REDCENTRIC WHITE PAPER NEXT GENERATION NETWORKS: 10 KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR MANAGED NETWORK PROVIDER

Transcription

1 REDCENTRIC WHITE PAPER NEXT GENERATION NETWORKS: 10 KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR MANAGED NETWORK PROVIDER

2 IP-based next generation networks offer significant business advantage through powerful support of highspeed Cloud-based voice, data and virtualisation services, as well as real-time collaboration tools such as video-conferencing. But to reap the benefits you need to make sure you re not getting a next generation network marred by last generation service and support. This paper suggests the ten key questions you should ask your network provider to ensure you re getting real value for your investment. Today s business users don t just expect, but need, seamless connection into the corporate network and access to corporate resources 24 hours a day in the office, from home, from customer sites, from hotels and airports. Next generation networks promise to meet these new demands, providing the backbone for commercial agility, competitive edge and customer loyalty. Certainly it s true that if you re still trying to stretch the life in your old legacy networks, you ll be missing out on a wealth of business advantages. But like many buzzphrases, the term next generation network is often liberally applied by network providers to give their offering a veneer of excellence which, when scratched, reveals little to substantiate the claims. Proactively managing, monitoring, securing and reporting on complex networks is difficult to get right. Using an experienced managed network provider can remove many of the problems, bringing better network management and enabling you to benefit from cost savings, budget predictability and freed up in-house IT resource for front-end, businesscritical operations. 10 QUESTIONS FOR YOUR NETWORK PROVIDER So how do you know whether the network provider you choose will deliver a truly next generation network and help you fully exploit its advantages? The questions below will help you investigate all the issues. THERE ARE THREE KINDS OF DEATH IN THIS WORLD. THERE S HEART DEATH, THERE S BRAIN DEATH, AND THERE S BEING OFF THE NETWORK. Guy Almes, Director, The Academy for Advanced Telecommunications and Learning Technologies, Texas A&M University KEY ROUTER SWITCH Removing single points of failure through multi-meshing

3 Q1 HOW RESILIENT IS YOUR NETWORK? The availability of the network will be agreed in a Service Level Agreement (SLA). What ensures that availability is the network s resilience. Most network providers will tell you their network is resilient but there s resilience and there s resilience. The key issue is what failover and self-healing options their network includes: what you are looking for is a multi-meshed infrastructure which provides alternative routes to key points on the network, ensuring that if one connection fails, network traffic can automatically be rerouted via another connection, so there s no single point of failure. All networks will offer a basic level of resilience; it s up to you to decide how much over and above that you need. How long can you afford to be without access to your network. What will it do to your reputation if your customers are unable to send or receive information? If your provider guarantees 99.8% annual availability, this might sound good. But if you re running a 24-hour operation, the missing 0.2% equates to 17.5 hours which means you ve lost two days productivity. In this case the extra cost of investing in having an alternative route available is probably worth it. How much will it cost your business financially? A 2010 survey of 7,000 businesses conducted by IT systems integrator CDW found that network outages were costing US businesses $1.7 billion in lost profits. 1 You need to establish that the network provider is proactively ensuring the network s availability. This should include everything from the configuration of the network itself to constant heartbeat monitoring (the industry standard is every five minutes) and automatic detection & remediation (see Question 7). TECHNOLOGY BYTE POINT OF PRESENCE (POP) An access point on the network that includes routers and servers, among other network devices. Does your core network have multiple layers of meshing? How many other suppliers underpin your network? Can your network withstand multiple points of failure? Do you have a secondary network to take over if the primary network fails? Are there multiple connections to an ADSL Cloud? If there s a fault, is traffic automatically rerouted to an alternative supplier s network until the fault can be fixed? Can traffic be routed via a different POP? In your POPs, do you have alternative devices that will take over if the primary device fails? How many times an hour is heartbeat monitoring performed? How much do I pay for extra resilience? Q2 HOW DO YOU ENSURE BUSINESS CONTINUITY IN EVENT OF DISASTER? This is related to Question 1 and helps you delve deeper into the network provider s ability to ensure network availability after a disaster. Anything from a short-term power failure to a catastrophic fire or flood can cut you off from your data centre and/or your Cloud-based data services. Although you may have your own or third-party disaster recovery measures in place, it is the network connectivity that will enable business continuity. A good network service provider will be able to reroute traffic, even to employees homes, using a variety of different selfhealing and other options in the event of a site-related failure or disaster, ensuring that businesses are still able to trade, albeit in an agreed limited capacity, in the event of a disaster. All the issues under Question 1 still apply but there are a handful of extra questions you should ask specifically to do with disaster recovery: How do you ensure essential services are maintained during short-term incidents such as power failure? Do you have a home-worker/disaster recovery plan to help maintain service during this time? Do you have two or more connected data centres that back each other up? I M AFRAID THAT LAST NIGHT WE SUFFERED MULTIPLE FAILURES, WITH THE RESULT THAT THE WHOLE SITE WENT DOWN. BBC 2

