Want to frustrate an employee? Give them a stack of work and a computer, but hamper their productivity with an out-of-date network connection.

We have all experienced the annoyance of a slow Internet connection. But as companies adopt more and more bandwidth-hungry applications, it might not be your connection to the outside world presenting a problem. Rather, you and your employees may be plagued by a slow Local Area Network (LAN).

In most offices, Ethernet switches connect computers and servers to the LAN. A common Fast Ethernet connection transfers data at about 100 megabits per second. So no matter how fast and effective your company’s servers and Internet connection may be, workers cannot receive data at speeds faster than their Ethernet connection will allow.

In the past, this was rarely a problem. Most employees – even those considered “information workers” – relied on the network primarily to retrieve email and pull files off of local servers. Now, however, many employees place much greater strains on the network in the course of doing their jobs effectively:

• CRM and other applications have shifted employees away from working on their PC’s hard drives. Instead, they are working on applications that are hosted or in the cloud. As a result, employees are continually bombarding the network with data transmissions.
• Commonly used applications are growing richer each year. A few years ago, PowerPoint presentations typically included some colorful backgrounds and text. Today, they may include many large photos, audio files, video files and more.
• Employees are being asked to watch videos for training and conduct video conferences from their cubicles.
• Workers also enjoy non-sanctioned applications that strain network bandwidth. Pandora isn’t a critical business application, but it can slow down network performance nonetheless.

To speed LAN performance, many companies are upgrading their standard Ethernet switches to gigabit Ethernet connections. A gigabit Ethernet switch transmits data at speeds of about 1 gigabit per second – 10 times greater than Fast Ethernet switches.

Fortunately, gigabit switches are growing more affordable for everyone. To get the full benefit of the switch, every component in the network, including computers, needs to be gigabit compliant. Also, keep in mind that upgrading to gigabit switches will not increase the speed of your outside Internet connection. It will only speed up the transmission of data on your LAN.

An example of a high-quality gigabit Ethernet switch is the NetVanta 1600 series by Adtran. This series offers 48 gigabit Ethernet ports, with or without Power over Ethernet (PoE), and two high-speed interface slots, which can accommodate up to four 10-gigabit Ethernet links. This means that users can benefit from up to 80 Gbps between interconnected NetVanta 1638 switches for the most bandwidth-intensive applications.

This article first appeared on Best in UC.

Is theft just a cost of doing business that companies must accept?

We’ve all seen the grainy footage on the news. Robbers hold up a bank or convenience store. Thieves break into a business. But the images are so jumpy, blurry or otherwise incomprehensible, they offer no real clues to the identities of the criminals.

With IP-based security cameras, however, that is all changing. IP cameras are sometimes called network cameras. Rather than transmitting their signals over a traditional cable connection, they send video over a company’s data network.

When an IP security camera records an image, it is initially in analog format. The camera, however, converts it to a digital image. In addition, the camera can use motion detection features to sense a problem, and it can compress video files. After files are compressed, they are sent over the local area network to a PC, where the images are stored.

With an IP system, rather than a traditional cable-based system, users can quickly retrieve video files. The images are clear, and individuals who are captured on film are easily identifiable. Advanced systems even allow for automated face recognition. With this technology, people who are allowed in a particular place at a particular time do not trigger an alarm. An unrecognized individual, however, would be tagged by the system.

Consider this example. A company had very expensive inventory on its premises. Unfortunately, some of that inventory was disappearing. Managers were not interested in a video security system, believing it would not solve the problem. After one too many losses, however, they installed an IP security camera. One night, the video captured a group of perpetrators pulling on ski masks, cutting the fence, going into the yard and stealing items. The security service automatically called the police, who made an arrest while the theft was in progress. So far, nine convictions have been made.

So what does it take to install IP security cameras? If you have an IP network already in place, you’re halfway there. No additional cabling or hardware is needed. Each camera simply needs a port where it can be plugged in. If ports are not already available, they can be easily and inexpensively installed.

With the right choice of IP security cameras, images can be clear and crisp – under all lighting conditions. Motion detectors can make the system call company personnel – or the police directly – when a break-in is detected. Business owners can even watch video remotely, from any computer with an Internet connection. And a small investment in IP cameras can pay off big-time when expensive losses are stopped before they can happen.

