When WANs Aren't Wide Enough (continued)
NetQoS is a major provider of software and services in this category. "Our goal in life is to understand how well applications are performing for those remote users. That is really the best measure of how well the infrastructure is delivering applications and gives companies visibility into what is on the network," explains NetQoS VP of Marketing Steve Harriman. "Is VOiP a major consumer of bandwidth? Is SAP? Is it your salesforce automation system? Is it recreational use, which we're seeing increasing amounts of?"
Once the main bandwidth consumers have been determined, a company may decide that infrastructure upgrades are in order. Of course, upgrades are inevitable in any case, and what QoS software can do, says Harriman, is "ensure that mission-critical apps are getting first access to the pipe, ahead of recreational use, for example." A company may have a fairly long priority sequence, and then an "as available" bucket, which may be where recreational traffic gets routed.
Smart Investments Open the Pipes
Although every enterprise has its unique networking challenges, experts agree that increasing capacity, or simply adding more pipes, may be an effective "brute force" solution, but not necessarily a wise investment. Rather, IT professionals should first invest in a QoS product to analyze their network. Only then, based on the resulting insights of how data flows, consider investing in optimization, acceleration and differencing appliances. While more bandwidth will undoubtedly be needed sooner or later, these immediate investments will pay off in both the short and long term.
About the Author
Jeff Merron is a freelance writer living in North Carolina. His articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Slate, Online Journalism Review, MacWorld and many other newspapers, magazines and websites.
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