Mr Coool Cisco

Buy third-party

2011-11-17T02:05:00.000-08:00

Third party savings
In the not so distant past, using third party network accessories was a risky business. Plug a third party optic into a network switch, for example, and you risked invalidating the switch's warranty. Times change, though, and today, while the warranty issue can still raise its ugly head in mission critical networks, you can make your budget go much further by careful deployment of third party accessories in less critical areas.

This change has been paralleled in other areas. Recent Euro regulations have had a similar effect in the car market, for example, overturning the long standing requirement that cars be serviced at manufacturers' main agents. We all know that when buying a child's car seat, an upgraded car hi-fi system or even something as mundane as new wiper blades, there's no need to buy manufacturers' own products. Most of us are very happy to make savings by opting for third party alternatives, rightly confident that our vehicle warranties will not be affected.

The best of both worlds
Similarly, in the network world, while the manufacturers of our hypothetical switch aren't required to guarantee workability with every third party offering available, they also don't have the right to mess you around. Should you want to connect that switch to a component made by someone else (and there's every chance you will – most networks today draw on a rich mix of different manufacturers) then you have every right to do so. Your switch warranty should remain intact.

What is important is that your network support provider is fully aware of who is supplying what and what comes from where on your network. Failing to keep them fully up to speed could result in unpleasant surprises when the time comes to call on their services to sort out this or that problem on your network.

Explore every avenue
With the economy and trading conditions as tight as they are, and with many pundits predicting even more difficult times ahead, it is absolutely in your interest, and in your business' interest, to explore every possible avenue down which savings might be made. From the cable to the optics to the ways in which you connect your switches together, every saving made represents budget that can be deployed more profitably elsewhere – perhaps on upgraded core network infrastructure.

Of course, you may not need to go as far as actually specifying third party components in every case. Sometimes simply letting your manufacturer know that you are aware of the savings that you could make this way will be enough to encourage them to offer discounts, bring their own prices in line. Business is business, after all, and often, when they can't get what they want, they'll accept what's on offer.

It's all too easy to overpay by defaulting to your main network manufacturer even for simple components and all those overpayments add up. Used wisely, the same budget can pay for more important devices at the network core. Next time you are ordering network kit, take a long hard look at your shopping list to see where third party alternatives could help you make savings.

Check viability of new equipment

2011-10-18T04:18:00.000-07:00

When is 'new' really necessary?
I bet, like me, you get something of a buzz when buying new kit. It's satisfying and (let's face it) fun to see new components going into your network. But replacing existing equipment with the latest, even if not the greatest, is not always the financially prudent thing to do. Sometimes it's wiser to keep your existing kit going a little longer, replacing it later on.

I tend to keep my cars for a fair while: my old 4x4 is knocking on eight years old now and it's had new parts in pretty much every area, from the engine and suspension through to the driver's seat. Every new part and every repair costs money, though, and the time will come, probably fairly soon, at which point replacing the car will make more financial sense than continuing to run it.

Of course there are other good reasons to replace an ageing car. My 4x4 has a petrol engine and a substantial thirst – frankly, I'm getting bored of filling up every other day. I've promised myself that when I change it, I'll go for a diesel model or perhaps even a hybrid: running on diesel would cost me a fraction of my petrol running costs.

New: interesting and fun
As well as offering impressive fuel economy, today's vehicles are amazingly reliable. And of course, though it sounds obvious, a new car is, well, new. Like most of us, I like new: it's interesting and fun.

I need to be hard-nosed, though, if I'm not to throw away money. I need to do the maths and identify the right point at which to replace my car. I need to check out the market, so I know what new models are likely to be introduced around the time I reach that point: a new model could be a better bet for me, in which case it might be worth keeping my current car going a little longer, until the new model is available.

These principles apply as much to my network – and yours - as they do to our cars.

Older kit – more failures
Recently I was chatting with a colleague from one of Go Communications' Network Enterprise Partners. He told me – perhaps not surprisingly, given the current economic climate – that while they were busy quoting customers and prospects alike for new products available from manufacturers, a significant number of sales were not being completed. When those customers and prospects saw the proposals, many considered that their existing infrastructure was adequate for their requirements.

The same Partner also told me that network infrastructure component failures were gradually on the increase. That's inevitable, of course, with ageing kit. The older it gets, the more likely it is to fail, and the time will come at which it is more expensive to continue to run an aged infrastructure than it is to replace it, either in whole or in part. In today's economic conditions it's often reaching this point that triggers previously deferred network infrastructure upgrades.

When those upgrades are made, not only is the reliability issue addressed, but other benefits can also accrue. The new devices may have features useful to the business that were not available before, for example.

Do your homework
The two keys to maximising return on your existing investment without spending more than you should on keeping it going are thorough research and careful sums. Study the pros and cons of upgrading now or waiting until later. Know the market, the products on offer, what features you need and what you don't. Be crystal clear on how much your existing set-up is costing you to run and what savings you could make in running costs by upgrading.

When the time comes, you can upgrade with confidence, knowing that the decision is sound – and of course that will mean you can enjoy that 'new kit' thrill all the more.

Buy fully tested hardware

2011-09-15T02:59:00.000-07:00

Testing pays dividends
Fascinating fact: as much as 6% of hardware equipment purchased new and delivered sealed fails to initialise on first start up. Largely this is down to shocks and vibration as the product passes through assorted warehouses on its journey from the manufacturer to your site.

Of course, if one of those 6% of devices happens to be critical to your network installation, this ceases to be a fascinating fact. It becomes instead a substantial pain in the neck, potentially costing you significant amounts. So, what can you do to avoid suffering at the hands of this particular statistic?

A basic principle
To answer that, let's first review a basic principal. Just as your hot and cold water systems are fundamentally more important than the various appliances and fittings they serve (after all, the most expensive, all singing, all dancing shower is useless without a reliable water supply) so your network infrastructure is more important than the devices connected to it.

If you doubt this, consider for a moment the upshot of a key component of your network infrastructure arriving on its installation date and refusing to initialise. How many people will you have sitting around doing little more than honing their thumb-twiddling skills and charging you by the hour for the privilege? How many aspects of your business will be impacted? The total cost can be enormous.

Pre-installation testing
Addressing such risks comes down to pre-installation testing. However, simply having your supplier test equipment before shipping it to you, repacking it in its original packaging complete with test report, is only part of the story. After all, faults can develop in transit, even after such supplier testing.

However, this should catch all pre-existing hardware issues, as well as rooting out any potential compatibility problems – much better to know in advance than waste expensive engineering time because the pre-sales team failed to pick up on something when proposing devices and configurations.

Get involved
Being actively involved in deciding on the types of testing to employ pays dividends, as does making such decisions early on. Full traffic load testing, for example, is likely to cost more and take more time than basic loop-back testing, but if planned well and in advance, the time involved is likely to be significantly cheaper than the time involved in resolving problems resulting from faulty or incompatible components at installation time.

Undertaking such testing is also likely to be significantly less stressful and damaging to your reputation than managing problems on D-Day, with a couple of engineers hanging around idle and a testy customer tapping his watch and making sarcastic comments.

Knowledge, so the saying goes, is power. When it comes to advance knowledge of potential pitfalls it certainly is, so make sure your kit (new or refurbished) is tested thoroughly before despatch, make sure you are intimately involved in the testing process, and do it early on.

Use Refurbished Spares

2011-08-12T02:57:00.000-07:00

Don't bin it – sell it
It's in your interest to maximise the return you get on your network infrastructure investments. That's simple business common sense. And it holds good even when devices reach the point at which they can no longer form a useful part of that infrastructure. How? Simple: sell them, for the best price possible.

Smaller companies tend to be better at this than larger ones. That's possibly not surprising, as financial outlay on network and other IT infrastructure is typically a large proportion of a small business' total overhead. When such businesses have serviceable network kit to retire that they can't re-use elsewhere on their network, they don't usually just dispose of it: they sell it on as second-user equipment.

Make your budget go further
New network devices aren't cheap, and given the financial constraints under which many businesses are currently working, any net reduction in spend that can be achieved will be welcomed by owner, shareholders and bank manager alike. Every pound retrieved by selling used kit is one pound fewer that the company must find to run its network.

While many smaller businesses would view this as obvious, it's surprising how many medium-sized and larger organisations do nothing to secure a return on retired network kit. When you consider that whereas a small business might spend several thousand on its network over the course of a year, a larger one could well be spending in the tens or hundreds of thousands – or even millions – this is all the more remarkable.

A formal sales process
Whatever the size of the business, the key to maximising sales revenues from retired network devices is to formalise the sales process and clearly identify who is responsible for it.

Larger businesses can benefit from dedicated teams to handle the disposal of retired equipment, properly incentivised to secure the best possible price the kit they sell on. Even smaller ones should have at the very least a sales-oriented individual responsible for this area.

It might seem like a good idea to have the existing network management team handle the sale of surplus equipment, but while highly skilled and experienced technically, they are unlikely to be natural sales people. As a result, they won't get the best prices and they'll probably end up resenting having to handle this task as well as their day-to-day network management activities.

Plan it – and go for it
Looking at the practical issue of how to sell redundant kit, a number of alternatives present themselves, including private and public auctions, press or online advertising and even, for larger organisations, creating an in-house outlet. The key is to generate competition to purchase the retired devices, thus maximising the sale price.

There's almost always a market for second user kit: a device that seems useless to you could well be exactly what the company down the road needs. So plan the best way for your business to sell its retired network kit, put the right people in place to execute that plan, and start getting value from your network hardware even after you've removed it from your network.

Reduce Maintenance Costs

2011-07-20T01:10:00.000-07:00

Cut your maintenance costs
While it's quick and easy to simply accept the renewal proposal your maintenance supplier sends you each year, it's also a sure-fire route to rapid cash burning. It's a healthy policy to explore maintenance cost savings on a regular basis: networks and the cost of supporting them change constantly and opportunities for savings can easily be overlooked by the unwary.

Contract renewal
Achieving a reduction in maintenance costs may be fairly easy to negotiate when contract renewal time comes around. After all, your supplier already has the necessary spares so they have no sparing-up costs to meet. Also, with 12 months or more of history to review they can see that most parts of your network simply carried on working faultlessly all year. They are aware that you know they can see that, and that you're wondering about dropping support on some items as a result.

Of course, there are real costs associated with providing maintenance support, and your support supplier has to make a profit. You are never going to reduce the cost of mission-critical network support to zero. But what else can you do to get the cost down?

Shopping around
The obvious answer to that is to shop around for better prices from other maintenance companies. This is most likely to be fruitful if you are currently using your manufacturer's premium support service. If you are already with a third party maintenance supplier, you are unlikely to make significant savings this way. In fact, you may find that alternative providers actually quote more than your existing supplier, because they need to spare up, and because your existing supplier will want your repeat business enough to be willing to discount their prices to retain it.

There is another avenue to explore, though, which can realise significant savings whether or not you switch suppliers. It may not be surprising to regular readers of this series that it can be illustrated with a parallel from the world of motoring.

Checking the detail
When renewing your car insurance, you probably shop around to see if you're getting the best deal. If the quotes come in at or around the same price, you might dig a little deeper into the detail. I certainly do. I like to make savings where I can, because then I can spend those savings on things rather more exciting and entertaining than car insurance.

I check the policy detail. Where is the car kept overnight? Is it alarmed? How is it used? I even look at the excess payable on each claim. I've had my Range Rover for over eight years and I know I can get most parts at very low cost second hand or from online spares specialists and my local mechanic can fit them at rates well below those demanded by the main dealer. I don't need insurance for that, and if I'm involved in a minor scrape, I'll sort it out myself to avoid pushing my premiums up.

Therefore, when it comes to looking at the excess I'm willing to pay on any claims I actually do make, I push it as high as the insurance company will allow. That drives my premiums down, and because I'm a careful driver and I can afford to sort out any minor scrapes myself, I save significant amounts over the years.

In short, I carefully assess exactly how much cover I need, and make sure I'm not buying cover where it's not necessary.

Don't need it? Don't buy it!
Similar principles apply to networks. Take a look at your telephone and technical support. This is an area in which many businesses have much more wide-ranging cover than they actually need. Of course, for some parts of your network you may well need such support, especially if you aren't always around and your team aren't as technically proficient as you. Indeed, a few years ago, when money was less of an issue than it is today, it was commonplace for telephone support to be included in every hardware support contract.

