for the buck? It feels to me like I’m paying for that extra bandwidth either way.

For a company such as ours, where our data and bandwidth needs tend to be excessive, and out of proportion to other companies of our size, these pricing models are prohibitively expensive. A pricing model based on users or connections makes much more sense for us. It’s been a good lesson for me. In the case of Expand we’ve been very happy with the product itself. Their network acceleration appliances work well, and we’ve managed to work out the pricing issues so far. However, this could be an ongoing battle as our company grows, and I don’t particularly relish the thought of revisiting these pricing issues every time we add an office or renew our support contracts.

It’s been a valuable lesson learned for me, and it’s one I’ll pay a lot more attention to in the future. Because our storage and bandwidth needs are out of proportion to our size, basing a pricing model on these elements just doesn’t work for us.

Instant Messaging vs E-Mail

How many of you are currently utilizing Instant Messaging as a legitimate business tool in your organizations? We’re currently planning an implementation of Microsoft’s Unified Communications system, and their IM product – Office Communicator forms the center piece of this offering, providing information about user’s presence. I’m finding that selling Instant Messaging into our organization is not going to be an easy sell, and trying to sell the Microsoft version of it makes it even tougher.

As it turns out, our latest acquisition is an office which was already utilizing Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger in their day-to-day business. They are thrilled over the fact that we are considering the adoption of a tool they are already using, and they would protest long and hard if we attempted to remove it from their systems. When I asked them why they chose the Microsoft client instead of a more popular product such as AIM, they told me that they actually preferred the fact that the Microsoft client was less widely accepted – and it actually made it easier to sell as a legitimate business tool. This new group of users is actually turning out to be my biggest ally in terms of selling it to my own company. Beyond that argument, it’s fairly easy to make the case in terms of Communicator’s enterprise level capabilities, including integration with Microsoft’s other products and the ability to control and manage it via Group Policy, but those arguments tend to get lost on either users or management.

One of the things I’ve been asked is how is IM different from e-mail, and I actually think that particular question is a very telling one. My users have a great deal of difficulty understanding why they would ever use an Instant Messaging tool for the simple reason that we’re already using e-mail in that fashion. The point they are missing is that we have been misusing e-mail over the past several years, and that e-mail has already become an IM tool in our business. The expectations surrounding e-mail have become so unreasonable that many of our users can and do use it as a chat tool. E-mail conversations routinely happen in real-time, and people actually get upset when an e-mailed question isn’t answered immediately.

I suspect that one of the first steps I need to take in selling the idea of IM to my users is to break them of their bad e-mail habits. If we don’t do that, then they are correct in that they don’t need a separate IM product. The question is how exactly do you break these current e-mail habits? It’s obviously going to take a concerted effort in terms of re-educating our users, and I fully expect that to be a real battle.

Streaming and the NCAA Tournament Coverage

What better day to discuss the issue of streaming audio/video than today? With the NCAA Tournament upon us, and CBS offering up every game at no cost, there will undoubtedly be more than a few of our users who decide to spend the afternoon keeping track of their bracket selections.

We’ve tried blocking this type of traffic in the past, but any such efforts on our part have not lasted long. The reality of our business is such that we need to ability to view or listen to streaming video/audio in order to do our jobs. We have Public Relations and Public Affairs people whose jobs require them to monitor local and national media for breaking stories. We have Creative and Account Service people who routinely use YouTube for viewing the latest commercials created for both our own clients and our competitors. As a result, any efforts to block this traffic have been short-lived.

We’ve tried monitoring tools, using both software and/or hardware to attempt to keep tabs on streaming in order to cut down on the non-productive uses (today’s basketball games would be a great example). The problem with monitoring is that it can get expensive. We’ve got 5 different external pipes we’d have to monitor, so any appliance-based solution would require 5 pieces of hardware to monitor all the access points. Furthermore, it requires somebody to watch things, and none of us really have the time to sit at our desks and monitor real-time streaming. When we have done this sort of thing, generally the only time we check is when we’re hearing complaints about things being slow. Today might be an exception, but at the moment we’ve basically given up.

I’ve always resisted the urge to have IT personnel act as “cops” when it comes to these types of productivity issues. We do have a policy against non-business use which covers this type of thing, but as far as actively monitoring, I’d much rather have my guys spending their time fixing things and finding ways to increase productivity than acting as a high-priced police force. If we can find some ways to monitor things without breaking the bank, great but otherwise we’ve got better things to do. Personally, I feel very strongly that it’s the job of management to keep tabs on their own personnel, and I think it’s a bit of a cop out for folks to expect IT to do that job for them. If an Account Executive is wasting their time watching basketball games or viewing non-work related videos on YouTube, I would expect that to be reflected in their job performance. IT might be called in to verify that type of activity is occurring, and I’m perfectly ok with that. I just don’t believe that we should be the ones bringing productivity issues to the attention of managers. It should work the other way around.

How does your company handle these types of issues? Do you monitor? Are you doing anything special with regards to blocking the NCAA tournament coverage?

The iPhone – an Enterprise device?

Now that Apple has announced the long-awaited SDK for the iPhone, I thought it would be a good time to discuss mobile devices. We’ve had a policy restricting employees from purchasing their PDAs/Phones and tying them into our network, but over the past 5 years we’ve still managed to reach the point where we’re currently supporting 3 different platforms/devices (Palm, Blackberry, and Windows) .

We certainly didn’t wake up one day and decide that it would be a good idea to support three different mobile platforms. In fact, from what I’ve seen and heard, we arrived at this point like many others have done. A senior manager or CEO shows up on our doorstep with a new device and says “make this work” I envy those of you who are able to successfully fend off all of these requests, and I would note that we do manage to deny more requests than we approve.

I’ll actually take responsibility for introducing the 3^rd platform, which was Windows Mobile. I was never particularly fond of adding Blackberry or Goodlink servers to my environment, so when Microsoft added push capability to the Exchange servers I already owned, I jumped in with both feet. Don’t get me wrong, the Blackberry and Goodlink servers are both good products, but given the opportunity I’m more than willing to eliminate the middleman. I also find the provisioning process to be much simpler on the Windows platform. We’re currently in the process of phasing out a Goodlink server which supports the Palm devices, so soon we’ll only be supporting two platforms.

Which brings me to the iPhone, and I’m certain that our phasing out of the Palm platform and Goodlink will coincide with our phasing in of the iPhone as an Enterprise platform. In my mind, the recent announcement of ActiveSync support for the iPhone seals the deal in terms of our supporting this platform. We’ve already got several senior managers using the iPhone, and they’re actually content to access e-mail via Outlook Web Access. Once we can deliver push e-mail directly from Exchange, I can’t see any reason not to use this device as an option for mobile e-mail, particularly in our business. I’m thrilled that it’s going to work directly with Exchange. We’re signed up for the beta, and I look forward to testing this as a mobile option for our organization.