Daily Network Monitor

I have been out on the road the past few weeks but I am glad to be back. I was reading about the latest data theft at Boeing today. A disgruntled employee with the intent of hurting his employer placed sensitive data on a thumb drive with the hopes of leaking it to a local Seattle newspaper. As you probably guessed, this man is unlikely to receive any employee awards or merits. What really caught my eye in this story was the ‘potential’ financial impact had the newspaper not done what is right – a whopping $5-$15 billion loss was possible. If you’re like me, your wondering what the heck the data said? Did it unveil the material makeup for it new dream liner or was it indicative of bad business practices?

One of my favorite security lecturers is Bruce Schneier. If you ever have the chance to listen or speak with Bruce, you’ll be entertained and well educated by the end. In reviewing this data breach, Schneier bring up valid points of practicality, “If a company hires an untrustworthy employee, there is almost nothing it can do to prevent theft”, Schneier argues. “What’s done in African mines is they do full-body cavity strip searches every time they leave. That works,” Schneier says.

I’ll talk more about USB thumb drives in a future entry but in the meantime, check out RedCannon Security. I can’t validate whether or works yet but these guys caught my eye as a needed innovation in the security space. RedCannon says it can restrict the types of USB drives that are plugged into computers, monitor what data is pulled from a hard drive, and remotely destroy content if the thumb drive is inserted into an Internet-connected computer. As an extra safeguard, RedCannon says its products can set USB devices to stop working when they are not inserted into a computer connected to the Internet

A former colleague called me this morning with a variety of gossip news on the industry and mentioned that ITIL v3 is scheduled for release next week. You probably have the same experiences dealing with colleagues who mention an acronym or other catchy slogan without any real knowledge of the term.

I succumbed to the need to be inquisitive and asked my former colleague an innocent question, “What Does ITIL Mean and Why Is It Important?” After a few seconds of odd silence, he noted, “Well I have to go to a meeting.”

Fancy or not, we have so many acronyms and terms to deal with it is no wonder no one knows what the acronyms stand for. To ensure I am not one of the cases we make fun of the blog one day; I went to Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com) and re-read the definition for ITIL.

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) is a framework of best practice approaches intended to facilitate the delivery of high quality information technology (IT) services. ITIL outlines an extensive set of management procedures that are intended to support businesses in achieving both high financial quality and value in IT operations. These procedures are supplier-independent and have been developed to provide guidance across the breadth of IT infrastructure, development, and operations.

ITIL is built around a process-model based view of controlling and managing operations often credited to W Edwards Deming. The ITIL recommendations were developed in the 1980s by the UK Government’s CCTA in response to the growing dependence on IT and a recognition that without standard practices, government agencies and private sector contracts were independently creating their own IT management practices and duplicating effort within their Information and Communications Technology (ICT) projects resulting in common mistakes and increased costs

ITIL is published in a series of books (hence the term Library), each of which covers a core area within IT Management. The names ITIL and IT Infrastructure Library are Registered Trade Marks of the United Kingdom’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

When describing the relative performance adoption of ITIL over the past couple of years it is useful to use Aesop’s fable of the hare and the tortoise as an analogy.

After a huge burst in interest and commitment by enterprises spanning all verticals to implement an ITIL strategy, it appears that the number of prospects following through have dwindled during the first part of 2007. It almost seems like participants fell asleep under a tree, while the slower steady upward climb of virtualization and SOA implementations took over and outperformed.

Enterprises generally invest in technologies that can increase revenue and profits and eliminate a pain point or two but they also invest in new and cool technologies that solve a problem they didn’t even know they had or think they have. One only need look at the number of $500k SAP investments made that were and are on Year 5 of their now multi-million dollar SAP investment. In contrast, SMB’s or SME’s invest almost exclusively in pain relief focused solutions that help the business run well and meet the need of value-based solutions.

Will ITIL have a place in SMB/SME’s? I don’t believe so. It’s too big, it’s too complex and its too costly for most. But, I do believe their will be plenty of good practices that make their way from the volumes of ITIL binders to the planning board of network administrators, systems professionals and business line managers responsible for the network that runs the business. V3 for example will focus on services and delivering services and I am certain there is information that can be shared and examples that can be modeled in SMB’s and SME’s across the globe.

Only with a smaller piece-by-piece strategy will ITIL be digestible for most businesses. In Aesop’s fables, the hare wakes too late to beat the tortoise in their race. Luckily, technology is a continuing race for long-term returns that don’t simply stop at the end of the day. Perhaps there is still time to shake the hare awake and send him racing off after the tortoise

I’ve written about this before and after reading this latest review by Denise Dubie of Network World I couldn’t resist.

If your currently a network and operations management customer of a Big 4 vendor, namely HP, BMC, CA or IBM your likely as upset as 640 of your colleagues and looking for a change in course and performance. After all, Denise stated that 40% of respondents gave the Big 4 a C grade and 30% gave the forbidden D grade. What is going on? You pay hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions and all you get is C & D grade performance, service and respect?

Denise notes a Gartner report that says, “”Continuing customer satisfaction issues, the emergence of new technology and service delivery approaches, and the rise of large technology infrastructure providers expanding their capabilities into management software all contribute to making these industry leaders vulnerable.”

For more years than we care to count at times, visionary vendors like Ipswitch and a host of other SMB management vendors have dedicated productive time and thought to designing products that are effective in resolving pain yet easy to use. For years, the Big 4 dismissed us all as point products while they continued to fatten their products with hard to use features. As markets have matured in knowledge and grown in frustration, I feel exhilarated to know that our plan to build usable products was not only the right plan – it will make a difference in thousands of networks across the globe.