Finances are rather tighter nowadays, though. I speak on a regular basis with network managers from a wide variety of sectors, and the common story from all at present is that budgets are under pressure, frozen or even cut. They have hardly any room for manoeuvre, and when that unexpected (and unplanned) requirement arises, they find themselves having to go to great lengths to justify the additional expenditure. When the network is down and the phone is ringing off the hook, that's not good.

Cut cost, not value
It makes good sense, then, to evaluate carefully exactly what does, and what does not require telephone support. For much of your network, a simple break-fix contract may be entirely sufficient. Pull together a list of everything that needs hardware cover but doesn't warrant telephone support. Technologies such as routers and switches aren't the rocket science they used to be, and where you don't need telephone support, there's precious little point in buying it. Doing so adds significant cost but no value: move such devices onto straightforward break-fix support.

Take your list to your maintenance supplier and ask for a reduced quote in the light of the reduced telephone support: on some devices the saving could be as much as 50%.

So this month's money-saving tip is this: don't just renew your maintenance contracts each year. Scrutinise them. Check that you're with the supplier who can give you the best deal, make sure they're giving you the best deal, and be ruthless in pulling out of the contract any support that you don't actually need. Remember: if it's old and you're familiar with it, it should cost you less to maintain.

Use original & OEM & 3rd Party

2011-06-16T04:34:00.000-07:00

Genuine, OEM or third party?
In these economically challenging times, savings must be made. As costs are driven down, though, risks often rise. Lose control of those risks, and those hard-won savings – and more – could be wiped out.

If you could buy the same piece of memory, for example, through two different channels, one being twice as expensive as the other, which would you choose? Get the choice right, and you could make great cost savings. Get it wrong and not only could you damage your network, but you could also jeopardise the warranty that's in place to protect you against failures. Conventional wisdom says that genuine or OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) components are the safe but expensive options, while savings are to be had, at the cost of increased risk, by going for third party products.

Cars again!
In keeping with the tradition we've built up in this series, consider a parallel from the motoring world. When you buy a brand new car, it will come with perhaps as much as a three year warranty. Typically you'll protect yourself against unexpected expensive repairs by having it serviced at the official dealer you bought it from, in line with the warranty contract – all part of generally taking care not to invalidate the warranty.

This extends to any additions you make to the car. While there is a huge range of performance and comfort enhancing upgrades available, the manufacturer will require that you have any work done at an authorised dealer to keep your warranty intact.

Main dealer labour rates being what they are, this will almost certainly not be the cheapest option, of course. However in the good old days of plentiful money supply this was the norm, and independent dealers were left somewhat out in the cold, having to explain to potential customers how money could be saved here and there by using genuine parts sourced through independent channels: as long as proof of the parts' origin was retained breach of warranty terms could be avoided.

Have your cake and eat it
Those days are of course long gone. Today money is tight and the situation has as a result been turned on its head. It's almost as if customers have an even greater desire to save money (safely!) than the independent dealers have to sell to them. And the good news is that you don't need to throw caution to the wind and take wild risks in order to make worthwhile savings. With a little careful research, you can have your cake and eat it.

I've gone through this process with my faithful old Range Rover. I've owned it from new – eight years ago – and I still love it. So, do I take it to the main dealer for service and repairs? Absolutely not! I'm not about to be stung with main dealer prices. Instead, I've done my homework and found a local independent Land Rover specialist. They only work on Land Rovers and Range Rovers, and they don't get involved in vehicle sales, only servicing and repair. All of their customers are, like me, ex-main-dealer customers who have seen the benefits of using a specialised outfit like this, and the cost savings that can be made.

You have a choice
Critically, they have the resources to supply and fit both genuine parts and third party alternatives. I always get quotes for both, and if it's a safety-critical part that's needed, such as brakes, I'll usually go for the genuine item. If it's less critical, I'll probably go for the third party alternative.

Similar choices need to be made by network managers. From the smallest home network to the largest corporate infrastructure, the key is reliability. Life's too short to be sitting idle without access to critical applications or data. Time is, after all, money.

To be able to decide when to go for genuine parts, when to choose OEM and when to go third party, you need to know your network – the age of every component and the nature of the support service it's covered by.

For components still under warranty, there are two alternative options when sourcing spares: OEM or third party. In the case of a very large network there is clear justification in conducting a close examination of all components that could be purchased as OEM, while avoiding invalidating the warranty. OEM gives you peace of mind that the product comes from the same source as that used by the manufacturer, and allows you be fully supported if any product failure issues arise.

It is sheer network size that makes this exercise worth undertaking: on a larger network the savings can be enormous. For smaller networks, with smaller numbers of devices involved, the potential savings are much reduced, making it less worthwhile spending the time involved. In either case, if your network is mission-critical and you want to preserve your warranty then OEM is the way to go. Such products will be manufacturer approved, and, indeed, identical to the manufacturer's genuine article, making sparing up easier.

Chunky savings
I like chunky savings, though, so I always like to explore the third party option: that's where the best savings can be made. Most third party products will not be manufacturer approved, but lack of manufacturer approval has little or no bearing on whether a product will work any better or worse than an approved product. After all, no manufacturer has the time or inclination to approve every third party device that may or may not work with their own.

Do your research, then. Examine non-approved vendor's products. Is the spec the same? Has it been recommended by anyone else? Is it recommended by the supplier as good for use in your device? What warranty does it come with? All of this may well be spot on, even though the third party device hasn’t been officially sanctioned by the manufacturer of the component that you need to upgrade or spare up for.

The key to making savings by specifying OEM or third party devices is comprehensive knowledge. Know your network, know which network segments and components are mission-critical. Know the nature and extent of the warranty on each device. Then research the available OEM and third party alternatives for upgrades and spares. Assess the risks involved to the network and the business and weigh them against the potential savings. Arm yourself with the information you need to make the decision, and then go for it.

Opt for sparing on less critical areas

2011-05-25T04:33:00.000-07:00

Maintenance costs driving you spare?
Your IT network infrastructure needs maintenance support. It is your business' central nervous system: without it, you would almost certainly be hard pressed to stay afloat for long. But it is a conglomeration of technology, and technology – even the very best technology – is subject to failure.

Nothing new so far. Indeed, I've said as much a number of times in this series of articles.

Here's the critical question, though: "How can you keep the risk of device failure at an acceptable level, without burning huge amounts of cash in the process?"

You could conclude that your entire infrastructure should be covered by a support contract. After all your business relies utterly on it – it is, by almost any definition, mission critical. That would address the risk reduction requirement, of course, but it wouldn't be cheap.

As always, there is a better way.

A little mental retail therapy
Think back to the last time you went shopping for one of the many pieces of electronic wizardry that we all fill our homes with. The latest plasma TV or game console, perhaps. At the checkout you're sure to have been offered an extended guarantee. When buying cutting-edge technology with as yet no track record in the market, I almost always go for such extended guarantees. After all, brand new technology is new not only to me, but, in terms of its performance in the mass market, it is new even to its manufacturer. The extended guarantee may be costly, but it provides a good level of protection against unknown risks.

Now leap forward a couple of years to the day the extended guarantee renewal notice lands on your doormat. At this point, I usually take a completely different view. I've seen the product in action, I've read the reviews and I've chewed the fat with friends who also have it. I know it's reliable, and with the benefit of hindsight the renewal premium looks rather expensive for what it will give me. The long and the short of it is that since the product has been working well throughout years one and two, there's every reason expect it to continue to do so in years three and four. I say "No thanks" to the invitation to renew.

Is the cover warranted?
There's a principle here that transplants well into the world of your IT network. While it makes excellent sense to have appropriate support contracts covering more recently purchased devices and those which are core to the functioning of your network, significant savings can be made by identifying those areas of your network that don't warrant such cover, and protecting them with spares instead.

Take a long, hard, critical look at your support contracts. You're paying, of course, not for the repair cost of each device, or even a percentage of it, but, effectively, for an insurance contract. You are buying protection against remedial expense and costly downtime in the event of a failure. It's your support provider's job to provide that protection, of course, and it's not something which can be done on the cheap. Each supported device must be surrounded with sufficient spares and skilled personnel to ensure that service can be delivered in line with the standards set in the contract. All that costs money, which of course is reflected in the price you pay for the support.

Mission critical, and not so critical
Now, if you have to have that support, then you have to have it. But – and it's a big 'but' – while your network as a whole is mission critical, it's almost certainly not the case that the whole of your network is mission critical. Naturally, your support provider isn't going to draw this to your attention – supporting those non mission critical parts of your network is usually, not to put too fine a point on it, money for old rope. Your support provider will be very happy to have the extra, low-hassle profit it brings their way. To take the initiative and put yourself ahead of the game, you need to do some auditing, before that renewal notice lands on your desk.

Before you are next due to renegotiate support contracts, take some time out to identify which parts of your network could be supported in house with appropriate spares. Of course, doing this may mean taking on additional staff – reckon all the various costs in and compare them to the cost of including those parts of your network in a support contract. It boils down to arithmetic. Have your accountants crunch the numbers so you can see clearly the relative costs involved. Once you can see that, and you know where in your network the dividing line between mission critical and non mission critical lies, you'll be able to decide what should be included in a support contract, and what you can support by sparing up.

And remember, the time to do that preparatory work is now – before the pressure is on at support contract renewal time. Arm yourself with a cuppa and get auditing!

Rent to Buy

2011-04-24T04:31:00.000-07:00

Try before you buyHave you ever gone out and made one of those big purchases – the sort that you plan for ages and really look forward to – only to get your new toy home and find that, really, it's a bit of a disappointment? Go on, be honest with yourself. We've all been there.

Often, there's little you could have done to avoid such a situation. Such disappointments are often not due to a lack of pre-purchase research and product comparison, but only make themselves felt once you start actually using the product.

Take a test drive
Most of us are familiar with addressing this problem when buying cars. Few of us, after all, would buy a car without first taking it on a test drive. Of course, before doing that you'd decide on the make, model and features you're after, and check out the cost. You might have to drop this feature or that in order to keep the cost within your means – you might even have to change to a different model – but you wouldn't place an order until you'd test driven the car you'd settled on. You'd want to know what it's actually like to drive. After all, that's what it's for. Driving.

Having made your decision, you might decide not to buy the new car outright, but to pay for it over a period of time, maybe three or four years. For business use, you might decide not to buy it at all, but to lease it. These approaches, while usually more expensive than outright purchase in the long term, offer great benefits in both cash flow and flexibility terms.

Rent it!
Network equipment can be acquired in similar ways: outright purchase, staged payments or by renting it.

Renting can offer significant benefits – it can be a highly convenient, flexible and economical way of acquiring the kit you need. Even if you decide to purchase the equipment outright or via staged payments, it can be most useful to rent it first in order to perform longer-term in-situ testing. Such testing can give you a much higher degree of confidence that the new equipment will do what you need it to do when installed in your network, in turn increasing the chances of a successful purchase, and keeping everyone happy – including your finance department and boss!

Renting means savings
The principal goal of this series of networking tips is to help you save money – to control capital expenditure. That goal is even more important now than it was a couple of years ago when we started this series. With the economic climate as it is, capital budgets are under much increased pressure.

Renting removes the need for major capital expenditure on network kit. Instead, it is funded via a series of regular rental payments. These are typically orders of magnitude smaller than the outright purchase would have been.

Tax savings
Perhaps the biggest financial benefit of renting is in the the tax savings it realises. Outright purchases must be accounted for through capital allowances, while rental fees can be charged directly against revenues for corporation tax purposes. Significant savings in tax can be achieved, as well as removing the need for major capital expenditure.

There is another, less immediately obvious, way in which renting can save you money, though – less obvious because it has to do with the end of the device's useful life on your network. Obsolete products are typically more difficult to dispose of. If you need to source a product which is near, at or beyond its end-of-life, then consider either purchasing it refurbished, or renting it. By renting, you can remove the risk of finding yourself at a later date left with an obsolete product that you can't resell.

At Go Communications many of our customers are regularly mixing outright purchasing with renting to help them address the new financial constraints that they must work within the current economic climate.

