Tuesday, June 26, 2007

The human side of net optimization

Network World

Network Optimization




Network World's Network Optimization Newsletter, 06/26/07

The human side of net optimization

By Ann Bednarz

When I write about a new technology implementation, it’s easy to focus on the products rather than the staffing and operational resources that go into a project. In reality, it’s the proper combination of technology and manpower that makes a rollout successful.

At Ceridian, coordination among different IT groups and changes to the reporting structure enabled the human resources specialist to adopt a new business model. The Minneapolis-based software maker over the last several years has shifted from solely selling shrink-wrapped versions of its HR applications to offering hosted services for applications such as payroll, time and attendance, and labor management.

The need to create network-ready applications that are delivered over the Internet, rather than deployed at customer sites, raised new IT considerations for Ceridian. When customers were responsible for the software, they dealt with issues such as network capacity, performance and data management. When Ceridian adopted a hosted model, those issues became more critical internally. “We went from that being on the customer side of the equation to it being on our side of the equation,” says Rodney Bowers, director of data center services at Ceridian.

ENTERPRISE NAS - TRENDS, ISSUES & OUTLOOK

Watch Network World's Editorial Perspectives webcast on Enterprise NAS for the issues, trends and new developments affecting today's enterprise network storage environment. View to understand the latest thinking on Network Attached Storage (NAS) and its place in today's enterprise.

Click here to watch now.

To ensure solid application performance, Ceridian implemented 3400 series Big-IP appliances from F5 Networks. The F5 gear today handles load balancing among more than 1,900 servers at Ceridian’s data centers as well as authentication of SSL traffic.

One of the advantages of using the Big-IP appliances is that it freed development staff -- who were under pressure to prepare the hosted offerings for launching -- from having to address traffic management and SSL authentication on their own, Bowers says.

“We could take and aggregate TCP/IP sessions, also do the SSL acceleration, and offload that from the application,” he says. “To be able to use hardware to offload those two important components was a very beneficial find for us.”

At the same time it was deploying the F5 gear, Ceridian tweaked its IT structure to better address the challenges of delivering applications to customers over the Internet. Shifting to an application service provider (ASP) mode was an effort that crossed network, application development, storage, and customer support disciplines, and getting it right required better coordination among these distinct departments, Bowers says.

“The groups were truly siloed. The network guys didn’t talk to the storage guys, the storage guys didn’t talk to the application guys,” he recalls. “We had to get people understanding the other groups’ problems.”

For example, it was important for network staff to work closely with field service staff who were charged with helping Ceridian customers prepare their own internal networks for the hosted applications. Likewise, application development teams paired with data center specialists to design distinct Web and database application tiers to better isolate and monitor application performance issues.

Ceridian also needed to address how the new delivery model would impact storage requirements, which meant getting the network and storage teams to work together. “We tuned our storage requirements, we tuned our clustering configuration working with our SAN infrastructure, and then we worked on replication between the two data centers,” Bowers says.

In breaking down the organizational barriers that existed between the IT factions, Bowers wound up taking on greater responsibility. He used to oversee the network teams; today Bowers oversees an operations team that encompasses network, storage and data center groups. In the next newsletter I’ll share some of Bowers’ tips for making such a transition go smoothly.


  What do you think?
Post a comment on this newsletter

TODAY'S MOST-READ STORIES:

1. How MySpace is hurting your network
2. Lawyers show how to side-step immigration law
3. Gartner to IT: Avoid Apple's iPhone
4. Cisco moves reputation services into network devices
5. 10 automation companies to watch
6. NY college plans 11n WLAN rollout this summer
7. Pentagon shuts down systems after cyberattack
8. Microsoft, IBM feel heat from Google Apps
9. Why time stands still on the iPhone
10. The case of the 500-mile e-mail

MOST E-MAILED STORY:
Gartner to IT: Avoid Apple's iPhone


Contact the author:

Ann Bednarz is an associate news editor at Network World responsible for editing daily news content. She previously covered enterprise applications, e-commerce and telework trends for Network World. E-mail Ann.



ARCHIVE

Archive of the Network Optimization Newsletter.


BONUS FEATURE

IT PRODUCT RESEARCH AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

Get detailed information on thousands of products, conduct side-by-side comparisons and read product test and review results with Network World’s IT Buyer’s Guides. Find the best solution faster than ever with over 100 distinct categories across the security, storage, management, wireless, infrastructure and convergence markets. Click here for details.


PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE
You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered to your inbox each day. Extend your knowledge with a print subscription to the Network World newsweekly, Apply here today.

International subscribers, click here.


SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here.

This message was sent to: networking.world@gmail.com. Please use this address when modifying your subscription.


Advertising information: Write to Associate Publisher Online Susan Cardoza

Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772

Copyright Network World, Inc., 2007

No comments: