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hen it comes to network performance, having adequate bandwidth is important, but its never enough. Thats what federal agencies are discovering as they look to capitalize on recent innovations in how data is accessed, analyzed and shared. Big data, cloud computing, mobile computing, voice over IP in the end, these and other advances in technology depend on agencies being able to provide adequate network bandwidth and management capabilities. It should come as no surprise then that agencies are prepared to invest more money in their networks. But as a matter of necessity, they also are looking to drive down the cost of managing those networks. These are some of the findings of a survey of 251 federal, state and local government IT professionals conducted in November 2012 by the 1105 Government Information Group. (Details about the methodology and demographic information on the respondents are below.) The survey found that over the next two years, network traffic is projected to increase by an average of 29.3 percent across the federal government, with 13 percent of respondents expecting an increase of 60 percent or more (see figure 1). Indeed, agencies have already begun to invest more money in their networks, with 30 percent of respondents saying their budget for modernizing their network infrastructure was increasing, 52 percent saying their budget would hold steady, and only 18 percent anticipating a decrease. However, the increased investment is not necessarily a result of the expected surge in network traffic. In fact, federal agencies have anticipated these demands and have upgraded backbones accordingly, said Warren Suss, president of Suss Consulting, which provides services to corporate and government clients. Most agencies are
19% 21%
13% 25%
22%
already in pretty good shape, at least in terms of their core networks and their network backbone, he said. Instead, the investments are likely aimed at what Suss calls expanding at the edges. Many popular networking applications, such as voice over IP and videoconferencing, are real-time services that demand a higher level of reliability and redundancy in the end-user environment than many traditional applications. If you dont have the right technology in your localarea network, you are going to have some extremely unhappy end users, Suss said. Likewise, quality of service is an increasing concern. Agencies need the ability to ensure that data associated with real-time services is given priority; otherwise, the application performance will suffer, even if adequate bandwidth is available. The need for better tools to prioritize network traffic was one of the top concerns listed by respondents to the survey, with 41 percent saying it was very critical
VERY CRITICAL
SOMEWHAT CRITICAL
41%
Need for network prioritization
50%
having well-designed and highperformance networks, but they need to remember that the main reason you have a network like that is to ensure that your important applications run well, he said. This is especially important when it comes to applications being accessed over the Internet, in which case the performance of the backbone network is only one factor that determines the performance of an application. They need to leverage monitoring and analytics so they have visibility into everything that could be impacting the performance of key applications, Rapoza said. Federal agencies are equally concerned about the huge growth in IP-based network traffic. Other pressing issues include more robust telecommunications expense
management solutions and network infrastructure asset cataloging and management. However, government IT managers have another concern: convincing their bosses about the need to modernize. In the current budget environment, any increase in spending will not happen unless managers can make a compelling business case one that speaks to the bottom line. That is not always easy with network modernization, the survey found, with 34 percent of respondents agreeing that it is quite difficult to demonstrate any significant returns on investment (see figure 3). The difficulty likely comes from the need to make upfront investments to realize long-term savings. For example, agencies can both save money and get additional capabilities if they integrate their voice and data networks, but only if they can find the money to buy the necessary equipment and services. There is such an extraordinary focus on near-term cost savings, and such extra pressure to reduce spending, that its a challenge for agencies to command the resources to make the investment needed to obtain that ROI, Suss said. Suss believes that agencies will come up with the money because, in the end, they do not really have many other options for achieving the efficiencies they know they need. But it will not happen unless agency IT leaders are bold enough to press for long-term investments despite the prevailing focus on the short term. He said some agency leaders, most notably at the departments of
34%
neutral
38% 28%
disagree
Defense and Veterans Affairs, have stepped up to the task. I hope others will follow because its the right thing for agencies, Suss said. But its not for the faint of heart.