Minimise your exposure to financial and other risks. Take your new network kit for an extended test drive by renting rather than purchasing outright. If it doesn't work out, you'll have minimised or completely avoided any egg-on-face. And if it does do what you hoped, then you'll find yourself everyone's new best friend – your customers, your boss and perhaps even the bank manager!

Use Serial Number Tracking

2011-03-24T05:31:00.000-07:00

Protect yourself with serial number tracking
What factors do you consider when selecting a network devices supplier? Price? Product availability? Quality control? Good reports from existing customers? Those are all excellent criteria. There is another issue to check out, though, and while it isn't as immediately obvious as others, it is fundamentally important.

It is this: choose a dealer with robust, reliable and comprehensive serial number tracking technology in place. I cannot over-stress the importance of this. Only by tracking components at the serial number level can devices be identified precisely and thereby be dealt with appropriately. Product and part numbers simply aren't good enough.

How's your insurance?
To illustrate this point, consider what happens if your home or business premises are damaged by fire or flood. In such a situation, you make a claim on your insurance company for lost or damaged items. That's the point at which you discover whether or not you are under-insured. If you are, then you're going to come out of the episode with less than you had before, rather defeating the purpose of having insurance in the first place, which is, of course, to protect you from loss.

With the benefit of hindsight, therefore, you might decide to make sure you're adequately covered by listing everything you own, noting the value of each individual item. It you're anything like me, always shopping around for the best deal and therefore getting more for your money, you could well be surprised at just how long the list turns out to be, as well its total value.

Armed with this list, you'll be in a position to make sure that your insurance gives you adequate cover. Now, when disaster strikes, you won't be left short, on top of all the other inconvenience that such crises always involve.

Get a tracker
Good network specialists display the same obsession with detail when it comes to tracking the devices they supply. Rigorously tracking serial numbers enables them to provide swifter and more effective support: they know exactly what they are dealing with, right down to the detail of software versions and installed options.

They will also know immediately if they receive as a return from a customer a device that they didn't originally supply. That means they don't have to absorb the cost involved in such situations – cost which must, inevitably, be passed on to their customer base. Additionally, if they can track devices by serial number then they will be able to maintain a record of test logs for each device, further improving their ability to provide swift and effective service.

All network specialists have equipment spread out over a number of sites – their own and their customers. When devices fail, as of course they do from time to time, a supplier's ability to respond effectively depends heavily on how comprehensive and accurate their picture of the failed device is. In short, using a supplier with no serial number tracking is likely to mean longer periods of network downtime.

With comprehensive information and serial number tracking your supplier can maintain accurate records on order and delivery dates, warranty windows with both their suppliers and you, as well as a host of technical information on each device they have supplied to you. With all that information at their fingertips, they are in a position to make very swift decisions as to the best approach to solving any problems that may arise. That's good for you, because you suffer less downtime and enjoy a more productive network. And it's good for them, because happy customers tend to come back for more, and to recommend their suppliers to others.

Do it yourself
The same principle should be applied to your network: make sure you always know exactly what is installed on it, and its value, by tracking all network component not only by part or model number, but also by serial number.

Serial numbers are the key not only to swift diagnosis and remedial action when it comes to failed components, but also to knowing the true value of your network devices. Any given device model may be available over its lifetime in dozens of different variants. Assorted options and enhancements, as well as different hardware and software revisions can mean huge differences in value, whether you are considering replacing devices after loss or damage or selling them on as second user equipment.

Go Communications' business is entirely focused on second-user Cisco Systems devices, so it's no surprise that we are frequently approached by companies that have devices to dispose of. Sadly, in most cases all that the prospective vendor can give us is a list of part numbers. With the serial numbers, we would in many cases be able to make a better offer, and of course the potential vendor would be in a position to negotiate more effectively with any prospective buyer.

Protect yourself from future shocks and get the best price for your retired network kit. Track network devices by serial number, and make sure your dealer does the same.

Exploit manufacturers trade-ins

2011-02-21T05:28:00.000-08:00

Don't chuck it, trade it in
If you've been following this series of money-saving tips you'll know that I'm a big fan of redeploying and reusing network devices that are no longer suitable for front line work. Even I have to admit, however, that there will come a point at which you'll have no further use for various pieces of kit.

Don't throw those old devices out yet, though. They could still be worth a lot to you.

Any manufacturer's default position will be to sell you the best, most profitable solution for your needs, from stock, at list price – end of story. Most manufacturers have a trade in programme, however (although their sales team may not mention it if you don't raise the issue) and it's possible to make huge savings. So, while your specifying kit and negotiating prices, take an inventory of your pensioned-off devices and explore trade in options.

Out with the old, in with the new
Let me take you once again on a trip to the car showroom. Generally, when buying a new car, you have the associated challenge of disposing of the old one. There are two approaches you might take: sell it privately, or trade it in for the new one.

Usually, most car dealers will much prefer you buy your car outright, without any trade in. Disposing of your old vehicle, unless they happen to have a buyer waiting for it, means extra work for them and extra expense. They're quite happy for you to take on that work and expense.

Some car dealers, though, have recognised the fact that you and I really don't want to be spending our leisure time trying to sell our old cars, and have made the trade in offer a standard part of their service. As a result they can offer you a good trade in value on your old car, saving you a significant amount on your new purchase and freeing you of the need to sell your old car yourself. Excellent!

Don't miss the trade in opportunityThere is, of course, a parallel with your network here. I'm frequently approached by companies looking to dispose of their old network equipment. While I'm happy to make an offer for such kit, I always wonder why they didn't look into the possibility of a trade in. Were they unaware that it is an option to explore? Did they think they had as good a price as they could get on their new network equipment? Whatever the reason, had they secured a trade in, they could have ended up saving thousands.

A very attractive characteristic of trade ins is that everything is negotiable. There are, for example, no 'golden rules' stating that all traded-in kit must be under six months old, or must be returned within 14 days. You can negotiate a trade in deal that not only saves you significant amounts on your purchase, but also suits you in terms of logistics. That could be invaluable in the situation where you need to trial run your new kit alongside the devices it will be replacing, before pulling out those old devices.

Trading in is always an optionManufacturers know that the more savvy the customer, the more likely they are to be tempted away to an alternative supplier. And if you should move to a new supplier, they know that in this industry, you could be with them for three to five years. That's a long time, and a lot of lost business – and that's before they even think about the work they'll have to do to win you back.

Because of that, while they may not mention trade ins as an option at the outset, or even at all – the manufacturer's preferred result is a straightforward sale of new kit, without the complications of a trade in, after all – you can be confident that the option is there.

Finally, if your manufacturer makes you a derisory offer for your trade in kit, give us a call at Go Communications. We'll happily quote you for the kit, and while we can't, of course, guarantee that we'll be able to make a better offer than your manufacturer, there's a very good chance that we will. Refurbished network devices are our core business, after all.

Whichever approach you take, don't write off your old kit. It could be worth thousands off the cost of your next network upgrade. That's the power of the trade in.

Plan ahead

2011-01-23T02:29:00.000-08:00

Know what's coming – and plan accordinglyWhat will your network look like in ten years' time? 100 Gig to the desktop, with a 10 Terabyte backbone? Hi-def video apps for every user?

If that sounds like a pipe dream, it's worth noting that right now the clever money says that over the next few years, 90% – yes, ninety percent – of Internet traffic will be accounted for by video. That's a huge figure and can only mean one thing: a huge upsurge in overall traffic volumes.

Hi-def the way forwardI'm a big movie and sports fan, and I already frequently check out the TV guide to see if the big game or blockbuster is being shown in HD. I take the view that good movies and great games are to be savoured, and the only way to watch them is in HD. I'll even avoid watching a classic in standard definition – I'd rather wait until it's broadcast in HD, so I can enjoy it to the full. That probably gives you some idea of how I view HD. I think it's brilliant and I'm convinced it's the only way to watch. I'm absolutely certain it's where all broadcasting and video, online and offline, is headed.

I'm far from the only one who takes that view. There's a growing army of people who love HD, and those people will drive explosive growth in Internet and LAN traffic. It's not a question of if, but of when.

Exciting times aheadClearly, traffic growth of this magnitude must be planned for: failure to plan here will very much be a matter of planning to fail. The traffic will be there. The question is whether your network infrastructure will be up the task of handling it. I can't see anything else, with the possible exception of cloud-enabled technologies, coming close to HD in terms of its impact on network traffic.

SD video has of course already had an impact on traffic. A colleague working in the IP carrier sector told me that September 2008 saw an exponential growth in Internet traffic – growth that he put down to explosive growth in the use of video sites. Requiring around ten times the connection speed that most home users currently enjoy, HD's effect on network traffic will make the impact of SD video seem like a minor blip. It's going to mean major re-engineering of Internet and LAN infrastructures across the globe. Exciting times are ahead for anyone working in the networking field.

Protect your core network
How should all this crystal ball gazing affect network managers right now, though? Firstly, it's important to be clear, especially in the current highly cost-conscious environment, where cost cutting should and should not take place. For almost all businesses, network infrastructure is an absolute essential and should as far as possible be considered sacrosanct. A robust and highly-performing network infrastructure is vital today, and with the increasing adoption of technologies such as HD video, will become all the more so in the future. Your baseline position should therefore be always to protect your core network.

Modern businesses are so reliant on their IT networks that it's probably fair to say that many, maybe even most of those businesses who fail to invest sufficiently and appropriately in their network infrastructure will fall by the wayside as HD video makes its presence felt. It will be companies who have cutting-edge communications technologies like HD video in mind right now, and who plan effectively for their take-up in the immediate future, which will prosper and succeed.

Keep the future in viewYou may not be able to afford to upgrade your network to support HD today, or next year or even the year after that, but you do need to recognise that over the next five to ten years you will need to do so. You need to be looking not just a year or two ahead, but a generation ahead: any decisions you make today could have significant implications for your network and finances in the coming years. Whatever you specify for your network, you should have in mind not only its immediate use but also the ways in which it could be redeployed in the future.

In line with my earlier tip on the general reuse of network equipment, the approach to take is to start moving towards a video-friendly infrastructure now, so that when the heavy HD traffic starts to hit in a few years' time, you'll be able to migrate the devices you specify today out to the periphery of your network, replacing them with current products in the core and giving you a bang up-to-date HD-capable network.

It may not be state-of-the-art in the sense that cash-rich corporate giants' networks are state-of-the-art, but it won't be far behind, and you will have achieved it at far lower cost. It will put you in a great position to take advantage of all the benefits that HD video will offer, giving you competitive advantage in the market, and, ultimately, boosting your business' bottom line.

All because you planned ahead.

Use a dealer that's less than 4 hours away

2010-12-21T02:28:00.000-08:00

It's not that small a worldI'm a big fan of ebay. My wife isn't so enthusiastic, though. Despite the fact that I've used the site to buy loads of great things and only had any problems on two occasions, it's those occasions she's quick to remind me about whenever I mention it. I know the value of a quiet life, and both of the less-than-straightforward transactions happened to be with overseas suppliers, so I now make a point, whenever possible, of only dealing with UK ebayers.

If you're a regular reader of these tips, it probably won't surprise you to learn that there's a parallel here with network infrastructure purchasing. Let me make one thing clear right away, though. I'm certainly not making a blanket statement ruling out all overseas or long distance purchasing. Indeed, right here at Go Communications we have a large number of very happy Cisco maintenance spares customers right around the globe.

If it's mission critical, keep it localWhat I do want to say, and say loud and clear, is this: for mission critical network support, your key suppliers should be local. The world may be smaller today than it was a decade or two ago, but shipping parts still takes time: generally it just isn't feasible to get network components from a supplier in one country to a customer in another in less than a day or so – and that's when everything goes smoothly.

Almost all networks have one or more mission critical segments, demanding four hour or perhaps eight hour coverage, whether that be from phone call to fix or to initial response. Whichever of the various permutations apply, your maintenance supplier will have made arrangements with a local courier depot, broadly speaking centrally located between you and their other customers in the area, so that it can meet the demands of its SLAs with all those customers.

Local engineering and warehousing That sounds good – and it is good. But it's not enough. You need a supplier, for those mission critical parts of your network, which is actually based near to you. More specifically, you need them to have local engineering and warehousing facilities, not just admin and sales offices.

