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Network Solutions End-to-end offerings aiming to bolster your network’s performance 24 Network World Canada November 25, 2005 www.ITworldcanada.com Visionael tracks assets for network vulnerability BY MARK ELS Managing the distributed complexities of an ever-changing enterprise network carries inherent risks, both personally to the CIO or network administrator, as well as to the new technology being implemented should that critical first installation fail. The implementation of voice over IP (VoIP), for example, might fail because the network manager doesn’t know what’s on the network and which devices are unlikely to support the application. When he rolls out a new application, he needs to understand what the network looks like. “Network asset and configuration management is a high priority with projects such as application management, security, data centre consolidation and VoIP,” said Vincent Lui, senior analyst, network management at IDC. Key drivers for enterprise spending in this area, says Lui, are business processes, automation and regulatory compliance. Businesses want immediate return on investment and simple deployment, without having to alter their existing infrastructures. “The automation, discovery and management of network assets can minimize mean time to failure and repair, as well as bring visibility to inventory almost instantly,” he said. One vendor that is re-entering the Canadian market is Visionael Corp. of Palo Alto, Calif. Christopher Thompson, vicepresident of product management and marketing, says network spending is on the upswing in Canada and some features in BI tool can hurry hospital data ly available to Ontario hospitals. HRRC develops methods and reports on hospiOntario hospitals have access to a new tal performance in Ontario using the balsoftware tool that could help them slash anced scorecard format. The software enathe time it takes to trend performance in- bles hospital staff to calculate financial and dicators from eight months to minutes. clinical performance indicators. Traditional methods used by hospitals The software was developed by the Hospital Report Research Collaborative to obtain performance data have been time (HRRC) at the University of Toronto’s consuming, Brown says. The new tool was Department of the Health Policy, Man- developed to more efficiently report on agement and Evaluation. The perform- the performance of Ontario hospitals to ance and quality improvement reporting the Ontario Ministry of Health and Longtool is based on technology from business Term Care (MoH). “Traditionally, hospitals create large intelligence (BI) product vendor SAS Infiles of either financial data or clinical stitute in Cary, N.C. data, (including) a variety of “Performance indicator information is general ledger and transactiona year or a year-and-a-half old. That’s al summaries,” said Brown. On a quarterly or an annual basis, kind of hard to run a business on.” hospitals then send the data out Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, principal investigator, HRRC to firms that collect such inforDr. Adalsteinn Brown, principal in- mation, including provincial agencies. vestigator for HRRC, says the Wizard for This data is then “cleaned” and procHospital Report Indicator tool is currentSee BI, page 25 Briefs... BY RYAN B.PATRICK Visionael’s Network Resource Manager (NRM) 7.3 software upgrade were designed for a Canadian customer. Thompson has noticed changes in the way networks are being used to drive businesses to compete, as well as changes in the en- and documents the topology in a visual modterprise market, primarily driven by VoIP, el. “Companies can then understand how storage area networks (SANs) and 10GigE their networks operate and how devices are (10Gbps Ethernet). Network transforma- connected. And that becomes a foundation tion, says Thompson, is being driven by the for change management,” said Thompson. replacement of infrastructure that is now “Once we’ve established what a network seven to eight years old. “The looks like, we can put in place cost to enterprise businesses to “Infrastructure a multi-step plan to get to our support their legacy networks upgrades eventual end-result.” is very high,” he said. “On top Thompson says many users for VoIP and import their CAD diagrams of that, you’ve got companies into Visionael and overlay the talking about voice over IP and wireless LAN infrastructure on top of it, so 10GigE. Those types of technol- adoption are ogies cause companies to have to on the uptake.” they can see the floor of their building and locate the devices re-architect their networks.” Vincent Lui, on the network. “That way, if “The adoption of network senior analyst, IDC there’s a vulnerability or servasset management products is being triggered by network issues encoun- ice issue on the network, a quick report tered after an IP-based implementation can identify visually exactly where the afsuch as site-to-site VoIP,” said Darin Stahl, fected device is located.” research lead at Info-Tech Research Group The product incorporates a number of different components. The discovery tool in London, Ont. IDC’s Lui said the most activity by places a probe on the network. The probe medium to large enterprises adopting IP- uses simple network management protobased environments was in upgrading and col (SNTP), along with a number of othconsolidating data centre infrastructure er discovery tactics, to scan the network. from remote offices. “VoIP infrastructure Once the device is identified, it’s ready for upgrades and wireless LAN adoption are the J-walk, which is a query of the device also high on the uptake,” said Lui. “And to see how it’s configured. virtual private LAN services are being imThe information taken from this netplemented by enterprises with multiple work audit is fed into the core product, branch offices or regional headquarters.” NRM, which houses a database of devices As large enterprises, government or- encountered in the network, as well as how ganizations and telecommunication serv- these devices are configured and connected. ice providers increasingly move towards an A user can then use NRM’s Visionael StuIP-based environment, the risks created by dio tool to review a current network design network change can be reduced by identi- or plan changes to that design. fying the devices that live on the network The ability to demonstrate that a company’s infrastructure can support its busiand documenting the system’s design. The Visionael NRM software automati- ness processes is a core requirement for cally discovers what the network looks like Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. 058842 IBM taps VMware, Citrix for blade PCs NetPro adds group policy management Aruba tightens remote security IBM has announced partnerships with Citrix and EMC’s VMware subsidiary to provide customers with the means to manage desktop PCs from a secure, centralized location. With its Virtualized Hosted Client Infrastructure, IBM joins ClearCube and HP in the market that goes beyond traditional thin-client computing by moving the core of a PC to blade servers hosted in a data centre or computer room, providing what proponents say is better PC security and easier manageability. IBM executives say the company’s new hosted-PC offering will link to any client device over Ethernet using standard protocols. NetPro recently bolstered its security and compliance suite for Microsoft’s Active Directory with software that lets users delegate who can set and change policies used to manage desktops and servers. NetPro’s ChangeManager is a workflow-based change management system for the group policy objects (GPO) of Active Directory and is designed to let companies build workflow and approval processes around management of GPOs. The use of group policy is catching on because users are starting to get the infrastructure pieces in place, including Win 2000 or XP Professional on the desktop. Aruba last month rolled out wireless hardware and software that aims to improve mobility and security for remote workers. The AP-41 creates a connection between a remote location and the company network and VoIP services. The pocket-sized AP-65 fashions a secure wireless hot spot. Once the access points are plugged into an Internet connection, they create a secure IPSec tunnel to an Aruba controller in the data centre. Aruba also has updated its mobility software to include secure VPN connections. The feature lets remote and branch-office users be continuously connected to headquarters via secure VPN tunnels.