UD ACM Minutes for 3-7-2007

Steve has introduced his boss, Vess Bakalov, who works at SEVONE and is in charge Network Design and gave a presentation. It is as follows...

Of necessary Evil
- IT has traditionally been viewed as a cost center across non-IT companies
- Challenges justifying investment in IT
Unclear Benefits
Too much Hype
Too many late projects
- Challenges managing the IT department
Quantifying objectives
Process design
t3chn0-sp33k

Along came the network
- Networks emerged as the single most important driving force behind the wide adoption of computers both at home and in businesses.
-Since the early 90's, more and more applications have migrated to the network.
- The Network has grown into one of the most important assets of companies of all sizes.

Commoditization
- What is commoditization?
- When can something be called a commodity?
- Is the commoditization of IT good for business?

How do commodities compete?
- Driving up availability while simultaneously driving down the unit cost.

The Network as a Utility
- If IT is becoming a commodity, then the infrastructure is becoming a utility.
- The role of management is to achieve that utility-like status.
Automating basic tasks
Enable more "strategic" tasks
Planning
Optimization
Increasing Alignment with the business unit
- This means both technical as well as human behavior modification.

Your New Phone
- VoIP: How the network is replacing your phone
Why will it?
Adoption of VoIP has skyrocketed in modern enterprises (25% have it, and 75% expect to have it within 3 years).
Cost savings and exciting application are driving the deployment.
Why it hasn't yet?
Poor Planning.
Poor Budgeting.
Poor Interoperability.

What do we need to get there?
- Process, Process, Process!
- Manage.
Fault
Performance
Configuration
Security
Accountability

A Network as an Employee
- The network does a lot of work in your enterprise
- The same rigor that is used to measure the performance of an employee should be used to measure the performance of the network.
Throughput
Latency
Jitter
Outages

Agility
- Agility is about managing change
- Change comes in many forms
Market pressures
Competitive pressures
Technological pressures
Natural disasters
Etc.
-Managing changes requires quick communication and informed decision making.

What is an Agile Organization?
- An organization that can respond in a real-time-enough fashion to situations that impact the health and well-being of teh organization and its stakeholders.
Wal-Mart
U of Flordia
Department of Homeland Security

Becoming Agile
- Becoming Agile is about Becoming
Proactive
Predict and be ready for change
-Reactive
The best laid plans do not survive the first bullet
- Comprehensive
- In Depth

FYI
- The Innovation Gap was defined to be the difference between the Importance of Innovation and the Amount of Innovation.
- The six areas of IT with the greatest innovation gap were:
Security (35%)
Performance Management (32%)
Management other than performance management (29%)
WAN Services (25%)
Data Center (20%)
Converged Applications
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For next week...
Xbox Tourney!!! 4 rooms and 4 projectors!!!