100 80 60 40 20 0
Few initiatives Many initiatives
Planning/Investigating
already account for 29 percent of agency IT budgets, with the Defense Department reporting an even larger portion and more growth. In part, that is probably because so much of IT is now network-oriented. The technical domain of the network has expanded, so many of the pieces we used to talk about independently are now subsumed in the network, said Warren Suss, president of Suss Consulting. But thats not to say that agencies are spending freely. Instead, the survey shows that agencies are trying to balance the need for better services with the need to keep costs down. That is why there is such strong interest in the possibility of unified communications (UC). The prevalence of IP-based networking solutions not least of which is voice over IP has paved the way for agencies to integrate their telecommunications infrastructure with their data infrastructure (including wireless) and, in the process, eliminate a lot of duplicate investments in network equipment and management tools. Economically, UC is hard to beat, but thats only half the story. The real payoff is that agencies can create an environment where you can get better access from wherever you are to the information that you need, Suss said, whether thats for employees or the general public. Agencies apparently are intrigued by the possibilities. Slightly less than a third of survey respondents said their
No plans Planning/Investigating
agencies had a converged infrastructure in place or were in transition. But another 42 percent said they were studying the idea or had plans to make the move (see figure 3). DOD is at the forefront of IP-based convergence. As part of its strategic plan for 2013 to 2018, the Defense Information Systems Agency aims to deliver voice, video and data services across an IP-based infrastructure that stretches from the departments business networks to the battlefield. DISA is methodically integrating IP-based networking throughout its programs. For example, the agency recently launched a procurement to upgrade the Joint Hawaii Information Transfer System (JHITS), which provides voice, video and data services to military bases in the state of Hawaii, and convergence is definitely part of the plan. Any follow-on effort to JHITS is driven by the need to migrate customers from the existing legacy Time Division Multiplexing technology base to an almost Everything-over-IP technology base, the request for information states. Agencies looking to make the move will find a burgeoning market for products and services, according to the market research firm Infonetics Research. Beyond traditional operators and service providers, were seeing a growing number of PBX/UC vendors, enterprise agents, systems integrators and resellers
expanding into hosted UC offerings, an Infonetics report states. However, one potential sticking point is the transition from the IPv4 protocol to IPv6. For several years, Internet experts have been warning that the number of IP addresses available with IPv4 is rapidly shrinking and so organizations must begin switching over to the new protocol. Experts also tout the numerous operational benefits of adopting IPv6, including better security, autoconfiguration capabilities and support for more advanced peer-to-peer networking tools. But many agencies continue to hold back. In the 1105 survey, only 8 percent of respondents said their agencies have already made the transition, with another 22 percent saying work was in progress. The remaining 70 percent said their agencies had no plan in place as far as they knew. The reason? Half of those respondents said their agencies did not see any need to transition, while others cited concerns about staff training, support for IPv4-based operations, the lack of vendor support or the lack of IPv6-related standards (see figure 4).
Wireless networks loom large in the future of federal IT The days when wireless devices were treated as ancillary are coming to a close, as agencies realize that their employees cannot afford to stop work just because they might be out of the office or away from their desks. If federal IT managers havent figured it out for themselves, their employees have made it clear: If they are allowed to stay connected wherever they might be, they can be much more productive. In a recent survey by the 1105 Government Information Group, the interest in wireless was clear. Out of 209 respondents, 30 percent indicated that their agencies had integrated wireless traffic into the existing network infrastructure or were in the process of doing so. Another 45 percent said their agencies were investigating the possibility or already planned to do so (see figure 1). In all likelihood, the number of agencies integrating wireless into their core networks will only rise. A recent report by market research firm Infonetics Research found that nearly all the devices being added to corporate networks are wireless, with a new surge in tablet use expected soon. Some of this, of course, can be attributed to bring-yourown-device policies, which are making it cost-effective for organizations to allow more users to go mobile. But those same policies make it more important to improve management of the mobile environment. In order to effectively support mobile devices, user mobility and BYOD, a robust wireless infrastructure is no
Planning/Investigating
11% 18%
33%
10% 17%
44%
13% 10%
44%
38%
29%
33%
P de lan pl nin oy g t
ed
er
in
oy
id
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Intelligent monitoring WAN optimization appliances Data compression More edge routers
Cloudspecific network management tools
18%
24%
Co
De
39%
23%
16%
38%
19% 19%
41%
15%
22%
32%
31%
13% 19%
51%
12% 8%
37%
43%
The positive market performance in the first quarter of 2012 speaks well to the network infrastructure needs of enterprise IT as it embraces cloud technologies, said Rohit Mehra, director of enterprise communications infrastructure at IDC. Given the limited deployment of cloud-based applications, most agencies probably are not feeling pressured to upgrade their network infrastructure.
