doesn’t enter the picture—Long believes that
the best answer is the implementation of a
two-site solution, where the company’s core
processes are protected by a redundant infrastructure that is geographically distributed.
“The reality of business is that there are few
companies in few verticals that can actually
afford that level of protection,” he concedes.
The next best step, then, is to create a
modular, scalable backbone that supports a
centralized approach. “Technology such as
Citrix has allowed us to deliver application
experiences to the end user with very little IT infrastructure at the receiver’s
end,” says Long. “It also allows us
to maximize the investment that
we place in our data center for the
protection and redundancy of our
IT infrastructure by keeping all of
those resources in one location.”
A BOOST IN PERFORMANCE
One trend in the effort to increase
wide area network (WAN) performance is to
consolidate where possible. “We are seeing
more technologies being integrated into some
of the mainstay products, like switches and
routers,” says Greene. “We’ve seen security
appliances practically start to disappear, because companies like Cisco and Juniper are
building security into their routers.”
WAN optimization technologies help to
solve performance issues
when files are centralized, according to Mark Urban, director of product marketing at
Packeteer, a WAN application
provider based in Cupertino,
Calif. “There has been a lot of MARK
focus on acceleration tech- URBAN
nologies: protocol acceleration
and caching and compression, which do
things to offload the data that traverses the
network,” says Urban. “These acceleration
technologies help to overcome performance
and bandwidth issues.”
Joe Hicks, product manager at F5 Networks Inc., an application optimization vendor in Seattle, points out that one way to increase performance is to combine file
virtualization and global namespace with
WAN optimization. “You keep only the hot objects that people have requested out in the lo-
cal file shares, but most of the objects that
are uncommonly used are migrated to tier-two
storage back at the data center,” says Hicks.
“You have backup, you have control, and
through global namespace, you have the ability to dynamically migrate the files to where
they are needed.”
This helps circumvent the issue of decreased performance as a result of centralization. “If someone is using something,” says
Hicks, “there is no reason why you can’t
transparently move that out to the branch office until they’re not using it anymore, and
then slowly migrate it back.”
Increased sophistication in virtualization
technologies helps customers economize their
computing environments, says Robert Whiteley, senior analyst for enterprise networking at
Forrester Research Inc. The catch, however,
is integrating optimization that works. “What
you need to be aware of from a network perspective, and from a security perspective, is
that it does change your traffic mix a lot,”
says Whiteley, adding that many of the virtualization technologies require Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) as the underlying network protocol
to make it all happen. “The problem is that
most acceleration devices cannot accelerate
those protocols. If you have a customer looking at a virtualization technology like that,
make sure you think through issues like acceleration so that they don’t feel that they’re
not getting the most from their investment as
they change their traffic mix over time.”
Long notes that the core issues surrounding IT infrastructure are pretty much the
same for SMBs as they are for large corporations. The difference is that most SMBs
don’t possess the on-site, specialized human
resources to oversee IT on a dedicated basis.
The goal for channel partners is to combine
their knowledge of the available products
and solutions with the needs and revenue
streams of the businesses in question to design a solution that saves customers both
time and money.
Long underlines that channel partners garner the best results when they are less prod-uct-centric and more focused on arriving at a
comprehensive solution. “There is a distinct
difference between being a vendor and being
a consultant,” he says. “SMBs would like to
KEY TAKEAWAYS
CONDUCT A COMPREHENSIVE
ASSESSMENT. Before arriving at a
decision on what IT resources to
centralize and what to distribute,
understand the nature of the assets your customer is protecting
and managing.
PREPARE FOR A PHASED-IN
APPROACH. SMBs rarely have the
funds to deploy a large-scale proj-
ect all at once; scalable, modular
designs work best for this market.
BOTH OF YOU ARE EXPERTS.
The customer knows about his
business; you possess the technical knowledge to save that customer time … and consequently,
earn him more money.
A CONSULTATIVE APPROACH
WINS OUT. Pushing knowledge,
rather than products, is what garners customer loyalty in the end.
FOR MORE
INFORMATION
www.avocent.com
www.f5.com
www.forrester.com
www.packeteer.com
www.yorel.com
have consultants, but they can rarely afford
them. When you use a consultative approach
to an SMB customer, they tend to be very appreciative, and they continue to buy from you
over the long term, which reduces your cost
of transaction over time. We end up being
able to solve more customer problems more
effectively and more efficiently, and that’s
what enables us to generate revenue.”
CAROLYN HEINZE (carolynheinze.blogspot.
com) is a freelance writer/editor.
