InformationWeek

The high demands of network-dependent E-businesses have managers seeking out whatever management strategies they can--consolidation, network-management application service providers, and new software tools. "E-business has obviously made network management a more critical discipline," says Roger Hull, CIO of First American Title Insurance Co., a $2 billion subsidiary of First American Financial Corp. Hull says the Santa Ana, Calif., company's customers--which include builders, mortgage brokers, and bankers in 30 countries--want a single, electronic point of contact for doing business with First American. "We can only give that to them if our network is responsive and reliable," he says.

In First American's case, cost efficiency became a must as increased E-business activity drove network-management costs up 67% in the past 18 months, when the company rolled out business-to-business applications and added more network connections.

A fragmented network-management staff was a big part of the problem. First American expanded to 988 offices nationwide through acquisitions, leaving widely scattered IT personnel in charge of different parts of its far-flung network. Hull found that six people were centrally managing 45% of the devices on the network, using remote-management tools, while it took 45 people to manage the remaining devices manually. "It became pretty clear that by using the right remote-management tools, a relatively small staff could manage the whole network," he says.

Hull initiated a network-operations-center consolidation project that will eventually let his entire 12,000-user network be managed from headquarters. The center, designed and implemented with the assistance of Lucent Technologies Inc.'s NetworkCare business unit, should save First American $1.5 million. "We're going to bring the overall cost of managing the network back down to where it was 18 months ago, but we'll be supporting an overall volume of traffic that's four times higher," Hull says. "And we'll be doing a much better job."

The network is primarily frame relay, with more than 700 routers and a mix of Windows NT and Unix servers. Lucent built the network-operations center, which includes remote-management tools, restructuring of the center's staffing, training, documentation, and knowledge transfer. According to Hull, it's not just cutting staff that's reducing costs; a smaller, centrally located staff makes fewer mistakes. "The more people you have, the more difficult it is to enforce policies and procedures," he says. Even more important, Hull says, the network-opera-tions center will let First American respond much more quickly to emerging E-business opportunities. "You can 'turn on' new products and services much more rapidly with a well-managed network," he says.

As an example, Hull points to a recent rollout First American accomplished in just five working days--rather than in the one-to-three months that such an implementation would have required in the past. The new line of insurance, known as Eagle9 UCC, provides coverage to lenders for loans where virtually all forms of personal property can be taken as collateral. In addition to providing comprehensive protection even for highly complex financing deals, this new policy makes it simpler for First American's customers, who now have a single point of contact.

While preaching against geographic and organizational fragmentation of network management, Hull also cautions others to avoid artificial boundaries between enterprise network management and other IT functions, such as systems administration, application monitoring, and even software development. "If you don't consolidate all the information you need about your network--your systems and your applications--troubleshooting becomes a difficult, slow process," he says. "That can lead to real problems if you're trying to service your customers electronically."

Andy Kiolbasa, director of enterprise infrastructure for ITT Industries Inc.'s Fluid Technology and Specialty Products business unit, is facing similar challenges. The company is letting its worldwide customers place orders, check shipments, and get technical support online.

Like many IT executives, Kiolbasa is fairly confident about his management team's ability to keep tabs on what goes on across the enterprise network--which in his case connects 10,000 users across 250 facilities in 25 countries. But E-commerce brings a new set of variables into play. "Across my own network, it's easy for me to see that we have 120-millisecond latency from Chicago to New York," he says. "But with E-commerce, you have to learn to start dealing with the unknown of the Internet."

Without a way to monitor public-network traffic, Kiolbasa says, an E-business can quickly become no business. "You can't just throw your hands up in the air and say, 'It's not our problem.' Customers will just go buy what they need somewhere else." That's why Kiolbasa is shopping for tools that will let his staff see whether some problem outside the enterprise, such as poor performance on his customers' Internet service provider networks, are hampering ITT's E-commerce services.

Kiolbasa also will not segregate E-commerce management from other IT management operations. Ultimately, he expects to replace his conventional WAN/LAN management tools with next-generation E-commerce solutions, such as end-to-end application response-time monitors. "That way, we'll wind up with a single technology portfolio that's no larger than what we have now," he says.

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