4 Q3 HOW DO I KNOW YOUR NETWORK IS REALLY SECURE? Networks are subject to widely differing but equally disabling attacks from covert cybercrime and denial of service attacks through to old-fashioned vandalism in which the copper and fibre are literally dug out of the ground. It s not hard to find examples of network security breaches: The external intrusion onto Sony s PlayStation Network at the end of April 2011 led to the loss of data of about 77 million people and several lawsuits. 3 Earlier, in February 2011, AutoTrader, MyVue cinemas and the London Stock Exchange served malware-tainted ads as the result of a security breach at an ad network they all used. 4 At the same time, metal thefts are costing the UK around 770 million a year. Indeed, in a 2013 survey conducted by PWC, it was estimated that some 78% of large organisations had experienced an attack by an authorised outsider. These incidents highlight the complexity of the problem of maintaining network security. So how can you establish a vendor s real security credibility. One thing you can do is ask to see their facilities. Another is to check their compliance with industry regulations and guidelines. ONE THING YOU CAN DO IS ASK TO SEE THEIR FACILITIES. The main ones are: ISO and ISO 9001 PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) IG SoC (Information Governance Statement of Compliance for entering into an agreement with NHS Connecting For Health for access to the NHS National Network (N3)) Compliance with these standards will indicate a rigorous process control and attention to detail in the provider s approach to security, but you should still ask the provider specific questions yourself. Do you have an information security policy that specifically includes protection processes and configurations for networked equipment? Is your network MPLS-based, (the protocol itself providing security for multiple customers on a single network)? Is your network protected by intrusion detection systems to prevent hackers getting on to or disabling the network? Is your network protected by a firewall compliant to at least EAL4 (i.e. the highest) level? What authentication processes do you have to ensure only authorised staff can access the network? Do you provide granular control over the network via access control policies? What types of physical security do you have? Which industry regulations and guidelines are you compliant with? TECHNOLOGY BYTES QUALITY OF SERVICE (QOS) Relates to the prioritisation of network traffic. The term is more relevant to newer IP networks such as MPLS and QoS capability is a key indicator of a vendor s commitment to performance, especially for applications such as VoIP which need to be prioritised. CONTENTION Competition between nodes for network resource. Contention can bring down costs but can result in limited throughput that might not always be suitable for your needs.

5 MPLS NETWORKS ARE PARTICULARLY SCALABLE ALLOWING MULTIPLE SERVICES VOICE, DATA, INTERNET, VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORKS (VPNS), VIDEO ETC TO USE THE SAME INFRASTRUCTURE. Q4 HOW DO YOU GUARANTEE NETWORK PERFORMANCE? A number of factors can affect network performance. Speed, for example, can vary significantly from a few Kbps up to and beyond 10 Gbps. The equation is straightforward higher speeds and higher bandwidth give you higher capacity which in turn gives you the ability to run more business-critical applications. Along with speed, Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities, contention management and the provider s future plans for resource availability should all be taken into account. Especially as the need for the network to support more and more traffic is likely to grow considerably in line with what Ted Chamberlin, research director at Gartner, has called pentup user demand for collaboration and Cloud-based projects? 5 How do you cope with surges of traffic, for example how will you handle the increased internet access required during the Olympics? Will l have to pay extra to ensure constant internet access? If so, how much? What speeds are available? How many classes of QoS do you have? How do you manage contention in your network? Are you IPv6 ready or do you at least have plans for it? Will your network support growing user demand? Q5 HOW SCALABLE AND FLEXIBLE IS YOUR NETWORK? To protect your investment, your network needs to be scalable and have the ability to absorb new technologies without requiring additional infrastructure or incurring added expense. MPLS networks are particularly scalable allowing multiple services voice, data, Internet, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), video etc to use the same infrastructure. It s simply a case of adding more services to the original pipe, not installing a whole new pipe. This ultimately allows for scales of economy as the infrastructure doesn t have to be duplicated to support additional services. In addition, you don t have to waste money oversubscribing to allow for possible future growth. Another significant and often overlooked factor is that using one supplier to provide a range of converged services on a single network will remove the complexity and expense of dealing with several suppliers. Does your network enable the delivery of multiple business quality Cloud services such as voice, data backup, Internet, and corporate VPNs to all our sites? How easy is it for me to add these other services to the same network pipe? Is there any disruption to my existing services? What does this cost? Can remote and home workers connect to the same core network? Can I add new network-based applications that might put new demands on my connections?