It seems like a more efficient use of everyone’s time. But document sharing technologies actually create a host of new challenges in the enterprise, both for users and the network.

The benefits of share-centric systems are clear. Workers can all access a document and make changes to it, ensuring version control and the preservation of changes by various authors. This improves efficiency and makes information ubiquitous throughout the team and the organization.

But at the same time, sharing information can overload a company’s bandwidth – especially at branch offices. In many cases, these satellite facilities are in far-flung locations that may not have access to the super-fast fiber connections that make watching video or downloading large PowerPoint presentations a snap. Rather, branch offices may be accessing their central office’s VPN via a T1 connection.

In recent years, most organizations have pulled back from the practice of maintaining significant IT infrastructure at satellite offices. It simply cost too much to build and maintain the servers at multiple locations. Instead, most companies are finding it more cost-effective and efficient to keep all IT resources in a single location at corporate headquarters. That results in high availability and easy access – as long as your WAN and local data connections can perform.

Just a few years ago, a T1 line provided decent speed for most branch offices. That’s because most of corporate America was relying on the Internet primarily for email. Things have changed dramatically in just the last 12 to 18 months, and as more time passes, bandwidth-intensive web applications will become the norm.

So how’s an organization to deal with this “new normal” of high-bandwidth apps at low-bandwidth satellite offices?

One of our vendors, SonicWALL, has developed a new line of products designed specifically to accelerate performance of the wide-area network, which greatly benefits users in distant geographic locations. The SonicWALL WAN Acceleration Appliance (WXA) solves several of the challenges that file sharing creates. In the simplest terms, SonicWALL dramatically reduces network traffic by transmitting only new or changed data – not entire files.

Imagine a satellite office in a rural location that relies on a T1 line to connect to corporate headquarters. What if five members of the sale team are trying to download a graphics-intensive PowerPoint presentation simultaneously? They could each waste much of the afternoon waiting for the file to complete its journey to their laptop.

That’s why the WAN acceleration appliance actually caches traffic that flows over the WAN. In the above example, the first time that the presentation file is downloaded, it’s cached by the WXA. Then, each subsequent user can quickly and easily retrieve the file – without reaching out over the WAN to the home office.

There are other companies that have created similar devices. The WXA, however, is designed with a couple of twists that make it more effective. First, the WXA sits to the side of the firewall, rather than being in line with the firewall. Why does this matter?

• When competitor products are in-line with the firewall, they are looking at data that has already been compressed and optimized. As a result, data is simply let through without being inspected.
• If there is a problem with a competitor’s in-line device, it slows down the entire WAN or even becomes the equivalent of a cut wire.
• Both of these problems defeat the entire purpose of an acceleration device, which is to optimize data going through the Internet connection and making it take less bandwidth.

The SonicWALL WXA sits off to the side of the firewall. There, it can inspect data before it is optimized. In addition, if it becomes overwhelmed or inoperable, the firewall knows that the WXA has become maxed out and send requests to the VPN without going through the WXA.

The result? Remote users enjoy faster WAN performance with safe, clean files free of security hazards. And that T1 line isn’t such a barrier to work anymore.

In a business, file sharing is supposed to improve efficiency. Rather than editing multiple electronic copies of a documents and later merging the various versions, work teams can share access to a single master document. This eliminates duplicate efforts and keeps everyone on the same page, even when working from remote offices. Many organizations have embraced file sharing, in part thanks to the massive push from Microsoft and other technology vendors who have made collaboration a central theme of their new software releases.

Yet file sharing has created some negative unintended consequences for many companies. Applications that tout collaboration capabilities, such as Microsoft SharePoint and Windows File Sharing, bombard the network by retransmitting entire files time and time again.

When a team member makes minor grammatical changes to a Word document or adds a graphic to a PowerPoint presentation, the entire file might be transmitted throughout the organization – rather than simply the incremental changes. This increased traffic on a wide-area network (WAN) can lead to expensive bandwidth and server upgrades, plus add more work for the IT department.

