How Does One Define Network-Centric Performance Management?

 

How Does One Define Network Centric Performance Management

How Does One Define Network Centric Performance Management

This was the question before the experts at the first Roundtable that kicked of this initiative!

The interest and excitement on this topic was evident from the active and animated discussions experts from Linked In, TATA, Cisco, ADVA, OPNET, InfoVista and other partners had at our inaugural Roundtable on this topic. Opinions were heard, points raised and argued, and from this intellectual churning, emerged some valuable conclusions.

The debate centered on fundamental questions related to network-centric performance management. For instance, Aamer Akhter of Cisco, Benoit Claise, OAM Area Director at the IETF, Vikas Trehan, SVP Alliances, InfoVista, Gordon Bolt, VP Engineering, OPNET, Seth Higgins, Senior Director, Ethernet Services, ADVA, and yours truly first discussed how one may define “network-centric”, and then distilled key trends driving today’s renewed interest in performance management. Finally, we focused on the major open questions that the carrier eco-system needs to address.

Defining Network-Centric Performance Management

After some back and forth, the Roundtable came to the conclusion that network-centric performance management is the management of network parameters and activities that are not tied to specific applications, but rather are needed to keep the network running satisfactorily. E.g. sync distribution, impairment detection, fault isolation and notification, and adequate levels of delay, jitter, loss, and availability (perhaps defined by some average of the requirements of applications typically running on the network).

Network-centric performance management is, thus,  the first step, in a sense, to meeting the goal of application performance management. If the underlying network is not operating correctly, application-level performance is surely impaired.

Framing the Problem: What is Driving the Interest in Performance Management Today?

As we analyzed industry developments of the last few years, a few trends became evident. We concluded that we now have a lot more application sensitivity, more user and application mobility, higher bandwidth usage, and overall higher expectations from users. Specifically, we can delineate these trends into:

  • Mobility of Users – users today are highly mobile, and demanding seamless operation of services and applications across locations and devices. So, an executive wishes to use the same services and applications form his laptop at the office, as he does from his iPad on the go, and from his laptop at home.
  • Proliferation of Mobile Broadband – With user mobility has also come significantly higher bandwidth usage by mobile end-devices, e.g. the explosion of video. So, the mobile user is not just using voice today, but rather using the mobile device to access large volumes of data, video, video conferencing and the like.
  • Emergence of the Enterprise Cloud – With the move of enterprise applications into the cloud, the cloud infrastructure is now a critical piece in overall application performance. For the cloud to be successful, we need to deliver SLAs to build trust in cloud services. This demands significant advances in performance management tools, techniques, software, and processes.
  • Cloud Mobility – As with mobile users, cloud-based applications today are mobile too! The provider needs the ability to move applications physically or virtually in the cloud, for redundancy, superior service, load balancing, and the like. None of this is feasible without excellent performance management.
  • Data Centers – Finally, the rise of data center operators as an important class of operators involved in the end-to-end performance management picture. This, in a sense, extends range over which performance management tools and systems need to operate, and requires enhancement to their capabilities to support this new infrastructure.

Scoping the Problem: Which Scenario(s) Should One Focus On?

Given the vast scope of the problem, one of the challenges before the Roundtable experts was: where do we start?!  We realized that the scenarios in increasing order of complexity were: a single customer (or enterprise) and a single ISP, them multiple ISPs, then multiple ISPs and the cloud, and finally multiple ISPs and multiple data centers, and so on.

At the end of the day, however, each use case is facing the same problems. So, rather than focus on the complex cases, it made sense to focus on just the first (and probably simplest) case, namely, that of a single operator/carrier/ISP with multiple network segments under multiple groups, because an operator will have to deal with this, no matter what.  Whatever is done in a given operator’s network between access, metro, and core, could later be extrapolated to the multi-ISP case. This simplifies discussion, because the end-customer has to deal only with one organization.

What are your thoughts on network-centric performance management? Do you agree with the definition and the decomposition of the problem?  Is there a different perspective that you have?

Let us hear your views below. And, do register at  http://bit.ly/QFrnaQ to be part of this ongoing dialog, and to submit questions that we can tackle in the on-line panel and beyond!

If you or your company would like to get involved with this initiative, and contribute to it, please contact Dr. Vishal Sharma at vsharma AT metanoia-inc DOT com or call +1 650-641-0082.

The companies cooperating in this initiative are:

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Metanoia, Inc. has consistently been a leader in bringing the eco-system’s focus to carrier-centric issues. If you would like to contribute to, participate in, or have a suggestion about our recent initiatives, write us at initiatives@metanoia-inc.com or comment on this blog. To be involved in the current ongoing discourse, write to Dr. Vishal Sharma at vsharma@metanoia-inc.comor call +1 650-641-0082.
 
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