6 Q6 WHAT CONNECTIVITY AND INTEGRATION OPTIONS DOES YOUR NETWORK SUPPORT? Almost all network providers lease the actual network and/or lines from specialist companies like BT, Cable&Wireless and Global Crossing. Many companies build networks using multiple suppliers, individual providers supplying a bit here and a bit there. This can give rise to problems of ownership of an incident, with one side blaming the other. So you need to check that your provider will assume all responsibility for any incident and will include this in their SLA. One other area to think about is if you need connectivity with one of the UK s large closed use group networks such as: Janet the UK s Education and Research network N3 the NHS national network linking hospitals, medical centres and GPs in England and Scotland. Do you have an MPLS network? What is the reach of your network? Does it cover the whole of the UK? Europe? The world? Does your network embed your own data centres for secure storage and data management services? What is your POP density? Do you undertake end-to-end management, i.e. do you manage all the customer links as well as your own or just your own core network? The type of network, its connectivity and the provider s network management policies are all important criteria for you to consider. In addition, the POP density is an important budgetary consideration. A high density of POPs can significantly reduce costs as much as 50% more over other suppliers due to the much shorter distances between a customer s site and their nearest POP. Real business support through multiple integration options Do you offer a choice of complementary access circuit types from high-performance multi-gigabyte fibre optic through to Ethernet, broadband, wireless (is it 3G or 4G?) and leased lines? Can you connect to traditional ISDN/ PSTN technology? Does your business plan to offer hosted IP telephony and data services on a single converged device, such as on smartphones? Are you Janet accredited to connect to and supply services over Janet into all connected institutions and organisations Are you accredited for NHS N3 connectivity and do you meet the NHS Connecting for Health (CfH) Information Governance Statement of Compliance? INTERNET NHS N3 ETHERNET CONNECTIVITY MPLS CORE BUSINESS ADSL CONNECTIVITY IP Voice PSTN LEASED-LINE CONNECTIVITY FUTURE CONNECTIVITY OPTIONS

7 Q7 DO YOU HAVE 24/7 AUTOMATED MONITORING AND SURVEILLANCE TOOLS A key differentiator between network providers is how proactive they are in detecting and resolving faults and how much they invest in best-of-breed tools for automated detection, management and reporting of incidents. Some less exacting suppliers will be relying on in-house tools or unsupported freeware but these solutions do not usually incorporate the highly sophisticated technologies that will automatically detect any failure, create an incident ticket and auto-assign incidents to engineers around the clock. Network providers using powerful tools will often have detected and fixed a fault overnight so the first you know of it is when you see the report when you start work in the morning. Make sure if there are specific issues you re interested in, that you can get reports on them. The importance of this area in the selection process is demonstrated by the fact that it is covered by one of the influential Magic Quadrants published by industry analyst Gartner. Examples of the automated tools you might look for are: HP Network Node Manager views and manages the status of nodes on the network. HP Service Manager progresses calls and is the central repository for service desks, recording incidents, changes and problems. HP Operations Manager takes and enriches information from HP Network Node Manager and auto-generates incidents in HP Operations Manager. HP UCMDB (Universal configuration management database) provides direct real-time root cause analysis for network incidents. Infovista reports on performance, availability and QoS targets. What tools do you use for automated detection and management of incidents? What percentage of faults are automatically fixed overnight without customers prior knowledge? What reports can I get, e.g. on network availability and uptime, utilisation, congestion errors, by port etc? Q8 WHAT SELF-SERVICE NETWORK MANAGEMENT OPTIONS ARE AVAILABLE? If you re using the services of a network provider, one of the biggest benefits is the amount of IT time that is freed up. So the last thing you need is to waste time trying to manage the same problems but this time being caught up in endless tag and phone frustration with the network provider. You need to be able to liaise with them easily, getting and giving information seamlessly. Is there a portal where I can log and update incident tickets? Do you have templates that will automatically create a ticket once I ve added details of my current issue? Can I request reports online? Is there a customer knowledge base I can access? NETWORK PROVIDERS USING POWERFUL TOOLS WILL OFTEN HAVE DETECTED AND FIXED A FAULT OVERNIGHT SO THE FIRST YOU KNOW OF IT IS WHEN YOU SEE THE REPORT WHEN YOU START WORK IN THE MORNING. HP Asset Manager registers and records all assets including financial, stock and end-of-life information.

