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.

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

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.

]]> http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/wans/network-security-spending-driven-by-cloud-computing-managed-services/feed/ 0 http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/wans/verizon-dives-into-deep-end-of-network-services-pool/ http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/wans/verizon-dives-into-deep-end-of-network-services-pool/#comments Wed, 20 May 2009 01:21:31 +0000 TScannell http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/wans/?p=17 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.

Once there, I took off my sport coat and rolled up my sleeves – after all, we were poolside – and dived right into a conversation about IP networking advances, cloud- based tools that improve application performance and a new partnership with CA, Inc. that could very well push Verizon further into managed services. Elvis would be proud, at least if he were a network administrator for a large West Coast enterprise. Thank you very much.

The agreement with CA, announced on Tuesday, builds upon an existing long-term relationship and further cements the company’s ability to provide network management, monitoring and reporting tools to its expanding client base. It also extends the company’s global MPLS-based network offerings, collectively known as Private IP, which has been available on the market for at least nine years.

The idea is to provide services and tools to customers who want to take their data and network infrastructures into the clouds, by deploying services throughout the network and eliminating the need for costly and duplicitous individual installations. As a speaker at one of many Interop sessions noted, cutting back on unnecessary deployments and consolidating assets are the ‘hard dollar’ values of cloud computing, virtualization and all the other buzz words that are a marketer’s dream.

Adding to this is an enhanced Internet Security Assessment service, that can be used to analyze potentially harmful network traffic and other nasties that might easily bring a system to its knees;  and an updated managed services capability for Verizon Secure Gateway-Firewall that can keep an eye on data, voice and video traffic as it flows between public and private networks. Both of these capabilities are managed by Verizon.

Security and keeping a close watch on networked managed resources is a key part of Verizon’s announcement at Interop, which goes well beyond just sniffing around for possible denial of service attacks and unauthorized associations. Verizon’s new security tools keeps tabs on how your network should function, what protocols and software should be installed, and identifies all of your approved hardware and software assets, says Conti.

The second piece of the pie is an enhancement of the firewall on the secure gateway that manages the flow and policy compliance of applications bouncing in and out of the cloud and through a corporate WAN or LAN. This includes partner programs and applications, which account for roughly 32% of all breaches in a network, according to Verizon research.

“What you see is a progression to protecting and mitigating threats before they even reach the network,” notes Conti.

When it comes to viruses and malicious network traffic, if it happens in Vegas it won’t necessarily stay in Vegas, and that’s the word served up poolside at Garden Cabana #8.