General IT

Halloween may last one day, but network managers have to face IT nightmares that haunt them all year long. Nightmares like those caused by users exercising poor judgment. In some ways, they're not much different from the folks you see in horror films who always make the worst decision possible. Case in point is Geico's Halloween-themed commercial running on American TV this month. The piece depicts four friends running through fields, at night. They come upon a creepy farm house, and decide to hide behind... chainsaws.

Over the past few years, organizations have been forced to deal with the rapid rise of BYOD, which created a number of IT problems as more and more employees began bringing in their own devices to the workplace. Today, there is a new trend IT departments are preparing to deal with that could be more troublesome than its predecessor: Wear Your Own Device (WYOD). With the number of wearable devices steadily increasing, from Google Glass to Apple watches, it’s only a matter of time before we see a proliferation of wearables in the enterprise.

Most college students in the U.S. spent a good part of this month prepping and taking their fall midterm exams, and straining their campus networks as a result. IT teams who manage the campus network, however, are tested each and every day in subjects like BYOD and network performance. With the average student carrying around at least two wireless devices, campus networks are under pressure to deliver a sustainable and consistent online experience.

Today I'd like to share an excerpt and link to today's blog about network management posted by Jim Frey from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) . It's a great lead-in to his firm's recent report on Enterprise Network Availability Monitoring Systems (ENAMS). From Jim's post:

Our Hero, the SysAdmin

Just after the first matches got underway for the 2014 World Cup we put a survey into the field. We wanted to measure the impact the world’s most popular sporting event was having on corporate networks. And whether IT managers and network administrators had heeded the lessons learned from past events to better prepare this time around. With the increased popularity of the World Cup and soccer in general, we were confident there would be a noticeable impact. The majority of World Cup matches would coincide with the heart of the work day here in the United States. And there was wide-spread concern that workers would be streaming matches in record numbers. This would, in effect, adversely affect business operations.

Many cash-strapped UK government bodies are spending on network management tools offering features that they either don’t need, or will never use. And they appear unable to easily gather fundamental data about the growing number of devices on their network.

If asked to name the five most-viewed sporting events in the world, what would you say?

Today we announced the results of our BYOD on Campus survey taken by 313 students at colleges and universities around the U.S. The survey highlights the disconnect that exists on college campuses between students and IT professionals who work hard to keep up with Wi-Fi demand. Students often blame the network for slowdowns while doing their homework. In fact, the source of their frustration can be their fellow classmates who are watching shows on Netflix or listening to their favorite music on Spotify. Survey highlights included:

I was asked recently to speak on a panel entitled “What IT Skills/Roles Should Reside in the Business” Premier CIO Forum in Boston. The event, held earlier this week, was a well-attended and engaging event supported by SIM (Society for Information Management). There was an impressive roster of IT executives from across New England.

Today's tale from the front lines of IT comes from a customer who works at a global conferencing company. His firm's customers use online services that require real-time responsiveness for video and voice. So it was a shock when a playback service for recorded calls was suddenly afflicted by sporadic slowdowns several months after its launch. It pitched users into a black hole of lost recorded conference calls.

A university network supports a broad population of students, faculty and others who all rely on a wireless network to do their work. Consider the user population. A big segment of it grew up with the Internet. And they have little patience for dead spots that don’t provide access to it.

Wigs on the network? This is technology that will affect networks I surely couldn't have predicted a few years ago.

Any large city puts its network of traffic signals to a severe test during drive-time rush hours as cars, trucks and other conveyances stream through the city. That’s why a major Canadian city came to Ipswitch for a network monitoring solution to monitor equipment installed in hundreds of traffic locations throughout its sprawling metropolis.

A facilities manager at a global real estate firm called recently. He was literally hot under the collar. Company headquarters on the U.S. West coast had been fitted two years earlier with a new HVAC system. It was designed to showcase the firm’s commitment to environmental efficiency. A month before we heard from him, temperatures at HQ started to unexpectedly spike up to the high 80s. And just as quickly subside. More than a few hot heads began to complain.

Convenience stores are the fast way for folks on the road to run in, grab what they need and be off to the next stop in their busy days. But when a regional convenience store chain known for its speedy service found itself spending as much as 6 hours to recover from fairly frequent failures of DVR servers used to help secure its stores, they gave Ipswitch’s network monitoring division a call.

Halloween represents the time of year that we embrace ghouls and ghosts, celebrate the macabre, and eat too much candy. This coming Thursday I’ll be greeted at my front door by trick or treat’ers, lined up for their packaged sugar rushes. In between trips to the check out the little ghosts and ghouls, I'll be watching one of my favorite horror movies. For me, being scared is part of the fun.

I just read an article published by CNBC online about the chaos caused by BYOD in the workplace, and completely agree.

Now you can isolate issues and resolve network and application problems before users are even aware anything is wrong. The new, easy to-use WhatsUp Application Performance Monitor, lets you diagnose and fix complex application performance problems quickly from within a unified dashboard.

When you evaluate application performance monitoring solutions, comparing capabilities is one key part of the assessment. But it can be misleading. Many application performance monitoring solutions include features that, while interesting, are not critical to you. Sometimes the feature-rich solutions are more costly, complex, and difficult to implement than you want. But sometimes more affordable products include features that aren’t high priority to you. The cost isn’t itself the determinant of whether products have more features than you need; it’s more a question of how closely each solution fits your purpose.