It's all very well having spares couriered from a local depot, but when the spare itself proves faulty or incorrectly configured for your needs (and, yes, it does happen) the backup unit or engineering resource being at the other end of the country can spell serious downtime for that mission critical network segment. Unless you feel like stumping up for helicopter deliveries.

Build your defencesOf course, selecting a supplier with local warehousing and engineering facilities doesn't guarantee that they'll have a second spare in stock when you need it. It does at least make it possible, though. It's a tick in a safety box, and when it comes to mission critical network segments, you want as many ticks in safety boxes as possible. Each one increases your defences against network failure and downtime.

As well as reducing the chances of serious network outages, using maintenance suppliers who are local to you may well get you a better deal financially, because of their lower shipping costs. And it will all go to help make for a quiet life and reduce the danger of your being smacked over the head, verbally or otherwise, for going with the wrong supplier. In my book, that's got to be a good thing.

Reduce purchasing new equipment

2010-11-29T02:59:00.000-08:00

Canny purchasing in difficult timesThe economic downturn resulting from the global debt crisis of 2008 has made itself felt in all corners of the market, and its impact is on-going. For network managers it has meant slashed budgets as businesses and other organisations seek to make significant financial savings. For some, the cuts have already hit. For others they are still filtering down through the financial system. For almost all, though, it's just a matter of time: few businesses are likely to escape unaffected.

Such cuts put network and IT managers in an unenviable position. They must, of course, operate within the finances available, but they, better than almost anyone else, know how dependent modern businesses are on their networks. Every network manager must defend their network (and especially their core network) not least because, if it is compromised, they will be first in the dock when the stewards' enquiry begins. There is a substantial financial circle to be squared.

Buy less?Let's take a good hard look at the situation you could be facing. Cuts in your network budget are either with you now, or on the way. If you are one of those looking at substantial cuts, you could be forgiven for thinking that your options are strictly limited to a drastic reduction in what you will buy, across the board. That's not necessarily the case, though. Instead, consider reducing the amount of new equipment that you buy.

You may normally buy all or most of your network equipment brand new. When budgets are generous, such a strategy can be ideal, for various excellent reasons. Adopting a policy of buying refurbished equipment can save you thousands, though. And these savings can be taken further. To maximise them, canny network managers don't simply specify product X refurbished instead of product X brand new. They pay very close attention to exactly what device is specified for each network requirement.

Supply and demandWith a well-rounded understanding of the market, careful device selection can pay significant further dividends. For example, many large networks are currently decommissioning 10/100 speed kit in favour of gigabit and ten gigabit devices. As a result, the market is awash with 10/100 product, and the immutable law of supply and demand is making prices rather attractive. Predictably, 10/100/1000 is following suit. By specifying refurbished 10/100 devices for network segments that will run happily at these speeds, you can retain as much of your reduced budget as possible for your core network while minimising degradation of your peripheral network performance.

That brings us to the heart of the matter. In harsh times, all these money-saving tactics should have one goal: the protection of your core network. Virtually all businesses today are utterly reliant on a robust core network. Cuts to that core network will almost inevitably impact bottom line business performance – possibly seriously, or even disastrously. Protect it at almost any cost. Buy refurbished devices in preference to new, specify lower performance where you can get away with it, and even cut peripheral network services if necessary, but use the savings, which can be substantial indeed, to maintain your core network.

Then, when easier times come, you'll have a solid, up to date and robust foundation on which to build up additional network services and performance.

Buy refurbished kit from the manufacturer

2010-10-12T01:35:00.000-07:00

Beware end-of-lifeWhen a network device is declared end-of-life its value on the used market typically plunges, drastically reducing the price it can command at resale. As a result, buying devices brand new shortly before they go end of life is a risky business that can cost you dear. The savvy network manager knows his product lifespans and wherever possible opts for refurbished alternatives in preference to brand-new near end-of-life products, saving thousands.

If you are a regular follower of these money-saving tips then my interest in cars, and sports cars in particular, probably won't have escaped your notice. For the last three years, though, my focus has been on building Go Communications into the respected supplier of refurbished Cisco Systems kit that it is today, and during this time I've been without a sports car. This year, with Go Communications established with a solid base of happy customers and strong sales figures, it was time to take a closer look at the sports car market, with a view to spending some money.

Actually, when I say "look at the market" I'm not being one hundred percent honest. I've known for a long time what car I'd be buying – in my book there's nothing to beat a Porsche 911. On checking the market out, though, I discovered that the Stuttgart boys have a new 911 waiting in the wings, due out next year, which of course means the current model is near end-of-life, and its resale value will very likely suffer when the new car is released in 2011.

Network managers often face the same situation. New kit is required for this project or that, and some of the devices on the shopping list are about to go end-of-life. Heavy depreciation and therefore higher over-all costs beckon, unless some canny buying tactics are deployed. There are three approaches that can be used to get the best long-term value in such situations.

New infrastructure, refurbished sparesMy personal preference would be to buy all my core network infrastructure brand new, direct from the manufacturer, and all my spares refurbished. This allows me to specify the best core infrastructure available. After all, there's little point in specifying brand new spares if it means you have to cut corners on the kit that your network will actually be running on. By adopting this approach and holding refurbished spares yourself instead of committing to an expensive maintenance contract with the manufacturer you can build a premier quality network and stay within your budget.

Refurbished throughoutBuying all your kit refurbished – core infrastructure and spares – can offer advantages, since the hardware is all 'tried and tested'. Over the last 14 years in network infrastructure sales it's been abundantly clear to me that there's not much to choose between the failure rates of tested used devices and brand new. The old IT adage generally holds true: if a device is going to fail, it will normally do so in its first couple of weeks. And, of course, there are significant financial savings to be made, assuming that an absolutely state-of-the-art network is not your objective.

Refurbished from a dealerThis is essentially a refinement of either of the above approaches. Instead of buying refurbished equipment directly from the manufacturer – the ultra-safe approach – savings can be made by sourcing your refurbished kit from a dealer. In 99 cases out of 100, this will be less expensive than sourcing the same devices from the manufacturer.

The downside is that in the event of a failure, the spare itself may not be supported by the manufacturer. In practice, this simply means that you need to approach the dealer for support, not the manufacturer, so choose your dealer with care.

The best bet is to choose a supplier which not only has a reputation for quality, but has gone out of its way to support that reputation with an internationally-recognised quality standard such as ISO 9000.

ISO 9000 quality controls are typically stricter than those enforced by manufacturers on their dealers: if your choice is between an authorised dealer without a quality standard, and a non-authorised one with a quality standard, the latter is typically going to be the safer – and often less expensive – bet. More expensive does not always mean better.

So: buy cheap, but be wily. Don't sacrifice quality in favour of brand names. Do your homework and identify the best time to buy, the best product to buy, and the best source to buy it from. Play your cards right and you could make significant savings at the same time as improving the quality of the parts and service you're working with.

Sell redundant network hardware on consignment

2010-09-13T01:34:00.000-07:00

One of the near-universal facts of network management life is that every network generates a constant stream of retired devices that must be disposed of. As with so many issues in life, this is both a challenge and an opportunity. It's a challenge because it's yet another task that needs to be addressed, consuming time and manpower. It's an opportunity because it can be something of a money-spinner.

There's no real rocket science here. Retired network devices can bring funds in by the rather simple expedient of selling them. You could have told me that. My kids could have told me that. So, what's the big scoop? It's this: there is a right way and a wrong way (several wrong ways, in fact) to go about selling retired network kit.

Selling your carLet's consider a parallel from the world of motoring. Imagine it's time to replace your car, so you need to sell it on. The right approach to take will depend on whether you need to shift the car quickly, or get the best price for it. Generally, you can have one or the other, but not both.

If you want the best possible price for your car, you'll wash and polish it, clean and tidy the interior, and have a professional agent sell it for you. Of course, if you need a quick sale, you'll skip all that and stick it in a second-hand car rag at a cut price.

The same principle applies to disposing of retired network kit. If you have have time to allow an experienced dealer to sell it for you, you can always secure a better price.

Niche complicationsThings are further complicated if your product only appeals to a niche market. To go back to our motoring example, let's assume your car isn't just any old car, but a Porsche. A bright pink Porsche. If you try to sell it to your local dealer, you're not going to get a good price for it. The dealer's chances of reselling it will be severely reduced, because bright pink just isn't to everyone's taste. There are people who like pink cars: I know a couple myself (one a public figure and the other in the Go Communications Harlow offices) but they are a select bunch.

The laws of economics dictate that if you are looking to resell something that isn't particularly popular, you should play it safe and slow. However, this doesn't mean you need to resign yourself to months of tedious negotiations – months which would be much better spent on more fruitful matters, such as the day-to-day running of your network. There is, you may not be surprised to hear, a better way.

Selling on consignmentIf the reseller of the product is not its owner, the pressure to sell it as quickly as possible – pressure which always tends to drive down the achievable price – is much reduced. The owner is likely to achieve a good selling price and the reseller a better profit on the deal. In the network world this approach, essentially using the reseller as a selling agent, is known as selling "on consignment".

Selling on consignment isn't the approach to take when a speedy sale is required, but it does markedly improve the chances of a good sale price. The reseller acting as sales agent must allocate monies to the cost of storing the device to be sold, but they can weigh that against their cut of the sale price and they have the direct sales advantage and reputation boost that comes as a result of being able to advertise the device as 'in stock'.

Increased demandThis almost always results in additional enquiries for the device, from sources which otherwise would not have known about it – consignment brings the reseller's network of contacts into the game. And that increased demand will deliver the premium selling price that the customer is looking for.

So there you have it: this month's money-saving tip. Sell your redundant network hardware on consignment, especially if it's a little out of the ordinary.

I wouldn't recommend opting for bright pink routers when specifying kit, though. I think even the most effective reseller might struggle to shift them at a good price.

Don’t outsource

2010-08-19T04:15:00.000-07:00

Don’t outsource everything. My better half won't like it!
I love my wife. I wouldn’t dream of letting anyone else take her out for a romantic dinner, for example. There are some things that you just do yourself. I'd imagine most people would feel the same.

OK. I admit it’s a thin analogy, but bear with me. I do those things for my wife, rather than having someone else do them, because she's important to me. Beyond your home life, your business ranks pretty high on the scale of relative importance – so why would you outsource all your IT and network management? In today's world, without your network and IT, you have no business. It really is that clear cut. You need to be absolutely sure your network is in the right hands: yours.

Outsourcing became something of a business mantra in the nineties and noughties. According to the accepted wisdom of the day, huge savings and dramatic improvements in productivity could be realised if 'non-core activities' were outsourced. Times have changed, though. Rapidly and brutally.

The cold light of day
Much of the last two decades has been characterised by ongoing economic boom, fuelled by plentiful and easily accessible finance. That boom came to a sudden end with the Credit Crunch and the resulting economic downturn. What we have now is the cold light of day, and that light has exposed some uncomfortable truths about IT outsourcing.

The principal reasons for outsourcing an IT network are to make financial savings and to bring in expertise that the network owner does not currently have. In today's climate, a re-think is needed on how much exactly should be outsourced, if outsourcing is the favoured option.

If you don't have the necessary skills in your business to manage your own network, you should bring those skills on board as quickly as possible. Any organisation that fails to learn new technologies and understand today's and tomorrow's Internet is storing up serious trouble for the near future. Web 2.0 and other emerging social networking technologies are here today and here to stay, and new security risks and other threats are arising on a daily basis.

On top of that, successful management of your network demands not only technical expertise, but a deep and continually updated understanding of what your business is all about and what it needs from its network, today and tomorrow. It's likely that any outsourced provider's understanding on this front is going to be weaker in various areas than that of your own people.

This gap in understanding, however small, makes almost any outsourcing of 'all and sundry' an enormous gamble. The Internet is awash with disaster stories testifying in gory detail to the results of such gambles, but what those stories don't always clearly show is that some of them could have worked, if only they hadn’t outsourced absolutely everything in the IT department.

Agility and responsiveness
The current economic challenges, which are impacting all businesses, do seem to be prompting a return to sanity on the outsourcing of company IT networks. This is excellent news, because if there was ever a field in which the age-old maxim "If you want a job doing properly, then do it yourself" applies, it's IT networking.