When SonicWALL recognized this problem, it developed a new technology designed specifically to cure the ills of a WAN bogged down by file sharing. The SonicWALL WAN Acceleration Appliance solves several of the challenges that file sharing creates. In the simplest terms, SonicWALL dramatically reduces network traffic by transmitting only new or changed data – not entire files. This creates several benefits:

• Reduced total cost of ownership, thanks to increased efficiency of the existing network, as well as avoidance of network and bandwidth upgrades.
• Improved performance and reduced latency, with data compression across the network.
• Improved response time with Windows File Sharing acceleration.
• Better security, as SonicWALL’s Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection technology scans all traffic and data for threats.
• LAN-like application performance over the WAN, with decreased latency and chattiness.
• Extended life for existing WAN links because of reduced bandwidth consumption, the result of byte caching and file caching.

Deployment of the SonicWALL appliance requires little change of the existing WAN. At an organization’s headquarters, as well as each branch office, a firewall appliance is installed. This enables VPN connectivity between all sites.

Then, the acceleration appliance is connected to the firewall at each location. There, it improves WAN performance by reducing the amount of data moving through the VPN. Additional tools help the IT team manage traffic even better. For example, the SonicWALL Appliance Intelligence and Control Service can further prioritize and control application traffic.

Network and online security make up a large and complicated beast. That’s the main reason that companies cringe at the thought of addressing their internal security policies and network infrastructure vulnerabilities.

Yet today, security plays a tremendous role in everything related to the web. Our lives are essentially put online, with nothing to stop someone from harvesting every detail about us. At the same time, companies are adapting hosted applications and cloud computing strategies, which make the security of their data and corporate information harder to protect.

Consider a recent example, where researchers showed that Cisco IP phones could be transformed into listening bugs. In addition, the right strategy could create a denial-of-service attack and take out a call center. Disgruntled employees or crafty competitors can easily use Cisco phones to eavesdrop, wiretap and more.

In addition, with social networking, hackers have more entry points to a company’s network. In the past, hackers would try to exploit a core service to gain access to a corporate network. They would look for the services that were running, and then try to break one of those services. For example, they might attack an FTP server and break it to gain access.

With social networking, hackers have adopted a strategy called “social engineering.” They reach out to users to obtain personal information, or they entice a user to click on a link or browse a specific web site. When the users takes the bait and clicks on a pdf, web site link or e-mail, the attacker gets the access they need. From there, the hacker can harvest user names and passwords, mine company databases or even steal call records.

These stealth attacks are difficult to protect against, for two reasons. First, they rely on the ignorance of users, who take actions that give hackers access. Secondly, they are stealthy. If a network is not properly guarded, the data theft may go on for some time before it is detected.

Unfortunately, most companies today to not practice good security. This creates incredible risk, which only increases as more hosted services, cloud computing strategies, and VoIP phones are installed. If your company relies on any of these applications – or plans to in the future – you must devise a solid IT security plan. Get ahead of the bad guys.

Not sure where to start? If your company relies on a technology firm that has installed your network, VoIP system or other applications, start there. Ask what options they have available, and how they can help you increase security at your company – today.

This blog first appeared on Best in UC.

Is your server configuration killing your IT budget? And is there a solution for the servers that host unified communications (UC)?

At too many companies, servers run at utilization rates that hover around 10 percent. This has prompted many firms to adopt virtualization technologies, which can boost utilization to 60 percent or higher, without any decrease in service levels. That raises an important question in our industry: can virtualization be effectively used for UC?

First, let’s talk about the basics of virtualization. Many applications require that they have their own dedicated server. Virtualization is essentially a piece of software that tricks the application into thinking it is running on its own server, when it actually resides on a partitioned portion of the server.

Why undertake this strategy? Simple. When a company puts more applications onto each server, it needs to manage less hardware. Maintenance decreases. Plus, it’s easier to afford high-availability guarantees and other backup services for fewer servers.

Up until now, most applications that are put onto virtual servers are those with more flexible requirements. They may not need lightning-fast response times or be highly utilized.

Of course, UC applications are the exact opposite. On a phone call, delays are not acceptable. Downtime can quickly destroy a business. And efficiency is an absolute must.

At least one UC company, however, has devised a solution that allows UC to effectively run on a virtualized server. ShoreTel has teamed up with VMware to help companies consolidate and modernize their server infrastructure. ShoretTel software can run on VMware’s vSphere virtualization platform. That means all applications including voicemail, automated attendant, call accounting and reporting and more run in a virtualized environment.

