Networks Do Matter – Really!

Jerry Caron

Summary Bullets:              

• Networks and networking suffer from a lack of respect that defies logic.
• Innovation continues apace, however, the industry often fails to give these advances the attention they deserve.

Networks and the stuff that make them work are suffering from a dearth of respect to which even Rodney Dangerfield would have to defer. Sure, we all know that it is lunacy to dismiss the value of both private and public networks because the quality of experience is utterly dependent on the quality of the network connections. This is a stone-cold fact, whether we are talking about a teenager looking at YouTube videos on a smartphone, or a business running mission-critical applications.

Yet while networks and networking have never been truly glamorous, there is a perceptible downward trend in love for the stuff of connectivity. It has long been the case, for example, that the hottest, most admired Internet businesses take public and private networks for granted and ride roughshod over them with something approaching complete disdain. If Facebook is sluggish, you don’t blame Facebook, do you?.

Network and IT Only Converging in Theory

J. Caron

Summary Bullets:

• The convergence of network and IT in the enterprise may be inevitable, but it is a very slow process.
• The persisting split means that network operators are not considered IT suppliers, but they deserve examination.

It has been obvious for many years now that the systems to deliver and manage applications in enterprises would become less disparate and more intertwined.  We have been operating under the assumption that the computing, storage and software platforms used to support applications would blend together with the network and telecommunications platforms used to distribute them.  Certainly, the increasingly virtualized and distributed nature of most business organizations mandates that network and connectivity concerns are no longer an afterthought in application architecture, but an integral concern.  As a theory, this convergence of IT and communications systems is just about irrefutable, but is it really happening?