managed services

Managed WAN services: Who you gonna call?

WAN stands for wide area network, right? Since that’s the case, Current Analysis Research Director Brian Washburn believes in going wide or going home if you’re looking for a managed WAN services provider. When it comes to breadth, depth and reach of services, Washburn looks to the biggest global carriers, like AT&T, Verizon Business, Orange Business and BT Global services, if you’re talking worldwide presence, along with consulting, professional services, global networks and service personnel on-the-ground presence.

Of course lots of smaller telecom service providers offer managed WAN services well, and Washburn notes Qwest, Sprint, Global Crossing, New Edge Networks and MegaPath. In the “rising star” category is PAETEC. Notably absent on his list are cable companies, even though they serve smaller businesses well with managed router, managed firewall and managed VPN offerings. Go figure.

From the WAN mailbag: IPv6, WAN jobs, the carrier connection

In order to succeed, journalism has to be a two-way street.  Reporters talk to people, these people provide the framework for an article, and then people respond to the article through letters, email and op-ed articles.

Service journalism - the kind that populates the virtual pages of SearchenterpriseWAN.com - is even more dependent on reader interaction since it is more focused on news you can use rather than the traditional who did what to whom and why approach.  The readership is obviously more technical and more interested in news and tips that can be utilized in their day-to-day jobs, and more willing to share observations from the WAN front lines with other readers.

The following is an  edited  sampling of some of the letters and comments we received from the SearchenterpriseWAN.com readership over the past several weeks via email, the social networking and, yes, even through old school mail routes.

On a recent series of articles and a video report focusing on the move toward IPv6 and the impending IP addressing crisis:

I believe that moving to ipv6 is almost impossible now.  As far as i can see all relevant network equipment was already adopted few years ago, but applications are still coded (many of them badly) for v4.   More important,  it scares many network administrators.  So, unless something very unexpected happens,  we are going to stay with the v4 infrastructure for a very long time.

- G. Michaelov, Technical account manager, Aman Computers

***

I’m not seeing a massive shift toward IPv6. Because most enterprises NAT a small set of public IP addresses to a large set of private addresses, the urgency of moving off IPv4 is just not there.

- T. Yohe, VP engineering, Stampede Technologies

In response to a LinkedIN query on improvements in the WAN jobs market and related article an apparent thaw in WAN employment opportunities:

Interestingly, WAN performance will usually be an issue for companies that have gone through a consolidation process.  I’ve always approached WDS / APM as an enabler for companies to deploy other technologies on the WAN, and also as a way to better manage what they already have.  So,  based on this, even in a recession, these types of technologies should be high on the list of ‘things to address’ in any organization that’s connected with some geographical distance between sites.
Interestingly on looking around ‘personally’ for opportunities in this area, most if not all of the companies I spoke to (Vendor and SI), were looking to address recruitment again in Q4 09. Some of the SP’s I’ve engaged with are also actively building an ‘application aware’ service, which should generate some interest from the bandwidth provider side.

- A. Ford, proposition manager, Telindus

In response to a series discussing key points in selecting, deploying and ‘future-proofing’ your WAN solution, as well as a look at FTP file transfer alternatives:

I just want to expand on the point about carrier/cloud/managed deployments as we are seeing an increased demand in this area from business to service smaller offices.  It is really difficult for companies to justify spending thousands of dollars at each small office (typically using DSL) for WAN optimization gear.  The compelling value of carrier deployments is in the centralization of gear in POPs around the globe so one can take advantage of economies of scale in being able to share the WAN optimization equipment investment across a number of remote locations.

While there are trade offs in that you cannot take advantage of compressing that local circuit to save on bandwidth spend, end users can still benefit from increased application performance across the WAN.  Hybrid solutions are a great way to optimize the cost/benefit trade off.  Use CPE where the bandwidth savings due to compression can be significant while using a network approach to optimize traffic for smaller offices where CPE expense cannot be justified.

- K. Lynch, product manager, Virtela

Network security spending driven by cloud computing, managed services

We’ve been asking a lot of questions about network security lately, specifically targeting those companies that are getting more involved in such things as cloud computing, software as a service (SaaS), managed services, and other areas where applications and data are more virtual and bounce around a network like digital nomads.

Most of the vendors we talk to, including those involved in very heavyweight and mission-critical applications like CRM and ERP, insist that current Internet security safeguards and firewall filters are enough to keep everything safe and secure on your WAN, LAN, PAN and so on. A representative for a very big and very well-known enterprise software company also said – quite blithely – that security is the user’s problem and not a big blip on their radar.

This attitude is surprising, given the fact that companies are expected to spend more on security software and services next year, even as the budgets for other infrastructure segments are declining as a result of the weakened economy.

Spending on security software and services is expected to outpace that for general IT, according to market researcher Gartner Inc. Software security spending is expected to grow by approximately 4% in 2010, while spending on security services is projected to grow almost 3%, Gartner reports from a survey of more than 1,000 IT professionals with worldwide budget responsibilities.

The uptick in security spending is in part being driven by a shift toward managed security services, cloud-based email/Web-security solutions, and third-party compliance-related consulting and vulnerability audits and scans, Gartner points out.

Companies looking to validate a higher budget for security spending probably don’t have to look any further than the firms in their own geographic and industry-segment backyard. In its comprehensive Data Breach Investigations Report, Verizon Business documented 90 confirmed security breaches within the businesses that employ its services, totaling roughly 285 million compromised records. Roughly 74% of these breaches came from outside sources and 20% from insiders.

The industries hardest hit by security problems include retail (31%), financial (30%), and food and beverage (14%).

“Businesses should also recognize that new threats or vulnerabilities may require security spending that exceeds the amounts allocated and should consider setting aside up to 15% of the IT security budget to address the potential risks and impact of such unforeseen issues,” said Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner.

We couldn’t agree more, especially as more efforts are made to speed things up and boost performance in the WAN, and companies rely more on cloud-based and managed services — all areas that we will be covering more as we move toward the final quarter of 2009 and look for ways to approach networking in a more strategic and security-minded fashion in 2010.

** Gartner’s report, Security Software and Services Spending Will Outpace Other IT Spending Areas in 2010, is available for a fee on the company’s website.

Verizon dives into deep end of network services pool

Technology trade shows can be surreal places, especially when the location is Las Vegas where fantasy takes a quick left turn and everything eventually turns up in an all you can eat buffet.

At Interop this week, which has evolved to become one of the more important networking events in the industry, the ghost of Elvis and lesser entertainers were everywhere as vendors on the exhibit floor resorted to showgirls, D-list magicians and even a full-scale boxing exhibition to attract attendees and collect an audience for new product pitches.

A handful of companies even collaborated to create a beer safari on the exhibit floor, offering a taste to people who trekked from booth to booth. Others took a more ‘rat pack’ approach and provided martinis, olives and garnishes included. Ah, Vegas!

Verizon Business provided one of the more unique venues for a press briefing at Interop, when plans for a conference room apparently fell through and executives met poolside at the Mandalay Beach Hotel in private Garden Cabana #8. To get there, I had to take a short cut through the Bikini Beach Bar, which not so oddly was populated only by rough-looking males sporting an interesting assortment of tattoo body art.

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