The Performance Zone

Vacations – Good, Bad, or Evil?

Submitted By Michael Valladao, Product Marketing Manager for NetScout

This morning I received yet another message from a colleague asking me to fill in while they are on PTO. It’s the end of summer and it seems like everyone is going on vacation.  There are vacant cubes all over the office and plenty of open parking spaces outside.  What’s with that?  Don’t people understand there is work to do?

The same thing happens when I call folks back at our Corporate Headquarters outside of Boston.  Apparently, New Englanders go to “The Cape” a lot.  We don’t have a Cape here in California.  Even if we did, the Pacific Ocean is cold during the summer months.  So it is hard to relate.

It’s hard to believe, but IT people take vacations too.  That often means the help desk is understaffed or there is a summer intern covering the phones. How is a network supposed to run at peak efficiency when a key person who genuinely understands the network is floating down a river somewhere with a six-pack of beer and no cell coverage?  Just another hurdle in managing today’s Modern IP Network.  The most productive network teams I have ever worked with always manipulated their vacation schedules to ensure at least one high ranking network guru was available during the busy vacation season.  If you planned properly, colleagues would go the same destination to scope things out and figure out the best way to pass the time.  That way, when they returned, you could make the most out of your vacation. 

When the Modern IP Network Fails, It Makes an Impact

Submitted by Eileen Haggerty, NetScout's Director Product Marketing

It is hard to miss the news reports on the latest Netflix shipping problems.  Apparently, they have had difficulty in shipping DVDs to customers since Tuesday morning, August 12.  A company with 55 U.S. distribution centers that distributes approximately 2 million discs a day is experiencing only their second incident of missed shipments in their nearly 10 year history.  It appears that no discs were shipped Tuesday or Thursday while some got out on Wednesday, affecting approximately 2.8 million of their 8.4 million subscribers.  Netflix company spokesman Steve Swasey has been quoted as saying that Netflix is “having severe system issues on our shipping.” 

Data Center Consolidations are Big Money - How are you Going to Manage the Project Lifecycle?

Submitted by Eileen Haggerty, NetScout's Director of Product Marketing

I have been a regular reader of Information Week for some time, and as I read this latest article about Microsoft’s data center consolidation and build out, I had a deja vue experience – IBM had an article a few days ago about similar needs and challenges associated with their data center build outs.

And just last month there was an article on the State of Oregon consolidating 11 data centers into a single Tier 3 data center.

In all these cases, the investments are substantial – in some cases hundreds of millions – Google’s investments are reported at $600 million, IBM’s at $360 million, the State of Oregon at over $40 million. Microsoft attributes tens of millions in cost-of-revenue increases due to the increased costs associated with the data center build outs.  That kind of spending will get the attention of executives, but also put new and increased pressure on the IT staffs tasked with supporting these infrastructures throughout the life of the projects.

Femtocells – A Force for Change and More Traffic on Mobile IP Networks

Submitted by Adam Reeves, NetScout Product Marketing Manager

I watched a webinar on femtocells presented by the Yankee Group back in June, and just came across my notes.

Yankee and Research Fellow Roberta Wiggins are predicting, in what she described as “cautious” forecast that femtocells will have 17.8M shipments worldwide in 2012 bringing the installed base of users to 23.9M or about 5.3% penetration of the global broadband market. Coupling this with dual-mode phones over wi-fi like that being provided by T-Mobile and the carriers could be running significant IP traffic (in addition to that enabled by the iPhone - See blog entry "Is the 3G iPhone still what's hot?") onto their networks. A big if in this is the assumption that the cost of CPE drops from its current price (above $200/instance) to below $50. She seems to think that initial deployments competing and complimenting wi-fi hotspots may have the capacity to drive volumes and reduce this cost – I’m excited about  the technology, so let’s assume she’s right.

Mozilla’s new world record could have been better!

Submitted by Michael Valladao, NetScout Product Marketing Manager

Mozilla is petitioning Guinness for a new world record category for the most software downloads in a 24 hour period.  Earlier this month, Mozilla released Firefox 3, hosting a Download Day event and Bar-B-Que at their Mountain View headquarters.  They also prompted users to join in on the fun by adding “Download Day” buttons to websites and encouraging friends and associates to download within the 24 hour period.

Is the 3G iPhone still what's hot?

Submitted by NetScout's Eileen Haggerty, Director of Product Marketing

So how did you spend your weekend?  Were you in line to get one of the new iPhone 3Gs?  Looks like a lot of folks were given that 1 million have already been sold in just 3 days.  Yahoo News "Apple sells 1 million iPhones in first 3 days"

That’s potentially a million new mobile IP users that AT&T is going to need to support – no small challenge if you consider simply the activation challenges that ensued over the weekend.   Ongoing services performance for everything from music downloads to web surfing to VoIP calls will also need to be managed and monitored to keep the subscribers satisfied. 

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Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Terrorism & Disaster Recovery

Wow! I was watching the news last night about the swarms of violent thunderstorms and tornadoes that devastated communities across eight states. This reminded me of an article that I read in Network Computing Magazine. The cover story “What If?” on disaster recovery in the March 2, 2006 issue.  Right there on the front cover was the advice:  “Don’t bet your business on a weak disaster-recovery plan.” 

In January, Processor Magazine was also talking about what makes for a good disaster recovery plan. 

I’m not surprised to see network, systems, and storage oriented press media focusing on this topic.  After last summer’s truly disastrous hurricane season, experts are suggesting more fervently than every, that enterprises and government agencies must regularly evaluate and implement plans to ensure business continuity during catastrophic events.  Look at the news this week alone – severe tornadoes and storms destroyed homes and buildings across parts of Tennesee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinios, Ohio and Arkansas.

There is no predicting where natural disasters or even human errors might disrupt normal business activity.  Human error or computer viruses have impacted the energy grid – remember the blackout in August 2003 affecting power service from the Northeast to the Ohio Valley? Ensuring your business services, network communications, and mission critical applications are operational regardless of these types of disruptive situations is clearly essential because of the overwhelming dependency we have on them.

What is your business continuity plan?  Does it include redundant data centers?  Are you outsourcing to a 3rd party disaster recovery company?