According to VMware, companies that use its solutions can:

• Reduce capital costs by up to 60 percent
• Cut time spent on routine administration by up to one-third
• Reduce energy costs by up to 80 percent

In contrast to industry concerns about virtualization and UC, ShoreTel says that a virtualization strategy actually enhances its high levels of availability. VMware provides high availability and failover capabilities, which also improves disaster recovery strategies.

For IT managers, a virtualized version of the ShoreTel UC system is managed the same way as a typical installation, and using the same tools and processes. This is a contrast to some other UC solutions run in a virtual environment, which place different functions of the UC system on different virtual machines.

Making the switch to a VoIP phone system is all about choosing more advanced, effective modern technologies. So when the day of your professional installation comes, you might expect technical problems with a server, wireless device or other new equipment.

Typically, however, the biggest stumbling block during an installation is something that’s been in your office for quite a while: cabling.

Most modern buildings have Category 5 (Cat 5) wiring already in the walls. Sometimes, that cable has become compromised. Maybe a nail was put through it. Perhaps it was pulled around a corner, causing damage. Maybe a pesky varmint decided it would make a good snack.

Whatever the case, integrators who use Adtran Layer 3 and Adtran Power over Ethernet (PoE) switches have a great tool for avoiding delays on VoIP installation day. In short, these switches are intelligent. They can run diagnostics on Ethernet switch ports to determine whether any wiring has been compromised. If these switches are put into place a week or two before the VoIP installation is scheduled, any cabling problems can be solved in advance – and the new phones will be up and running on time.

That isn’t the only advantage to using Adtran switches. Adtran products generally feature a lower price than the competition, as well as a lifetime warranty. For example, the company’s Layer 3 products provide:

• intelligent switching decisions based on the OSI Layer 3 source and destination addresses, similar to that of a router. A standard Layer 2 switch relies on MAC addresses to make switching decision.
• Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities to support mission-critical applications such as VoIP.

Finally, Adtran switches offer more advanced power management services than the competition. Adtran Gigabit switches can provide higher bandwidth for corporate and branch office LANs to support today’s most bandwidth-intensive applications.

One the flip side, Adtran’s 24- and 48-port Power over Ethernet (PoE) switches are optimized for a mix of devices including IP phones, wireless access points and IP surveillance cameras. IP phones have low energy requirements, while IP surveillance cameras might require a burst of power when panning or zooming. With Adtran PoE switches, companies can conserve power. Devices can be turned off when not in use, or scheduled to go offline after business hours.

This blog first appeared on Best in UC.

In a recent blog, we talked about why awards matter when you are choosing an integrator for your unified communications, video conferencing, and other technology solutions.

The fact is, it can be hard weeding through a field of potential integrators. Somehow, as a customer who probably hails from outside the technology world, you must weigh factors like price, quality, service, product suites and more. After much analysis and hard work, you still might not feel confident that you have made the best choice of vendor.

In addition to the awards we discussed earlier, here are a few more considerations that may make
your buying decision a bit easier:

• Does the vendor have a third-party measure of customer satisfaction? Many companies hire independent third-party firms to call their customers and ask a variety of questions related to installation, service and ongoing maintenance. Customers are more likely to give honest, open answers to a third-party organization than they are to a vendor with whom they have an ongoing relationship. By outsourcing this survey, vendors show just how serious they are about truly satisfying their customers.
• Can you obtain references that are not carefully groomed? Ask how the vendor initially found these reference clients, how long the relationship has lasted and other details. Then, verify that information with the reference clients. The key is to be sure that the reference client you are provided with is not your potential vendor’s brother-in-law or someone with whom they have a bartering relationship. If possible, get a reference client in your industry or who will use the products and services in a way similar to your business.
• Find out what product manufacturers say about them. Many equipment manufacturers are growing stricter about the criteria they impose on vendors. Find out what requirements key manufacturers have, and what the relationship between the two companies looks like. You can then discern whether the vendor is an industry player, or just small potatoes.
• Look at relevant certifications. There are two kinds of certifications: industry standard certifications and manufacturer certifications. Both are important. Determine which are the highest and best certifications for personnel who would install and maintain your solutions. Then, make sure the vendor can show you these certifications are currently in place for their team.