Key in today's commercial environment is the ability to make the right decisions swiftly. It's that ability that will enable businesses to get ahead and stay ahead. Bureaucracy, indecision and labyrinthine purchasing processes all belong to the last century, along with anything else that hinders a business' ability to act and react with speed and precision.

The need for agility and responsiveness alone rules out wholesale outsourcing of IT networks.

Decision making is inevitably slowed and made less effective, which in turn increases real costs for the organisation, as well as impairing its ability to respond to changing opportunities and threats. Additionally, outsourcing your entire network could mean dealing with your provider's administration team rather than a long in the tooth, hardened purchasing individual. With fixed discounts and pre-set ordering systems, little negotiation can occur and adaptability in the face of changing circumstances and requirements can be severely limited. Surely the days of blind agreement to long-term price structures are long gone?

Partial outsourcing
In many cases, organisations have outsourced their entire IT facility, only to find that, part of the way through the contract, there are such serious problems that the only solution is to bring the arrangement to an end, returning to in-house IT management. The costs and disruption resulting from such a catastrophe are enormous, with the wasted time alone typically running into thousands of man-hours.

I'm not saying that outsourcing is necessarily a complete no-go, although I would certainly recommend exceedingly careful assessment of all of the costs, risks, limitations and potential pitfalls of any contract before committing to it. What I am saying is that complete outsourcing should be a no-go. In almost all the cases in which an outsourcing contract has gone badly wrong, the damage would have been much less comprehensive, and staved off for a longer period of time, if only part of the IT function been outsourced.

Had more time and thought been spent identifying what really needed outsourcing and what didn't, the resulting arrangement could have been far more beneficial to the end user, and significantly longer-lasting. That would have pleased the provider, too, since outsourcing companies calculate risk and costs on the basis of contracts running their full term. And of course the chances of a valuable renewed outsourcing contract would have been increased.

Ten long years
One of our customers is half way through a ten year outsourcing contract, which covers everything from a state-of-the-art 10 gig switch router all the way through to desktop support. Ridiculously (but inevitably) the customer knows far more about the desktops than the outsourced provider does. With the recession biting hard, the customer's income has dropped, but of course the full standing charge must still be paid to the outsourced provider. With internally managed IT, the customer could have cut back or restructured their network, reducing costs and reconfiguring for a leaner operation, but with the outsourced contract, they can't even do that.

That's an extreme case, but it illustrates the issues. The message is clear: don't outsource unless you must, and then only outsource what you must. Never outsource your entire IT function. To enjoy real savings and maintain flexibility and agility, bring the skills you need into your business and manage your own network.

Think of your network as you think of anything else (or anyone else!) highly precious to you. Keep it close and take care of it yourself. Your business depends on it.

Recycle existing network parts

2010-07-09T01:33:00.000-07:00

Recycle, recycle, recycle!It's OK. You can relax. This isn't yet another article telling you to be green, to sort and recycle rather than throw away. At least, not just that – and I promise that's the last mention of the 'G' word. I'm going a step further in this month's money-saving tip: before you dispose of decommissioned equipment you pull from your network, consider the possibility of re-using it.

A life lesson from shoesWith three children under six years of age it has become painfully clear to me just how expensive their shoes are. I reckon they must be far and away the most costly items of children's clothing. Of course, no one tells you this before you have children – it's one of those 'life lessons'. And it's a lesson that life takes great delight in ramming home forcefully!

To enhance the lesson, my wife tends towards the view that only the best will do. Now, I don't disagree on this, but the difference in the price tags on apparently very similar shoes from the local supermarket and the high fashion stores can be eye-watering to say the least. Like any father, I want my children to have the best. Higher quality shoes are going to be better for their feet and are likely to last longer. But I'm also keen to make the most of any way to save a bit of cash where I can do so without sacrificing that quality.

I have two daughters. Fortunately they both like pink, and they both take after me in that they have slightly larger and wider than average feet. While they may not be so enthusiastic about the latter, both factors are good news for me. They mean that we can pass shoes from the older daughter to the younger, saving money without upsetting anyone – including my daughters and my wife!

Your network: redeploy, don't throw awayNow – and this, odd though it may seem, is the important bit – your network is like my daughters' feet: 'hand-me-down' strategies work a treat. When you upgrade this or thatsection of your network, do you ever have the nagging feeling that the device you're pulling out could be put to use elsewhere in your infrastructure? Nine times out of ten, it almost certainly could, even if that means using it to upgrade another part of your network before it strictly needs to be upgraded.

Why should you upgrade a section of network that doesn't need to be upgraded yet? After all, the old adage "If it isn't broken, don't fix it" is based on some pretty sound common sense. The reason is that even if that part of your network isn't stretched at the moment, the day will surely come – and probably sooner than you think or hope – when it will be under pressure. Use the parts released by one upgrade to build capacity, capability and reliability in other areas – use your existing investment to secure your network's future.

By doing this, you'll not only please your users but also your finance department, by strengthening the return you get on the original investment in the reused network devices.

Your network infrastructure represents a significant investment – both in terms of hardware and software costs, and also in terms of time and effort. Get the best possible return on that investment and deliver the best possible network service to your users by, wherever possible, carefully redeploying retired equipment rather than disposing of it. After all, when it's gone, it's gone

Use surplus new

2010-06-08T01:32:00.000-07:00

Buy 'surplus new' not 'brand new'Never be ashamed to make the most of someone else's misfortune. Well, OK – never is a bit strong. But there is one situation in which I would advise you to do so. Whenever the opportunity allows, buy surplus new, not brand new.

One of my friends is a new car enthusiast. Whenever he replaces his car, it absolutely must be with a brand new one – something about the smell of it, he says. It strikes me as a bit bizarre, especially when I consider the depreciation hit that he suffers each time, but it all seems very sensible to him. I'm at the other extreme: I've only ever bought one brand new car, and lost so much money as a result that I'm almost too ashamed to admit to it, even today. Regardless of how much I earn, I will never again buy a brand new car.

Now, were money no object, we'd all have brand new every time – myself included. And for many, including my friend, the desire for 'brand new' is strong enough to outweigh the significantly higher price that it commands. The thing is, brand new versus used is a false comparison. There is a third option: surplus new.

Surplus newLet's imagine you have a network project under way. You've done your homework and planning, specced out your requirements and it's time to place the order. You know exactly what you need, and if you're anything like me, you're going to want to get it at the best possible price, but without sacrificing specification, performance, quality or warranty. You shop around a bit, but you need to maintain momentum on the project, so you place the order.

At this point, imagine getting a call back from the dealer: "I've just had a customer cancel his order. There's some overlap between his order and yours and I can let you have those items at a reduced price as I need to clear them out of stock." Now whether or not you're by nature an 'Always brand new and only brand new' person this has got to be good news. I can't imagine many situations in which you'd be answering with anything but a resounding "Yes, please!" The same product, with the same warranty, for less money. That's 'surplus new' and the downside is difficult to see, largely because there isn't one.

Excess stock happensThis situation does often arise, for a wide variety of reasons. A typical example would be a customer with an unmissable deadline to hit in relation to a complex network project. It's almost standard practice in such situations to order more than is required of the project's lower cost, longer lead time components, as insurance against any of these being faulty or suffering damage during the build.

Without such over-ordering, the entire project could be held up for months by a single faulty component. Generally such over-ordered product can subsequently be sold back to the dealer, minimising costs. And that, of course, means the dealer has as surplus new product to shift.

Customers cancel orders for other reasons, too. Changes of direction, component delays and hold-ups in other related projects are just three examples. Whatever the reason behind the order cancellation, though, it almost always leaves the dealer with surplus stock.

Dealers are rarely in a position to send the unwanted products back to their manufacturers, and simply putting the excess items into stock is usually not a viable option, for financial reasons. The best option is almost always to sell the products on, quickly. That means reduced prices. And that's good news for you.

When ordering networking products, always ask if the items you need are available from surplus new stock. You could make significant savings.

Exploit manufacturers promotions

2010-05-05T01:29:00.000-07:00

How to gamble – with a hidden advantage"Oh, I don't bet. I'm not into gambling." I've heard it a hundred times, My response? Bunk. We're all gamblers to one extent or another. Standing at the roulette table or the race course with your last tenner staked is extreme, but day-in, day-out, we all gamble. And, let's be honest, life would be pretty dull if we never took any risks, wouldn't it?

A classic example of this is our reaction to sales promotions. When we see a 'three for the price of two' offer at the supermarket, we're immediately weighing it up: "When will the offer end? How does the price work out per item? Is it worth buying six? Or nine? Have I got space to store them? Will I use them before they go off? What if the price comes down next week, or there's a different offer on?" We're gambling. We're assessing risk in order to decide which course of action to take.

Hone your skillsGambling is a skill. And like any other skill, the more you exercise it, the better you get at it. Take a game like poker. There's always an element of risk – it would hardly be gambling otherwise – but the more you play, the better you get at reading the game and judging the risks and opportunities.

So, what does this have to do with networks? Well, any network manager who's been in the business for any length of time knows that setting up and maintaining a network is a game in which you can win, or lose. When you win – when you get a great deal on something – the feeling of satisfaction and achievement is wonderful. Losing is less wonderful! When buying new devices or software, whether for a small extension to your existing network, or to set up an entirely new one, there are a number of angles to play to keep you ahead of the game. You have to gamble.

Play those angles right and stay ahead of the game and there are serious cost savings to be had.

The right time to buyIt's vitally important to buy at the right time. That means any time when the manufacturer is running a sales promotion on the items you need to buy. The wrong time to buy is when demand is high, stocks are low, or a new product is on the way but not out yet: at such times the manufacturer has no need to run sales promotions. Demand is high, and they will happily satisfy it at high prices. Sales promotions cost manufacturers money, and while they're happy to bear that cost in return for a benefit – perhaps increased share in a particular sector or shifting excess stock, they won't bear it when they don't need to.

The other side of the coin, of course, is that sales promotions mean savings for you, the customer. To benefit it's essential that you know, in advance, which products are most likely to be of interest to you, should they be available at promotional pricing in the future. That's a matter of research – know what you need and you can snap it up when it's offered at a reduced price.

Read your junk mailYou also need to be in direct contact with (and carefully watching) the outlets which provide the items on your list. This is where junk mail should not be junked, at least not until you've checked it carefully for the items you're after. It's a matter of knowing your network and watching the market – the equivalent of keeping an eye on the Racing Post or Sporting Life. Arm yourself with knowledge. Keep your finger on the networking pulse.

Finally, planning is all-important. Knowing the technologies that you will need for your network later this year and next will put you in a position to identify the products that should be on your wish-list. When items on your list come up as special offers, you can allow yourself a pat on the back, but hold back any desire to leap in the air and whoop for a while longer. This is the point to keep a poker face and play it cool. If there's a sales promotion on, there may will be the potential for further discounts as well. Most manufacturers, when running a promotion, accept that there will be a few 'low-ballers' in the market, keeping additional discount in reserve for such customers. They're playing the numbers game. While I wouldn't get over-excited at the likelihood of additional discount on an order for one or two units, if you have a quantity order to place, you are exactly the sort of customer the manufacturer is looking for, and should make the most of it, pressing them for as substantial a discount as you can.

The golden rulesSo, remember the golden rules of gambling on sales promotions. Know your network and the technologies you're going to need in the next year or so. Know the market – who sells what, at what price, including the products on your wish list and any alternatives. Watch the suppliers, looking out for promotions on the products on your list. And be prepared to haggle hard for extra discount.

Go on. Have a flutter.

Choose a reliable supplier

2010-04-06T03:39:00.000-07:00

Choose a supplier who can handle a crisis
When your network is working well, the best supplier might seem to be the one offering the keenest prices, the swiftest delivery or the latest technology. Don't let the good times fool you, though: you may find that when problems arise, your supplier can't cope.

I've worked in the network industry for 13 years, so it's probably not surprising that I've seen several well-known names come and go. They've all either been swallowed up in large scale purchases – usually by larger manufacturers – or fallen by the wayside. Most of those that went out of business did so not for want of innovation or as a result of choosing the wrong technology direction. They failed because, either in their products or in their service, they didn't deliver that good, old-fashioned business essential: reliability.

