Daily Network Monitor

I admittedly stole the headline from the direct and welcomed article written by Art Wittman, Editor for Network Computing, writing on the topic of security concerns with virtualization.

Well-balanced security professionals know how organizations can dynamically balance the parallel goals of IT performance with security concerns. Still, the “negatites” (negative, often academic technologists) roam in the background preferring we all revert to manual calculations and typewriters in the name of uptight and non-attainable security standards.

The latest attack from the “negatites” focuses on the progressive world of virtualization. Virtualization is a technology I personally believe in and I believe it will be one of the more “game-changing” technologies this generation of IT buyers and sellers will participate in.

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If your wondering why confusion is mutating from one area of the network to the next, sit down with a large cup of coffee and read a weeks worth of hypothesis by varying authors regarding the look of converging networks and the resulting change in the network administrators’ role.

Last night I read the follow-up posting from a GigaOM article debating the merits of having a network engineer/administrator on the staff of a Web 2.0 company. The post’s author, Allan Leinwand, says a Web 2.0er recently told him that connecting to the Internet was like connecting to the electrical grid - you don’t need an electrical engineering degree for the latter and you don’t need a network engineer for the former.

I call this absolute nonsense and commend the Network World online staff for correctly pointing out, “the very servers that you read NW blogs on are at a co-location facility. Had we just allowed the third party to manage our systems, we may not have discovered a peering issue that was causing a decrease in site performance. Maybe these Web 2.0ers need to think a little more deeply about the plumbing side of the Web instead of just trying to impress their peers with the latest AJAX script.”

The world of Web 2.0 is exciting but it’s my strong opinion that it provides new challenges and opportunities for the network administrator and not the elimination of his or her job. The comparison of Web 2.0 to an electrical grid is tactically accurate but does not illustrate the enormous complexity that Web 2.0 provide – after all, I can’t recall another technology initiative that promised every device in the network connectivity.

I think we better hold on to the network administrators.

If you’ve been researching the internet for a new laptop or desktop in the past year, you’ve likely run into Jeff Jarvis’ blog about his less than impressive experience with Dell Computers. The blog series caught so much attention that it eventually earned the serial name “Dell-Hell”. The blog series eventually became a topic at Dell Corporate and an upset Michael Dell found himself under fire for allowing Dell to become customer de-focused. Further, Dell conspiracy theorists believe the blog series began the eventual demise of co-CEO Kevin Rollins who resigned earlier this year.

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