No
18%
23%
21%
17%
pl
an
10
percent considering it, followed closely by backup and recovery applications, at 30 percent and 14 percent, respectively. In the area of platform as a service, the leading application is database software (26 percent adoption), while in software as a service (SaaS) both document management (26 percent) and content management (24 percent) are strong players (see figure 2). Across IT markets as a whole, SaaS is likely to grab the largest share of cloud-related spending over the next five years, according to IDC. However, despite becoming more commonplace, the adoption of SaaS should not be treated as a simple proposition, writes Bill Pray, a Gartner analyst who focuses on collaboration and content
strategies. Before moving from an in-house application to a cloud-based version, organizations need to understand exactly what they are getting and what they might be losing. For example, they must identify the mission-critical features of their existing application. They also need to understand the existing process and how that might be affected by the switch. Enterprises must develop their own set of core requirements based on their intended use and needs for the applications, Pray wrote on the Gartner Blog Network.
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ithout a doubt, e-mail and phone calls will continue to be essential tools of the trade for federal employees for many years to come. But make no mistake: The ways in which feds communicate are beginning to change, and IT managers need to start planning now. A survey of 251 federal, state and local IT professionals found a growing interest in alternative communications tools, including video, voice over IP (VOIP) and social media. Although their use remains relatively small, these tools could begin to put a lot of pressure on agency networks. Video is likely to have the most noticeable impact. On the whole, nearly one-third of respondents said IP-based video streaming is one of the fastest-growing components of network traffic at their agencies. A full 40 percent of respondents said their agencies were looking into enabling more robust videobased communications, including video streaming or videoconferencing. That is in addition to the 34 percent who said their agencies had already made the transition or were on the way (see figure 1). It probably comes as no surprise that most agencies support the streaming of audio or video, and slightly more than half provide IP-based videoconferencing to the desktop. But even high-definition telepresence technology is developing a significant user base, with 37 percent of respondents saying their agencies support it. And that base is expected to grow, eating up a larger and larger share of network bandwidth. As a percentage of overall daily high-definition network traffic, telepresence is expected to grow by 49 percent during the next two years, with IPbased videoconferencing growing by 24 percent and streaming audio/video by 7 percent (see figure 2). Video use is definitely growing and has the
Video in demand
% of respondents indicating the status of their agencies adoption of more video-based communications No plans
Planning/Investigating
32.5%
Streaming video audio Real-time IP video on the desktop Hi-def telepresence:
CURRENTLY
IN 2 YEARS
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On the whole, social networking might not eat up network capacity the way video does. Nonetheless, as the technology becomes an increasingly important communications tool within agencies and with the public, IT managers must ensure that they can support it. The good news, said Rapoza, is that its getting easier to manage this kind of content, thanks to a new generation of network tools that focus on application performance. In these kinds of environments, rather than just looking at protocols, admins can monitor the impact of specific applications and services like YouTube, Facebook and other social tools, he said. And they can apply network rules at an application level, so rather than blocking YouTube or Facebook, they can control how much bandwidth they can consume and prevent these services from impacting the performance of business-critical applications.
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..SOLVED..
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