Reliability is key
Back in the late 90s networks were moving from the then standard Thicknet to the new 'Fast Ethernet'. As is the case at the introduction of any new technology, for most network managers, slow but reliable was more far more desirable than quick but unreliable. There is, after all, no point in having the fastest car around if it's for ever breaking down.

Of course, no technology is ever one hundred percent reliable, but devices that fell over constantly or repeatedly needed patches or firmware upgrades were going to be unacceptably disruptive.

That was the case even ten years ago, when business was nothing like as reliant on communications technology as it is now. Today communications technology sits at the top of the business model tree, and it's likely to remain there until long after you and I have enjoyed our time here. If reliability in your network manufacturer and supplier was important ten years ago, then it's nothing short of vital today. I would rather have a Voice over IP system that reliably operates at 95% sound quality than one that delivers 100% quality most of the time but every so often fails completely. If I couldn’t get to my emails or take a phone call because this system or that was down it wouldn't be that long before you'd see me heading for the nearest travel agent out of sheer frustration. Like it or not, we are all dependent on reliable communications technology.

Swift solutions are vital
At the root of this is the simple fact that time is usually the most expensive commodity in any business. As soon as a network device fails, the clock starts ticking and the costs start building – costs relating not only directly to the failed network segment itself but also those relating to a host of other business areas whose normal operation is impacted by the failure. The knock-on effect is virtually unmeasurable.

The bottom line is that when a failure occurs, a solution needs to be designed and implemented as swiftly as possible. It's in such situations that network manufacturers and suppliers show their true colours.

The right manufacturer
It's all well and good having a network manufacturer show you their high speed, feature-rich goodies to tempt you into choosing their products. If they or their products don't have a track record of reliability, though, then specifying their products could well be storing up trouble for the future.

The nature and severity of that trouble will depend on exactly where in your network you install their products. Perhaps, in a non-critical area, such a risk may be worth taking in order to realise cost savings or some other benefit. Make sure you're clear on the risks before you take them, though. Plug the product name and keywords such as "faults", "problems" and "field notices" into your favourite search engine and see what comes up.

The right supplier
Identifying a good supplier or dealer is a much tougher job, so how do you go about it, if your current one isn't up to the job? Sadly, there are plenty of suppliers out there who take a rather short sighted view of their business, focusing purely on the bottom line. Happily, there are gems among the also-rans: suppliers who understand that the only way to build a business that's successful over the long term is to focus on outstanding customer service. The challenge, of course, is to find those gems.

It's very easy to accept second-best, claiming "Better the devil you know." The problem with that is that devils you know are still devils: if your supplier's service is mediocre when nothing's going wrong, there can little hope for a speedy and effective resolution when things do go awry. Of course, you can choose to wait until disaster strikes to find out how they'll perform, but that's certainly not a risk I'd like to take with my business.

Your network will fail
Benjamin Franklin famously said that there are two things of which we can be certain: death and taxes. In the Network world there is one more: at some point, your network will fall over. I've seen it happen many times, and it's always a time of mixed feelings for me. On the one hand, I'd much rather no one had to go through the stress of such a situation, but on the other, a crisis of this sort fires me up – I really get a buzz out of tracking the problem down and devising solutions that will get the customer back up and running, quickly and reliably.

In some walks of life there isn't always a solution to every problem. In the network world there always is – indeed there's almost always more than one. The tricky thing is finding the right solution for the situation at hand. It's that process of problem identification and resolution that really gives me a buzz. There may be a failed component for which there's no replacement available quickly enough, unexpected complications arising from a software upgrade or any of a hundred other possible causes for the failure. Whatever the problem, the right decisions need to be made fast.

A 'customer first' attitude
You need a supplier who can make those decisions quickly and effectively. That demands years of experience and a 'customer first' attitude. You'll get hints as to whether your current supplier has what it takes in the way they work with you from day to day. If it's apparent that you're just putting up with them, I'd strongly advise you not to do so for any longer than you absolutely must. That network disaster could strike at any time, and you want to be working with the best when it does.

Shop around. Read reviews. Ask your industry contacts for their recommendations and for feedback on specific suppliers. See what's being said on the online forums.

You don't need to put all your eggs in one basket or commit yourself before you're sure of the right supplier to go with: you could bring in a new supplier alongside your current ones, to keep them on their toes, for example. But keep your eyes open and your ear to the ground: you might just meet the new networking love of your life and choose to move on.

Buy peripherals from your hardware supplier

2010-03-01T03:41:00.000-08:00

Use a one-stop-shop
When buying network devices, which approach is best – entrusting the entire purchase to a single supplier or shopping around for the best deal on each component?

There are, of course, pros and cons to the one-stop-shop approach to general IT purchasing. Buying a complete system from a single vendor has the significant advantage that should something go wrong, that vendor has to sort it out. You don't find yourself dealing with various companies, each denying responsibility for rectifying the fault. On the other hand, shopping around can often result in savings on individual system components.

For network systems, the situation is rather clearer. Broadly speaking, networks break down into hardware, software and cables. Cables are a specialised area, and the majority of network managers have a preferred, tried-and-tested cable supplier, able to supply not only standard, off-the-shelf cables and harnesses, but also bespoke items to meet very specific needs.

Don't go it alone
When it comes to network hardware and software, however, I would advise that, in almost all circumstances, you buy both from the same supplier, especially when purchasing refurbished products.

It's a matter of making use of your supplier's expertise and experience. When redecorating your house (or perhaps your comms room) you can take one of two approaches. Option one is to go it alone, fumbling through colour choices, buying undercoats and top coats, and trying to make sure the paint looks good against your perhaps dubious choice of flooring and woodwork finish.

That's fine if you're a DIY guru. For the rest of us mere mortals, the sensible way to go is to get an expert in to advise on colours, supply the right materials and finish the job to a professional standard. Their reputation is at stake – referrals and testimonials mean new customers for them – so they're going to make every effort to get the job done as well as possible.

You don't have to be Brain of Britain to know that your chances of impressing your friends and family with your newly decorated room will be significantly higher if you get the expert's input, than if you shop around yourself.

Hardware and software compatibility
Coming back to network purchasing, the issue at hand is the tricky matter of hardware/software compatibility. Many products remain on the market for several years, during which time the manufacturer updates both hardware and software several times. One result of these updates is that earlier versions of the hardware may not support later versions of the software. This can cause end users purchasing refurbished hardware no end of problems, especially when early revision devices are specified with later software versions.

In fact, I would take my recommendation a step further: as well as buying hardware and software from the same supplier, make it a supplier that was in the network systems business when the hardware was available new. That way, you get the benefit of the supplier's experience with the device. If there were compatibility issues with the device you're ordering, they will remember them, and will be able to flag them up at the quotation stage. If your supplier does this, hang onto them – it's a sure sign that they're up there with the best.

Don't forget memory
Memory is worthy of particular mention. Shopping around for a memory upgrade may make sense on paper, as there is no doubt that savings can be made. However, complexities can and frequently do arise. The memory may be the wrong type for the device, the firmware revision in use may not support the level of memory being installed, or the memory may simply be the wrong physical shape to fit the space available in the chassis.

The resulting wasted time, multiple phone calls and to-ing and fro-ing between suppliers each blaming the other for the problem add up to significant cost and delay. Such costs and delays need not arise. Purchase your memory upgrades from the same supplier as the hardware devices for which they are intended, and the responsibility for ensuring that the two are compatible rests fairly and squarely with that supplier.

When buying network devices, memory, peripherals and software, always use the one-stop-shop approach. Have your supplier analyse the products you are ordering and ensure that everything works as it should do.

You'll save time, money and stress. You'll reduce the risk of compatibility issues arising, and should end up with a reliable network with fewer problems, as well as the added bonus of no sideways glances and comments from your colleagues or friends about your network configuration. Or the colour of your comms room walls!

Buy end of life products refurbished

2010-02-01T03:09:00.000-08:00

When refurbished is better than new
When the time comes to replace any network device, the manufacturer will always recommend that you buy the device's direct replacement - brand new, of course. If you've read a few of these money-saving tips, you may not be surprised to learn that there is a better way.

Imagine it's time to replace your car. You've done your ground work, researched suitable makes and models and spotted your dream machine. It's in the showroom and it's within your budget.

It's just a matter of signing on the dotted line, then, isn't it? Well, no. There's a small complication. The model you've set your heart on is due to be replaced by a new model, due to hit the showrooms next year.

So, do you go ahead and buy the current, end-of-life model at the asking price? I wouldn't advise it. At least, not until you've checked out its availability second hand or at discounted prices from other showrooms. After all at some point in the future you're going to want to either trade it in, or sell it on. You want to make sure you've bought it at the best possible price, or you're kissing your hard-earned money goodbye completely unnecessarily.

Substantial savings
The same principle applies to your network. Substantial savings can be made, way in excess of those that you could have made on the car. Virtually all network manufacturers have their futures planned out in detail - the keen eyed can often spot products which are about to be made end-of-sale, but for which support will continue for several years. Buying such products refurbished rather than new can save you thousands.

Of course, making such forecasts takes time that many do not have, but reference to manufacturers' websites will reveal which products have already been declared end-of-sale. Such information is updated daily, so, before making any acquisition for your network, check to see if the item you're about to order is on the manufacturer's end-of-sale list. If it is, it's likely you have the opportunity to make some serious savings.

Sit behind the curve
While some network managers buy the newest technologies to minimise depreciation at resale, others don't have the time or inclination to research the next big thing, preferring to seek savings through old fashioned cunning and common sense. Sitting 'behind the curve', they purchase products which are almost, but not quite, at the cutting edge.

With a little careful planning they can build a near-perfect solution, which, being a year or so behind the curve, will already have suffered the bulk of its depreciation - and had its bugs worked out.

This is a simple strategy for saving money. You can build a network which is for all practical purposes state-of-the-art - fully up to date on the software front and virtually so on the hardware front - at a saving of some 25% per annum.

A canny customer
One of my canniest customers always waits until any new piece of network hardware has been in the market for at least 12 months before considering installing it - and then they often choose to buy it refurbished. Their preference is always for the market leader, for support reasons, but they would never contemplate using brand new, recently-released products. They understand the need to wait to see if problems arise before committing to new products.

A well-known and highly respected company, they know exactly what they're doing on this front. When the manufacturer declares a product end-of-sale, there will be a period, often as long as five years, during which the product will still be supported. In just twelve months' time, the product will only be available refurbished, so they choose to purchase refurbished right away, enjoying the financial benefits immediately.

Take the time to research end-of-sale products, and consider buying refurbished instead of new. You could save yourself a heap of trouble, as well as a fat chunk of budget.

Never accept 1st trade-in price

2009-11-17T06:27:00.000-08:00

Trading-in: never accept the first offer
When upgrading network equipment, most Network Managers seek a trade-in on their old devices. There's absolutely no point in throwing away kit for which you could get a financial return, reducing the net cost of the upgrade.

That's fairly obvious, but there's more to this than meets the eye. The key is to shop around. Never accept the first trade-in price you are offered for any piece of redundant network equipment. It's almost certain to be well below what that piece of kit could command.

$50,000 saved
Several years ago, Go Communications had a customer who came to us periodically for devices that their incumbent supplier, a manufacturer, could not deliver quickly enough. They had reached the point where they needed to upgrade their network, in the process removing some 120 48-port VoIP-enabled switches. Their manufacturer offered them a trade-in of $200 per switch - around one twentieth of their purchase price some two-to-three years earlier.

Understandably, the customer felt they should be able to do better, and approached us. We were able to offer them around $600 per switch - a total saving on the upgrade of almost $50,000 (around £30,000). We were able to do this as VoIP had recently become a key technology for many up and coming businesses, and there was a strong second-user market for these VoIP enabled switches. The manufacturer could not match our offer because selling second-user equipment is simply not their core business.

Three rules
This story illustrates three simple rules of network equipment trade-ins. Firstly, always shop around. Secondly, never think you can second-guess the market. Thirdly, manufacturers are always likely to offer you a much lower price for your old hardware than dealers with orders to fulfil for those products. It's astonishing how many businesses throw away huge sums byfailing to follow these three rules.

Let's take a closer look at that third point. Switches, routers and other network devices are almost always deployed with a variety of options installed - extra features, modules and software functionality, for example. When you ask your manufacturer for a trade-in value for your redundant devices, the chances are, planning on feeding those devices back into their refurbishment programme, that they will offer you a price based on their base configurations. No options, no additional modules and no extra software functionality.

