This is the 182nd article in the Spotlight on IT series. If you'd be interested in writing an article on the subject of backup, security, storage, virtualization, mobile, networking, wireless, DNS, or MSPs for the series PM Eric to get started.
In today’s age of cloud-connected services, ever-expanding workforces, and consumer apps and technology pushing their way into the business world, I hear more and more complaints about the complexity of network connectivity.
Linking remote sites, allowing access from home offices or mobile workers, and providing managed access to hosted services are all top of mind, and all require secure, reliable connectivity — but there has been no one-size-fits-all approach that’s easy. I mean — that’s what I am told. But as a former IT pro myself, I always had the perfect solution. Sure, I was part of an IT organization with an annual budget that was larger than most small business revenues, and we were able to buy more gear than your average local data center — but the real key to my networking success? I had “the guy.”
See, back when the helpdesk phone lit up on my desk, the pager was on my hip, and the invoices for… well, everything… had my name on them, I had a certified networking genius in the desk across from me. I had a dedicated LAN/WAN guy. This guy was a real CCIE and had the certificate on the wall and everything. He had dreams in IOS, always had a crossover adapter in his pocket, and could tell CAT5e from CAT6 by smell. You know the type.
While I was busy maintaining our servers, storage, desktops and phones, “the guy” configured BGP between our edge routers, decided where to run leased lines, and where we needed MPLS to better support real-time traffic. He used words like “burstable” and “full mesh” even when he wasn’t talking about bladder conditions. And you know what? I never once thought networking was a problem. In fact, it was fantastic.
My guy had backup site-to-site VPN for the times our MPLS links took an unexpected day off. We had at least two service providers in every building, and more junk in our VLAN trunk than I knew what to do with. When the helpdesk phone rang, he would holler out, “It’s not the network!” and he was nearly always right. One-guy-fits-all networking. He had the eye-watering amounts of dough he needed to buy all kinds of gear and services, and the knowledge to make it sing. And me? I had it made. Our network was bulletproof…. until “the guy” left to go work for a bigger company.
I thought, “Sure he’s gone, but that’s a big cost savings.” I mean, he built out the network, and it was running like a top. I just paid the bills and ran the services over it. Maybe I can save his six-figure salary, spend that on a fancy backup solution, and hire the occasional contractor when I need to add something.
Which is what I did — well, it’s what I tried. Our first contractor broke the living daylights out of an office in record time. I mean, one second it was connected to HQ, and the next second — after a “real quick” BGP route update — it was just gone. Poof. In just 10 seconds they were off the network.
We brought it back — and we should never have been messing with that router anyhow — but it took a whole-freakin’ day: a day without email for 50 people, a day without Internet for 50 people. They had a local printer and each other. The LAN was fine, but it was bad. Suddenly, I was wearing kryptonite underwear.
I quickly found out that a network guy makes networking look easy, but it’s HIS network. The designs, workings, and configuration were made to HIS specifications. I learned that “Wr mem” really meant into HIS memory, and I had not thought to “copy run start” into my own.
It was a rough time. We eventually hired another genius, and guess what? We rebuilt most of the network. In many cases, it was easier to rebuild it than it was to try to understand what had been built in the first place. It cost us a pile of dough, and a lot of time.
And that’s what I learned. My super complex, full-mesh, n+1 redundant, high-availability, high-speed network hadn’t seemed so complex when I just paid the meter to the tune of a six-figure salary, plus hardware and maintenance cost for each of my sites. Having “the guy” is the secret to my networking success, and the single point of failure for the while shebang. And when it failed, it failed spectacularly. And when “the guy” leaves, we have to review and possibly rebuild with our “new guy.”
But times are changing.
Remember the storage solutions of yesterday that required onsite tape backup with cool refrigerator-looking robots that would zip tapes around inside themselves? They have now been replaced by hosted backup that costs pennies and has infinitely more redundancy and scalability. We now have cloud-based hosted email eliminating the need to deploy onsite email servers. Company applications have migrated to externally hosted options where we pay per user. We also have fast and affordable client devices: desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones. In fact, our employees are bringing cutting edge devices to connect to our networks and systems.
So what is the result? Small organizations now have access to some of the same technology that we were able to deploy with our staff, budgets and “the guy.” However, networking has not changed. We still need “the guy” to orchestrate routers, telecom services, firewalls, VPNs, and more. In fact, the mix of on-premise and cloud-based resources has made his job even harder. So organizations are now even more precariously perched on the shoulders of “the guy.”
But today, we are looking to an inflection point. Cloud-services have paved the way to deliver increased network reliability and redundancy — and the Internet is omnipresent. All that’s missing is the security and networking intelligence in the cloud to connect your resources, and a policy to manage it all.
What does a network look like when all your employees are mobile, and everything is in the cloud? Stay tuned. As virtualization is applied to the WAN using the power and pervasiveness of the cloud, great innovations are on the horizon. Maybe we will be a bit less dependent on “the guy.”