The need to focus Last week in Denver, Network World hosted an event entitled 'IT Roadmap conference.' At that conference Jim moderated two tracks - one track was on Network Management and the other was on Application Delivery. The overall conference was very interactive with a lot of dialogue amongst end users, industry analysts, and vendors. That dialogue highlighted the fact that in 2009 IT organizations need to focus even more than they do in normal economic times. With that in mind, this newsletter and the next two newsletters will discuss the need for IT organizations to focus on a handful of key applications. Establishing SLAs for key applications The last newsletter highlighted the fact that the dialogue at Network World’s recent IT Roadmap conference in Denver emphasized that the challenging economic environment puts pressure on IT organizations to focus even more than they do in normal economic times. With that in mind, this newsletter will begin to outline a process that IT organizations should follow in order to focus on a handful of key applications. Are SLAs worthwhile? The last newsletter discussed the fact that the conventional wisdom in our industry is that IT organizations need to offer service-level agreements internally within their company. That newsletter also pointed out that in many cases the SLAs IT organizations get from their WAN service providers are not that impactful and raised the question of what should IT organizations do differently to ensure that their internal SLAs are impactful. This newsletter will provide a part of the answer to that question./p> Managing BUM expectations The last newsletter discussed the fact that the conventional wisdom in our industry is that IT organizations need to offer SLAs internally within their company. That newsletter also pointed out that in many cases the SLAs that IT organizations get from their WAN service providers are not that impactful and raised the question of what should IT organizations do differently to ensure that their internal SLAs are impactful. This newsletter will provide a part of the answer to that question. Ensuring that SLAs are worthwhile There is a lot of buzz in the industry right now indicating that IT organizations should offer internal service-level agreements. In most cases, this buzz skips right over most, if not all of the challenges associated with that task. This newsletter is the next installment in a series of newsletters that is focusing on how IT organizations can successfully offer internal SLAs. Setting the requirements of an SLA The last newsletter discussed some of the political challenges associated with creating an internal service-level agreement for the performance of the company's key applications and services. This newsletter will address some of the steps IT organizations must take in order to ensure that it is able to meet the key requirements of that SLA. Podcast: Pushing Beyond 100G Ethernet Professor Harvey Newman from the California Institute of Technology joins us to talk about his recent experiment that delivered the first true 100 Gigabit payload transmission over a single wavelength, and where Ethernet is headed in the future - to Terabit and beyond! (14:08) Switch prices take a dive There's no better time than a recession to find that switch prices are down 50% from a year ago. Cisco Subnet blogger Wendell Odom shares his findings. Cisco Discovery Protocol and LLDP in voice networks Cisco Subnet blogger Dennis Hartmann looks at the history of CDP and LLDP in Cisco routers and switches. Cloud computing explained in easy-to-understand terms I've been spending a lot of time explaining what cloud computing is so am sharing my favorite video that will do the explaining for me, says Microsoft Subnet blogger Tyson Kopczynski. April giveaways galore Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books for grabs (15 copies each): CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30. Network World on Twitter Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news. |
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