Additionally, handling your old kit, refurbishing it and selling it on is a headache for the manufacturer. Their core business and chief objective is to sell their current lines, not to resell old equipment. Really, they'd rather you simply disposed of your redundant equipment than traded it in. On top of all that, any offer they make you for it will come straight off their bottom line: it's likely to be grudging at best.

A seller's market
Now, consider the dealer who needs your old equipment to fulfil a customer order. The scenario is turned on its head: without your kit that dealer may not have a bottom line on that order at all. They have an active, pressing need for your equipment - you're in a seller's market, and can command a much higher price.

There's a direct parallel to all this that most of us are familiar with. When buying a new car, accepting the dealer's trade-in offer on the old one is convenient, easy and simple, but we all know that we'll get much more for it by selling it privately. Only by doing so can we make sure the value of all the options - that heated, massaging driver's seat, the iPod port, those parking sensors - is reflected in the price we get for it.

So - especially in the current economic climate, with cost control a priority and used equipment prices on the rise as a result of fewer organisations upgrading - swim against the tide. Never, ever accept the first trade-in price you're offered on your old networking kit. Always shop around. It could save you literally tens of thousands of pounds

Seek a second opinion

2009-10-01T06:02:00.000-07:00

Don't be a lone ranger
One of the fascinating things about networks is that, to achieve any given desired end result, there is always a virtually limitless number of possible approaches. That makes seeking a second opinion on your proposed solution to any given challenge an absolute necessity.

Whether you need to upgrade, replace, modify, extend or reconfigure your network, there will always be many different possible ways of doing it. Only one of them will be the best approach for your particular needs. Tackling the problem of nailing that one down on your own is a tough challenge.

I love challenges like this - they are like a complex puzzle that needs to be solved. And they come up frequently, in all sorts of circumstances. Maybe a solution designed for a particular scenario doesn’t work - perhaps the details from the original network starting point aren’t right, there's been a change of WAN connection or a last-minute change of software that the hardware doesn’t support. Or maybe there's less budget or physical space than had been expected.

In such situations, changes must be made, and selecting the best changes is made vastly quicker, easier and more effective by securing an expert second opinion. Viewing the situation in a different light and from a different perspective usually turns up unexpected options that would otherwise be overlooked. And those options can sometimes save thousands of pounds and untold effort.

Working from those options, you can then create lists of the components needed for each one, and cost them up. One of those quotes will be lower than the others, for the same end result, and there's a good chance it will be one that you hadn't previously considered.

For this reason, whenever I propose a solution I always offer at least two alternatives for the customer to consider - this is particularly important in the current economic climate. For example I will often offer two single-port modules in place of a single, more popular dual-port module. The laws of supply and demand dictate that the former is nearly always cheaper than the latter.

This approach is particularly invaluable in situations where a proposed network solution is beyond the scope of your budget. An expert second opinion can almost always deliver canny ways of removing cost from a quote, potentially using products from completely different ranges. This is especially so when a network design has been over-specified in an attempt to cover all eventualities - I can almost guarantee that there will be a cheaper alternative just waiting to be found by a fresh pair of eyes.

Don't go it alone. Always seek a second opinion.

Change your network manufacturer

2009-09-02T04:57:00.000-07:00

Time for a change?
All network systems manufacturers are not the same. While this may not be a startling revelation, a key consequence does often go overlooked: changing your network manufacturer, or even simply considering doing so, can save you significant amounts of money.

Different manufacturers invest different amounts of effort in technology research and development. As a result, your current network systems vendor may well have missed a trick or two on the platforms you use.

Upgrade or replace?
If your current network systems have been in place for some time and you are considering upgrading to a newer platform from your existing manufacturer, it's worth casting your net a little wider. It may be less expensive to replace your entire network, or a segment of it, with one from an alternative manufacturer.

The savings can go further still. By switching manufacturers you can drive down not only your equipment purchase cost, but also your ongoing costs. As well as providing additional and enhanced features, newer technologies can also deliver reductions in hardware size, power consumption, and cooling and maintenance requirements. All of these translate into reduced costs, and reduced carbon footprint, which can be a key PR benefit for your business.

It's clear that all of these savings can be realised by switching to a more appropriate network systems manufacturer. What is perhaps not so obvious is that significant savings can be secured without moving at all.

Chaos on the network
Picture the scene. Part of your network is down. Maybe a power supply has failed, or perhaps a card has died. Either way one of your main routers is out of action. Traffic is being diverted over the rest of the network but, nonetheless, the entire network is running well below its normal speed. All manner of unexpected knock-on problems are arising. Web access is painfully slow, for example, and emails are not getting through. Inevitably, the phones are ringing constantly, with disgruntled and stressed users on the other end.

Into the eye of this storm drops a call from your network systems manufacturer. It's your account manager, chasing his monthly numbers: "What are you ordering this month? Where are you buying it from? Can I have a list of what you bought last month please? Can you email me the details today please?" You find yourself wondering who the customer is in this scenario, and whether there may be a bit of tail-wagging-the-dog going on.

Proactive, not pestering
Now, distant, detached network systems suppliers are of little use. Manufacturers design and build their products for specific tasks, so accurate, detailed and up to date product knowledge is key to successful network device specification. I am all for a proactive approach to assisting and supporting customers – helping them build the network most suitable for their needs.

There is a thin dividing line, though, between proactivity and pressure selling, with constant focus on sales numbers and pestering for orders. The key to making sure your suppliers stay on the right side of this line is to ensure that they always know that you have the option of taking your business elsewhere.

My very first network systems customer, back in the 90s, was an expert at this. He kept all his suppliers on their toes, and at the first sign of any of them trying to push him, would make it quite clear that if they didn't back off, he would be recommending a switch of suppliers at the next network refresh. It never failed. Manufacturers should work hard to win your business, but in the right way. Don't let complacency set in. Make sure your suppliers stay absolutely clear on who the customer is. They will quickly get the message that you won't be at their beck and call, and that you are likely to be the sort of customer who will very carefully scrutinise quotations when it comes to ordering new equipment and services.

Have kit ready for plug and play

2009-07-20T02:12:00.000-07:00

Ship ready for 'plug and play'
We've all heard it, or something very like it, a hundred times. "What time will you be home? The kids have forgotten what you look like." Anyone working with networks is familiar with long and unpredictable hours - in part because, let's be honest, we're all pretty much hooked on what we do.

What we do is fun. At least, it's fun when you can log in and out, engage and disengage, when you want to. It's less fun when you have to revisit work that's been done before and shouldn't need to be redone. For my part, I'd much rather be home reading my son "Slinky Malinky" than rehashing work that really should have been put to bed already. Life's too short.

Life is too short, and on top of that, the economy is too unforgiving. Time, as has been noted so often, is money. Your engineers' time is no different to anyone else's in this respect, and wasting it is a direct cost to your business. In the current economic climate, with growth and even survival depending so heavily on cash flow and profit, that cost could make the difference between staying afloat and going to the wall. Making cost savings without impacting quality is a key priority.

Build, configure and test
Let's look at a common scenario. A customer's network installation is just around the corner - you're waiting for delivery of the network devices and associated items. Engineering resources have been planned and allocated. The customer is champing at the bit and the pressure is on.

What happens next? You receive the equipment, unpack, build, configure and soak test it. A couple of days later, you dismantle it, pack it up again and ship it off to the customer.

A simple question
At this point, I'd like to ask a very simple question. Why do it this way? On receiving the equipment the customer or your installation engineer will unpack, build, install, configure and test it. There is more than a little duplication of effort going on here. There's increased risk of damage, and time and money are being wasted.

Avoiding this risk and waste is actually very easy. While awaiting delivery of the network devices, memory, cables and software, call the customer and ask them if they would like the equipment supplied with their configuration pre-loaded, with any necessary memory and software upgrades made. In short, would they like it delivered ready for plug and play installation? I can almost guarantee that most will give you an emphatic "Yes please".

Make life easier
This will make the customer's life easier, of course, but it will also make your life easier and save you time and money. Keeping the equipment in your testing station until the memory and software has arrived, and then making the necessary upgrades there and then will mean the job is done and the equipment can be shipped to the customer ready to run, with a test report certifying the upgrades that have been made.

As well as saving you time and money, this approach avoids the situation in which the customer discovers that a device has insufficient memory for the required software image. It also means that the customer gets network equipment that has been tested as they will use it - and that's the test that really matters.

Investing this small amount of additional effort before shipping the equipment to the customer can save your installation engineers hours of on-site time. That means savings in engineering costs, improved customer satisfaction, fewer network teething troubles, and, of course, that you and your engineers get to remind yourselves of what your family look like. That's what I call a result.

Buy 2 spares for mission critical networks

2009-06-24T05:08:00.000-07:00

Hardware maintenance: a better way
What do you do when a critical device fails on your network? You call your on site maintenance company, they send an engineer with a replacement unit, and you're back up and running, right? You do have a maintenance contract covering your mission-critical network devices, don't you?

Actually, you may not need such a contract. And if you have one, you could well be throwing thousands of pounds away every year, completely unnecessarily, in fees. That may well sound like complete lunacy, but stick with me: there's good sense behind it.

Firstly, let me say that if your network is mission critical, and you don't have network engineers on your team, then you almost certainly do need to buy in maintenance support – or get network engineering expertise on your payroll.

Spare up!
If you have your own engineers, though, you can make significant savings by keeping refurbished spares on hand to cover all your critical network devices. In the event of a failure, your own engineers simply use the spare unit to replace the failed device, and the network is up and running again.

The maintenance contract fees for any given switch or router can be double the cost of a refurbished device. That means that if you hold two refurbished spares for each device on your network, your support costs in the first year will be no greater than they would have been with a support contract, and then for every subsequent year, your only expenses will be the replacement of any spare units used to replace failed units.

Over the life of the network, such savings can add up to very significant amounts.
You may be concerned at the prospect of using refurbished units rather than new. Such concern is unfounded, though: this is exactly what maintenance companies do. They know that there is little to choose between new and refurbished units when it comes to reliability, and on the cost front, the issue is a genuine 'no brainer' – the cost of a refurbished switch or router can be as little as one tenth that of a new unit.

Radical but not unprecedented
While this 'no maintenance contracts' strategy may sound radical, it is by no means unprecedented. I gather from a close friend in the UK's largest telecoms company that one of the City of London's largest and most respected investment banks adopted the approach some time ago. They do not use any external network maintenance company, and only use their network devices' manufacturer for software updates and TAC access.

With sufficient engineering resource on their payroll, entrusting the support of their network to a third party makes no sense – doing so would drive up both costs and risk.

This investment bank has done the job properly: they keep not one or even two but three disaster recovery systems in place. By doing so, they ensure they are proofed against almost any imaginable hardware failure, as well as other potential disasters such as terrorist attack. Even with this level of redundancy in place, they still make significant savings, which they plough back into the latest technology for the core of their network.
Companies that do things the same way that they have always been done tend to be the also-rans. Companies that innovate, finding new and better ways of operating, tend to be the high-flyers and the market-leaders. Indeed, in the current environment of deepening economic gloom, with tightening budgets and contracting markets, survival itself may well depend on such innovation.

Don’t buy Future Proof

2009-05-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

So you think you can predict the future?
Future proof. Future proof. Future proof.

It's almost a mantra in the IT world. Everyone is preaching it. Everyone is doing it. And hardware manufacturers love it. It guarantees larger sales, right now. And as long as customers continue to do it, it will guarantee larger sales tomorrow, too.

The thing is, while it works like a dream as a sales improvement tool for the hardware manufacturers, it doesn't generally work for the customer, except over the short term. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's usually throwing money away on scalability that will never be used.

A huge future proofing over-spend
Part of Go Communications' work is in the decommissioning of existing network infrastructure, usually to make way for new systems. A while back I was involved in the decommissioning of a truly enormous network in a secret underground bunker somewhere in the South of England.

It was all a bit James Bond. There were metal detectors and a personal search on the way in, and a truly enormous switch and server farm inside. I had never seen an installation of such a size, before or since.

The decommissioning was required because the hosting company had overspent and gone out of business as a result. The customer it was designed for had required that the specification be future proof not just for a couple of years but for ten.