Making the switch to a VoIP phone system is all about choosing more advanced, effective modern technologies. So when the day of your professional installation comes, you might expect technical problems with a server, wireless device or other new equipment.

Typically, however, the biggest stumbling block during an installation is something that’s been in your office for quite a while: cabling.

Most modern buildings have Category 5 (Cat 5) wiring already in the walls. Sometimes, that cable has become compromised. Maybe a nail was put through it. Perhaps it was pulled around a corner, causing damage. Maybe a pesky varmint decided it would make a good snack.

Whatever the case, integrators who use Adtran Layer 3 and Adtran Power over Ethernet (PoE) switches have a great tool for avoiding delays on VoIP installation day. In short, these switches are intelligent. They can run diagnostics on Ethernet switch ports to determine whether any wiring has been compromised. If these switches are put into place a week or two before the VoIP installation is scheduled, any cabling problems can be solved in advance – and the new phones will be up and running on time.

That isn’t the only advantage to using Adtran switches. Adtran products generally feature a lower price than the competition, as well as a lifetime warranty. For example, the company’s Layer 3 products provide:

• intelligent switching decisions based on the OSI Layer 3 source and destination addresses, similar to that of a router. A standard Layer 2 switch relies on MAC addresses to make switching decision.
• Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities to support mission-critical applications such as VoIP.

Finally, Adtran switches offer more advanced power management services than the competition. Adtran Gigabit switches can provide higher bandwidth for corporate and branch office LANs to support today’s most bandwidth-intensive applications.

One the flip side, Adtran’s 24- and 48-port Power over Ethernet (PoE) switches are optimized for a mix of devices including IP phones, wireless access points and IP surveillance cameras. IP phones have low energy requirements, while IP surveillance cameras might require a burst of power when panning or zooming. With Adtran PoE switches, companies can conserve power. Devices can be turned off when not in use, or scheduled to go offline after business hours.

This blog originally appeared on Best in UC.

At every industry conference, manufacturers and service providers have been preaching the benefits of the growing cloud computing phenomenon. It will be the preferred way for corporate America to operate, they have crowed.

And then, there was Amazon. The Internet retailing giant also provides cloud computing services to a large number of clients. And in April, Amazon Web Services went down for four long days.

The cause? A configuration error was made during a network upgrade. In other words, a seemingly minor human error led to outages for several well-known web sites including Quora, Foursquare and Reddit. Unlike many web server issues, this was not a slowdown in service or occasional 404 message. Instead, entire companies were taken down over an entire weekend.

Almost immediately, the naysayers of the cloud computing concept began coming out of the woodwork. They began arguing that the idea of off-site hosting, storage and applications just doesn’t make sense for the enterprise.

Instead of this knee-jerk reaction, it would do IT professionals good to analyze the situation and see what can be learned – and how cloud computing can be safer, better and more reliable in the future.

For its part, Amazon published a highly transparent post-mortem of the entire situation.

Some of its customers are being quite public and forthcoming with their own experiences as well. For example, Netflix published a report on its experiences over the outage weekend. Netflix’s customers ran into more errors than usual, but the company’s web site and services generally remained live. This has only reinforced, however, Netflix’s decision to remain in the cloud.

“We set out to build a highly available Netflix service on AWS and this outage was a major test of that decision,” Netflix said in a published statement. “While we do have some lessons learned and some improvements to make, we continue to be confident that this is the right strategy for us.”

Like Netflix, I believe that companies who are considering or already rely on cloud-based computing services could ultimately become stronger based on the lessons learned from Amazon’s failure. First and foremost is this: every company needs a disaster recovery plan that extends to its unified communications system, data storage, servers and more.

Most firms that keep their servers for data and apps on-premise also rely on some kind of off-site backup. And those who don’t should start this practice today. Similarly, when a company chooses to operate in the cloud, IT personnel must have a complete understanding of potential failures and weaknesses in this strategies. Redundancy, backup and fail-safes are the key.

This isn’t the end of cloud computing. It’s just a growing pain. And over time, the same advantages that have made cloud computing a technology buzzword of 2011 will prompt its development into a stable, reliable platform for corporate America.