InformationWeek

In January, Sage Research surveyed 60 network and IT managers at small and midsize enterprises, defined as those with 500 or fewer employees. The managers described how they believe next-generation services such as high-speed network access, Internet-based telephony, and near real-time video should be packaged, delivered, and monitored.

Specifically, managers say they will have to use and monitor available service capacity and connectivity in a much more dynamic manner than exists today. For instance, a business user may require dedicated capacity to support the equivalent of 24 phone channels during the normal business day. However, in off-peak hours, this same user may support the equivalent of only six phone channels; the remaining capacity will be allocated to after-hours, remote-database backup.

Enhanced management needs to be implemented on the provider side and, to a lesser extent, on the enterprise management side as requirements change. For example, not only will users require access to a service-management portal that lets them manually request service-provisioning changes, but a more automated--and far more complex--provider-management system will need to automatically make changes in network traffic priorities and behaviors based upon predefined service-delivery policy.

Even given these objectives, neither users nor providers can afford to totally scrap their substantial investment in existing management products and infrastructure. And since many providers develop their own service-management systems internally, selectively upgrading existing management systems rather than replacing entire systems will be the preferred approach.

Because service providers can't scrap their existing management systems in favor of a vendor-specific approach, such as the Cisco Service Management system or Nortel's Preside, more industry-standard technology will have to be used. New service activation and customer manage-ment have to be supported through standard browsers and Extensible Markup Language technology on the front end and Corba technology on the back end.

One key link between the enterprise and the provider will be connectivity between the basic desktop browser and a provider-supplied service portal. This link will likely support service registration, change, and management functions, and will bring increased revenue opportunity for the provider. However, customer care and billing systems have to support highly automated operations as well.

The need for management system integration is not restricted to providers that only support voice, data, or video-transport services. Enterprise users will care less about where the computing iron and applications are located, and more about the service quality they get.

According to Glen Hill, assistant director of IT at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., enterprise managers need to assess who can best do the job while ensuring that E-application functionality, access, and performance aren't compromised.

Hill is evaluating SilverBack Technologies Inc.'s InfoCare service to provide network and application management while allowing as much implementation and management flexibility as possible. InfoCare lets users either operate the managed applications at their site or at the provider's site without compromising service levels.

Regardless of where these applications operate, users still need to effectively monitor performance and availability. When providers are used, they still need to access user site-resident systems and network components. Ensuring that the provider's staff has some form of management access (e.g. from a browser) is obviously the first step.

However, this needs to be followed with a set of common utilities whose usage, operation, and associated management data can be largely independent of the support model that a user implements.

Common management utilities that span the provider and the enterprise are being addressed by first-generation performance and availability-management products for Web sites, and by E-business applications from vendors such as Keynote Systems, Mercury Interactive, Response Networks, and VisualNetworks. In general, the management functionality of these products is independent of whether a given E-application runs on an intranet, extranet, or the Internet itself.

Some users, however, run these products for more traditional client-server applications first, and their usage is then expanded to cover Web sites and E-business applications over time.

Dick Vandenberg, director of IT at First Tennessee Bank, uses managed network and application services from Response Networks. These tools keep the provider honest in meeting their service-level commitments and also keeping stakeholders informed of application availability and performance, he says.

Factoring these requirements together with the assumption that excellent customer service will be one of the "must-have" core competencies, it seems clear that the economic future of the provider will become increasingly dependent on close service partnerships with business customers. Future management software technology will need to support these new models as well.