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F E A T U R E

Shoot for the Moon

March 17, 2003
By Peter Morrissey

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CYA Strategy

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	In this article
	Introduction
	CYA Strategy
	Gorilla vs. Guerrilla
	Executive Summary
	Can Infrastructure ROI Be Calculated? Maybe
	Epoll Results

Want to ensure that you won't be boxed into a corner, or worse, left in the lurch by a defunct vendor? One word: Standards. Whether you're in the single-vendor or best-of-breed camp, we can't stress enough that standards compliance is critical. Obviously, a best-of-breed approach isn't going to work unless there are interoperable standards in play, but standards adherence is just as important in single-vendor networks. When you make a commitment to one vendor to provide all your routing and switching from end to end, you'd better maintain some leverage. The best way to do this is to adhere to industry standards whenever possible. That doesn't mean it's unwise to take advantage of proprietary solutions, which in some cases will be superior, but you need to remember the trade-off you made should you become dissatisfied with the vendor.

Our RFI focused on the QoS, VoIP and PoE (Power over Ethernet) standards. And our poll revealed widespread interest in the last--36 percent of you say you have deployed a prestandard version of PoE and 32 percent of you plan to implement it. The IEEE is working on a PoE standard (802.3af), but unfortunately it wasn't finalized--or even as far along as we had expected--when we sent out our RFI in December. We said in our "2003 Survivor's Guide to Infrastructure" that the spec was likely to be finalized in early spring, but that may have been a tad optimistic. That's one nice thing about an RFI--it gives you the opportunity to find out where things stand.

Given the delay on PoE, when it comes to VoIP our fictional company will likely remain in the "planning" stage for some time. Still, the insurer is very interested in packetized voice, as are you. We've heard this buzz for some time, and indeed, 38 percent of you polled have VoIP phones in production on your networks, and of the remaining 62 percent, 42 percent plan to put VoIP phones into production this year.

Support Groups

FYI

Business units will take even more control of IT spending decisions, according to Gartner's Top 10 2003 IT predictions. The company also says that by 2005, 65 percent of enterprises will finance more than half of their IT projects using a business-unit driven, just-in-time funding model. The happy exception for those of you in the market for network gear: nonoutsourced infrastructure purchases.

In our RFI we asked vendors about support, though we didn't factor it into our rankings. We found that 62 percent of you polled receive support directly from your vendors, while the rest depend on resellers. Unless you're in a large city, find out how good local support is from vendors versus VARs--quality will vary. Establish relationships with peers at other companies in your area and talk with them about their support experiences. The Network Professional Association could be a good resource. As for references, ask for more than a handful, and specify that you'd like the names of customers who have needed serious help.

If you have any concerns, let vendors know and give them a chance to set the record straight. You don't have to believe everything you hear, but they might be able to give you verifiable facts to help you address concerns.