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Join Ed Granger-Happ, CIO of Save the Children, for a discussion of how creating an organization that is socially responsible improves staffing, retention, leadership development and overall corporate health.

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Network Management: Tips for Managing Costs

These tips, including virtualization, consolidation and measuring bandwidth consumption, will help you reduce costs as network management becomes more complex and expensive.

 

August 25, 2008CIO — Of all of the ongoing expenses needed to keep corporate IT running, network-related costs are perhaps the most unwieldy. New technologies, changing requirements and ongoing equipment maintenance and upgrades keep IT staff on their toes and money flowing out the door. But there are ways to manage network costs.

The Problem

According to Aberdeen Group, network costs continue to rise steadily. In 2008, for example, network spending is expected to increase slightly more than 5 percent over 2007. Telecom management industry association AOTMP of Indianapolis, Ind., backs that up, estimating that spending for voice and data services alone averages $2,000 to 3,000 per employee.

The biggest area for steady cost growth is the ever-expanding network, either as a result of physical expansion or a general thirst for connectivity. In the first case, a new branch office could require replication of the security infrastructure through technology like a point-to-point VPN connection. The network may need to add a multiprotocol labeling service (MPLS) to provide that branch office with a wide-area, high-speed connection. And those expenses are in addition to the cost of routers, switches and network appliances that the branch office may need.

Internally, the "need for speed" is driving the increase of network costs. More and more devices, either in terms of number of ports for network access or the number of network-connected devices per employee, is increasing.

One growing trend is the shift from standard PCs to mobile PCs in the corporate world. Over the next five years Forrester Research believes corporate America will reach an inflection point where traditional PCs are eclipsed by mobile PCs.

"Now you have a device that perhaps needs a port or wired drop at the desk and may also need to be supported on a wireless network, so the number of means by which employees can connect to the network drives the size of the network in terms of end points of connectivity," explains Chris Silva, an analyst with Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass.

Other factors also are contributing to spiraling network costs. Aberdeen Group, for example, found that companies expect to increase their bandwidth by 108 percent on average over the next 12 months and expect to increase the number of business-critical applications running on their networks by 67 percent.

The growth of wireless networking is also increasing IT costs. As companies begin to replace all or part of their networks with Wi-Fi networks to take advantage of newer technologies like 802.11n, they are spending liberally.

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Infrastructure
» Outbound Email and Data Loss Prevention
This report shows the findings of a recent Proofpoint and Forrester Consulting study on e-mail security, data loss prevention, and includes statistics on electronic risks.
» A Modern Approach to On-Demand Email and Data Security
Learn how Proofpoint delivers a dedicated, hosted e-mail security solution that combines state-of-the-art anti-spam and virus control.
» A Proactive Approach to e-Discovery
Learn about the key e-discovery challenges facing legal and IT departments today and how businesses can develop an e-mail archiving strategy to deal with e-discovery requests.
» The Advantages of Identity Based Encryption
Download this paper to learn why e-mail encyrption is critical to an organization's overall security architecture and the advantages of identity-based encryption.
» Global Best Practices in Email Security, Privacy and Compliance
This whitepaper discusses the latest global regulations that impact the e-mail security policies and strategies of today's enterprises, universities and government organizations.
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