The waste was horrifying. Rack upon rack of slots sat empty in every single chassis and the cabinets were twice the height they needed to be. The crippling cost of the over-specified hardware and the ongoing costs of wasted electricity – larger cabinets need larger power supplies and more cooling – must have been contributors to the hosting company's cash-flow problems. They could even have been the issues that brought it down.

How far ahead can you see?
Future proofing sounds good. And I'm the first to agree that, over the short term – a year or two – it is a vitally important issue in most network designs. Trying to cater for a future more than a couple of years away, though, is almost guaranteed to fail, because it's virtually certain that the network will have been replaced before the expansion space has been used.

Coming back to the secret bunker switch and server farm, specifying for ten years ahead seems, on the face of it, to be prudent – especially with a large, mission-critical network. Let's give it a moment's cold, hard thought, though. Ten years ago, we were all using Windows 98. The original iPod was still more than two years away. Digital cameras were an exciting new thing. And the average desktop PC was less powerful than today's iPhones.

With technological advancement accelerating, the changes over the next ten years are likely to be even more dramatic than those over the last. Predicting developments in technology is a bit like forecasting the weather: if you know what you're doing, you can make reasonable guesses as to what's around the corner, but try doing it any distance into the future and you're setting yourself up for a fall.

When you're specifying network systems, a fall means expense, and usually a lot of it.

Plan ahead, but control costs
Specifying one or two extra slots for extra cards in the next few months or year is usually prudent, but it's almost always wasteful going any further. While there is always the chance that additional slots over and above those one or two may be needed, designing for that small possibility is rarely wise: it ties up money that could be much more effectively deployed elsewhere on the network today.

Specify what you need today, with a little expansion room for the immediate future. If you do find at some point in the future that you need extra network resources over and above those for which you've allowed space, then re-specifying the appropriate parts of the network to cater for those resources can usually be done economically, especially as the general trend of hardware prices is always downwards rather than upwards.

Don't specify new products too early

2009-04-20T02:56:00.000-07:00

Caution: new products ahead
There's a certain amount of kudos in being 'at the leading edge'. Certainly, it's fun, especially if you have an engineering head on your shoulders, to try out the latest products. But, and this may come as something of a surprise from someone who makes his living selling networking products, ordering products before they are established in the market is not always a good idea. In fact, it can be a very bad idea indeed, and can cost your business dearly.

The leading edge is, of course, also known as the bleeding edge – and with good reason. Manufacturers almost always encounter unexpected design, production and logistical challenges with new product lines. In fact, over the past ten years, I can't remember a single network product that in its first release didn’t have some problem or other.

Recently, one of our customers specified the latest network switch from a particular manufacturer's range. Following a week of perfect, uninterrupted operation, the device spontaneously rebooted itself for no apparent reason. Brand new to the market, the switch had no field history: in specifying it the customer had taken a step into the unknown, with predictable results. Thankfully, they had the time and resources to handle the issue, but not all businesses would.

Resolved, but when?
Many bugs and issues with new products are of course resolved, although, when they first arise, no one knows how long such resolutions will remain in the pipeline. Worse yet, some are never resolved. Work arounds are almost always offered, but, again, no one can say how long devising them will take. In the meantime, who knows how many hours, days and weeks will have been lost?

In this respect, network switches, routers and other devices are like cars, washing machines, PCs and a host of other devices. Although a product's name, appearance and specifications may not change much over the years, a constant stream of improvements is made during its lifetime. Unless you ask, you don't generally hear about such improvements, but because of them the experience – and cost – of using the product some months after its launch can differ enormously from that of using it at Day One.

So here's my advice: unless you absolutely must, don't specify new products as soon as they are announced, or even released. Give them time to bed down in the market and for the inevitable teething problems to present themselves and be resolved.

Significant hidden costs
Of course, there may be compelling reasons for you to specify a brand new product – product features essential to your application and not available elsewhere, for example. If not, though, don't risk becoming a manufacturer's unpaid product tester, especially if you are pressed for time or have limited budgets, a small network team or a mission-critical network. Let your competitors discover the as-yet undiscovered bugs and handle the yet to be issued field notices – and bear the cost.

That cost, although often hidden, can be significant. In all aspects of business, time is one of the most valuable commodities you have at your disposal. And wasting it is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make. Just as jumping on the wrong bandwagon can cost you dear in terms of wasted time, so can specifying an unproven new product.

Use manufacturer approved memory products

2009-03-27T01:33:00.000-07:00

Genuine manufacturers' memory products. Wonderful, no doubt, but, let's be honest, they do tend to be a bit pricey.

You wouldn't buy a new TV from the high street if you could buy the same model for less than half the price from a reputable online store, would you? So why pay over the odds on your network switches and routers by using genuine manufacturers' memory products? After all, there are plenty of third party memory modules on sale for routers and switches.

Making savings
The obvious answer, of course, is that using third party memory would invalidate your warranty, wouldn't it? Or even not work at all. Well, no, in fact. It's something of a trade secret, but most manufacturers publish lists of approved third party memory products. And in the current economic climate, it's good commercial sense to find out where you could be making savings.

Those savings are far from insignificant, too. Approved third party memory product prices are on average some 80% lower than original manufacturers'.

The 'good old days'
Saving money on memory is nothing new of course. A few years back it was common for savvy network engineers to populate their live routers with third party memory, but keep one set on the shelf with original memory installed. That way they could have the benefit of the savings but avoid being caught out with a failed router populated with non-approved memory.

Times have changed, though. If, five or ten years ago, a router went down one evening, the engineer would typically not need to set about sorting it out it the next morning. Today, he's going to get a call-out when the router fails, and he's going to have to drop everything to see to it right away. His curry evening goes out of the window, his korma congeals and it's not going to help his heartburn. Really, it's not worth it.

No more heartburn
So here's what to do. Research your router and switch manufacturers' memory path upgrade programmes for each and every product you use. Find out who those manufacturers use as approved memory manufacturers. Most manufacturers publish the names, but they don't advertise them on their home pages: usually they are buried deep within their technical pages. If you cant find the information you're looking for, it's worth asking for it. You're quite within your rights to do so.

However you get to the information, once you have it, you've found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: safe memory upgrades for your sensitive network devices, no warranties invalidated, very significant savings. And no heartburn.

Check lead times before you specify

2009-02-25T01:01:00.000-08:00

Hold on. Don't order that part. At least, not just yet. The network component you've specified for a particular job may appear to be the right one for the job, but, please, check its availability before setting it in stone and making your project dependent on it.

Spikes and delays
The bad news is that unpredictable spikes in demand and manufacturing delays do occur, pushing component lead times up. The good news, on the other hand, is that the components you've selected may well not be the only ones that can do the job you need doing. Often perfectly acceptable alternatives can be identified. By checking availability at the outset, you can specify components that are readily available, in preference to those which are not, taking into account any effects of the component changes as you go.

It is essential, though, to make such checks at the design stage of your project, before placing your hardware order. Changing project specifications later on is complex, expensive and time consuming. For large companies the problems are compounded as back-tracking through the authorisation process consumes enormous amounts of time.

Indeed, the issue is no respecter of company size. Over the last ten years I have, on more occasions than I care to count, helped out even the largest telcos in the UK as they wrestled with it. Typically their usual supplier had been quoting lead times of six weeks or more – if they could quote a firm lead time at all – for a component that they needed there and then.

Costs up, time wasted
It may be that your design can accept an available alternative to the delayed or unavailable component. However, the alternative will typically be a more feature-rich version of the one you originally specified, and therefore more expensive. You've probably wasted hours trying to track down your preferred part, and now your project costs are up as well.

Some seven years ago I sold some Cisco Port Adapters to the largest telco in the UK at the time. They weren't available in the UK at the time, but I tracked some down in California. The only way I could make even a small margin on the sale was to sell them at global list price: no discount whatsoever. The customer paid it.

I cannot, therefore, over-state the case for investing a small amount of time, up front, in researching the availability of the components you are considering specifying for your project. This can be as straightforward as a quick phone call to your reseller or distributor, to ask if there are any issues with current lead times on your proposed kit list.

It may well save your sanity, as well as your project.

2009-01-20T04:56:00.000-08:00

Keep engineering resources in-house
Outsourcing works well in many areas of business activity, but I want to sound a note of caution. In fact, when I hear about companies taking their network management operations out of the safe hands of their experienced and committed in-house engineers and handing it to external providers, my blood runs cold.

Unfortunately, business owners and directors often focus too closely on the savings promised by network management outsourcing, while seriously underestimating the importance and value of reliability in their organisations' IT networks, and the enormous damage that failures can cause.

Network downtime: a company-killer
"I can't get web access and I can't check my emails. I might as well go home." It's a common complaint in today's office, and it illustrates how dependent we have become on our company networks.

Ten years ago we would simply have turned to the phone and fax. For years, though, IT networks have been becoming steadily more important to companies of all types and sizes and for most organisations they are now absolutely key to all day-to-day operations. Downtime can mean service disruption, dissatisfied customers, irritated staff, regulatory compliance failure, and significant financial loss.

Company networks are no longer just important pieces of infrastructure. They have gone far beyond that. Today, a company's network is its central nervous system. If it fails, the company is paralysed. If normal service isn't restored quickly, the company dies. It's that simple, and it's that important.

PR fallout: it's not pretty
In today's online world, news – bad news, in particular - spreads brutally fast. If a major company's network is down for even a few hours, we hear about it from bloggers, or even the media, almost immediately.

The longer the interruption to normal service persists, the more widespread is the bad publicity, the more serious the PR damage and the more customers who will simply go elsewhere, often permanently. Even if they don't result directly in company failure, network outages do serious damage to company reputations.

Downtime is not the minor inconvenience it once was. It's not just a matter of not being able to check emails or browse websites. It's a potential company-killer.

Protecting your network
In-house engineers' jobs depend directly on their ability and commitment to maintain the company network in good order. That accountability for problems, poor performance and downtime is highly motivating, keeping the company's interests at the top of their priority list: they will care far more deeply about the company's success than any external specialist ever will. As a result they are the company's best option to get the job done right, keep the network working effectively and efficiently, and rectify faults that do arise in short order.

Conversely, handing over responsibility for the ongoing management and maintenance of the network to unknown and untested individuals with no direct interest in the company's well-being significantly increases the danger of network downtime, and the damage it inevitably causes.

Think before you outsource
For businesses with in-house engineering resources, the temptation to cut costs by outsourcing should therefore generally be avoided.

That's not to say that outsourcing is never the right option. Many businesses don't have the resources at their disposal to effectively manage and maintain their networks. For such businesses, outsourced network management can be invaluable. But even in such cases, the business should employ at least a few engineers to work with the external team, acting as its eyes and ears, ensuring that the goals of the outsourcing exercise are actually delivered.

Businesses with skilled engineers on the payroll, though, have an enormous advantage. Those engineers are the best protection possible against costly, damaging, and potentially fatal network failures.

Think – very carefully – before outsourcing.

Everything you wanted to know about Cisco but were afraid to ask

2007-11-06T03:31:00.000-08:00

Force Ten Networks

I met them last year when they tried to tempt us as a secondary source Cisco reseller to sell their products instead of Cisco, my old friend and colleague (I shall call him VP) suggested that commercially it wasn't viable for us at the time. Technically speaking the Force Ten kit was faster for sheer shifting of moving large trunks of traffic from A to B but wasn't in the same league as Cisco for large IP Networks, only perhaps fat ISP's or Telco's and Carrier's level.

I was under the impression Juniper owned that area of the market but apparently not! I now know of at least two Cisco Telco customers currently decommissioning GSR12000 kit with OC192 and 10GIG Ethernet and rolling out an install over the next few months of Force Ten instead.

Where have the Cisco CRS-1 sales reps gone? Are they being priced out against Force Ten and Juniper? Are there only 200 CRS-1 install sites globally? I'm sure the take up of GSR12000 kit was massive compared to this, but perhaps it's too close to the transmission side of networking where competition is much more active.

Who knows maybe like plasma's when there has been more take up of CRS-1 there will be a price drop of the GSR12000 and Cisco will start shifting them in numbers, at the moment GSR's work so well that replacing them with expensive CRS box's just isn't worth it ..... yet!