8 Q9 WHAT IS YOUR COMMITMENT TO SERVICE DELIVERY AND BEST PRACTICE SERVICE MANAGEMENT? Is the network provider investing in best practice service management? A key indicator is if they operate to ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) guidelines. Described on its website as the most widely adopted approach for IT Service Management in the world and based on five key service management lifecycles, ITIL provides a framework for identifying, planning, delivering and supporting IT services. You need to drill down into the company s actual commitments and, as with other criteria, look very closely at what service delivery is promised in their SLA. For example, there can be significant differences in the time within which companies will guarantee to respond to a circuit going down. To give you an idea, Redcentric gives a commitment of one hour (and in fact in March 2011 averaged just 4.5 mins). Do the monitoring and incidence management tools you use conform to ITIL guidelines? How streamlined is the migration process? How much downtime is involved? If I decide to switch to your company, how much notice do I have to give that I m ready to complete the switch over? How long do you state in your SLA that it will take to fix a broken circuit? How much have you invested in your current infrastructure? What is your roadmap for your network? Q10 WHAT LEVEL OF SUPPORT DO YOU OFFER? Support goes hand in hand with service delivery and service management. Your ability to have your issues resolved quickly, even overnight, means that you in turn are able to give your own customers the level of satisfaction they expect. You need to establish how the provider thinks of support. Is it seen as having the same priority as its technology and services, or is it an add-on available only during normal office hours? Is support included as part of the licence /service? Do you offer dedicated engineering 24/7 or is there just 9 5 access? If you offer 24/7 support, is this from an operations centre that s manned round the clock or from someone on standby at home with a mobile phone? If I phone you, will I speak to a fully trained support engineer or a call taker based in an overseas call centre? What training do your specialists have? Do they have training in any supporting third-party technologies? Can I get support by phone, web and ? Can I speak directly to your support engineers and other technical specialists? Can I visit your support team Do I pay extra for 24/7 support? SUMMARY Next generation networks can bring you a wide range of business benefits from resilient geographical reach, high-quality performance, tight network security and a wide range of hosted voice and data services. Managed network providers can help you fully exploit these benefits but it is up to you to look below the surface to ensure that their technology, products, service and staff can deliver on their marketing promises and their SLAs. REFERENCES 1. Lost-Due-to-IT-Network-Outages-in Survey / 2. website_outage_explained/ ddos 5. Redcentric Solutions Ltd. Registered Office Address: Central House, Beckwith Knowle, Harrogate HG3 1UG. Registered Company Number REDCENTRICPLC.COM

9 HARROGATE (HEAD OFFICE) Central House Beckwith Knowle Harrogate HG3 1UG THEALE 2 Commerce Park Brunel Road Theale, Reading Berkshire RG7 4AB CAMBRIDGE Newton House Cambridge Business Park Cowley Road Cambridge CB4 0WZ READING 3-5 Worton Drive Reading Berkshire RG2 0TG LONDON John Stow House 18 Bevis Marks London EC3A 7JB INDIA & Block II, 4th Floor, White House Kundan Bagh, Begumpet Hyderabad sayhello@redcentricplc.com