Switching best practices in a multi-vendor environment

As Canada continues to emerge from global recession, small- and mid-sized businesses remain faced with two, often contradictory requirements: meeting ever-increasing user demands amidst ever-tightening budget. For many IT teams looking at constrained budgets and reduced staff, the network hasbeen the heart of efforts to seek greater efficiency, and ultimately do more with less. This need for network efficiency has driven SMBs toward products better tailored for their needs: easier to install, configure and manage; and, requiring minimal customization. In addition, these forces faced by SMB IT departments raise the need for greater interoperability. Single-vendor networks rob businesses of their ability to leverage their purchasing power. And that power can be a significant advantage to budget-inhibited SMBs—research from IT analyst firm Gartner estimates that a strategy incorporating a second vendor into the network can reduce capital expenditures by at least 30 per cent. IT leaders must have the foresight to look beyond often obvious choices, and to do so with confidence. One vendor does not fit all, in fact, with network solutions increasingly becoming commoditized, SMBs must investigate turning away from proprietary solutions commanding huge margins to ones that interoperate seamlessly using open standards. Still, when building a multivendor environment, businesses are going to have multiple vendor support teams, so products that interoperate without demanding a great deal of support is crucial. Given the staff shortages often facing SMB IT departments, switchingsolutions that communicates with other equipment at both basic and advanced levelsis another significant “must have” towards reducing maintenance and increasingly manageability while minimizing the need for support calls.

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This paper looks at the four most important considerations and best practices, to building a switching environment that is cost effective, while ensuring maximum productivity. While other factors, especially around support are not to be ignored, in today’s economy IT leaders at SMBs would be remiss to overlook the key elements of interoperability, feature requirements, hardware intelligence and efficiency.

Switching Best Practices Seek out interoperability: There’s a myth that multi-vendor environments are unwieldy or difficult to manage. While it’s true that IT leaders at SMBs must closely analyse the trade-off between potential management cost and return on investment from a multi-vendor environment, the savings (on money and headaches) more than typically outweigh management costs. At the same time, it’s important not to buy into hype around proprietary features. All vendors have some degree of proprietary features. Some might well serve your business, but many could be overlooked when making purchasing decisions. The realm of proprietary features is typically where multi-vendor management challenges dwell. Instead, consider that switching equipment must meet certain basic standards, and support industry standard features, that promote interoperability and ease of management; a switch cannot be called Layer 2 or Layer 3 without supporting its baseline features and capabilities. As long as support for those shared features is there–and there’s a vendor commitment to interoperability–it can be achieved without tremendous effort. If your switching hardware supports industry standard features, management tools you integrate into the system will just work, plain and simple. No doubt some interoperability challenges may crop up when managing a multi-vendor environment, but, again, using equipment that meets and exceeds industry standards will ensure they are easily resolved.

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Avoid proprietary features: Almost as important as the cost savings experienced today from building a multi-vendor environment is futureproofing. A network that doesn’t support equipment from multiple vendorsruns a risk of generating unmanageable operating costs in the future. Proprietary features inevitably get used, whether they are intrinsically needed or not. In that way, an SMB can become locked into using equipment solely from one vendor for the lifetime of their network or face a daunting demolition-style overhaul. If your business becomes dependent on various proprietary features, ask yourself: What happens if budgets must be reduced in the future? Or if an upgrade cycle must be dropped for economic reasons? Where does that leave the business? How easy will it be to move away from the vendor’s proprietary technology if you must? Examine each feature closely–how necessary is it for to the business? It might be just the technology the business needs to become more agile and more competitive, in which case the value of being locked into that vendor makes perfect sense. If, however, it does not, an industry-standard network infrastructure supporting multiple vendors leaves you open for future innovations that will enhance the business. Look for intelligent equipment: IT managers at SMBs frequently must wear multiple hats. Rather than the traditional Jack-of-all-Trades, IT managers in smaller businesses must be a master of many if not all areas of the network. VARs and service providers support efforts, but SMB-based IT managers can quickly find themselves pulled in more directions than can be easily handled. The network should not be one more fire to deal with. If IT is to be leveraged to an organization’s best benefit, staff resources must be freed up to find ways to transform IT into a competitive advantage. One way to turn that challenge into an advantage is to use devices that have built-in intelligence. For example, D-Link switches are able to detect other devices on the network in order to manage traffic more effectively. This kind of embedded intelligence eliminates the need for an IT administrator to manually configure the switch, traffic or Quality of Service (QoS). The more intelligence is driven into the device, the more time freed up for IT managers and administrators to handle challenges outside of network infrastructure.

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As more employees bring their own devices and add them to the network, this intelligence becomes even more important. An estimated 8.5 million Canadians currently own a smartphone and approximately one-fifth (21 per cent) own one or more tablets, providing them the ability to execute enterprise applications and access data on the go. If an employee plugs a phone or IP camera into the network without running it past IT, an intelligent switch can selfcorrect or configure itself for the addition of the new. Investigate device efficiency: The capital cost of a switch and management costs aren’t the only considerations when looking at total cost of ownership. Increasingly, as the cost of energy continues to climb, energy efficiency becomes an important consideration when looking to reduce operating costs.

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Consider using switching hardware on your network that closely monitors activity and mirrors it with power use. If ports aren’t being used, a device should shut off power to them; a device running at half capacity should similarly see reduced power consumption. In many ways this comes back to the advantage of embedded intelligence in the device. Energy efficiency doesn’t just save money. In today’s marketplace, driving down energy use is a must-have goodwill message that can be communicated to customers, employees and partners. An efficient IT infrastructure is part of this overall message.

Conclusion Businesses, especially SMBs, don’t have time and money to waste. When building, designing and upgrading their network they must look at the entire network holistically. All factors should be considered: from reduction in capital expenditures (capex) by implementing a multi-vendor environment to operating efficiencies foundthough intelligent hardware to cost cuts associated with energy efficiency. At the same time, it is important to have a hardware that meets and exceeds industry standards for features and support and from a trusted network vendor. When selecting networking gear, a small-to-mid-sized business should look at costs from all angles—oftentimes the most expensive product will not come with the greatest amount of value for an SMB. Consider theneeds that must be met, and evaluate each feature and component against those needs.

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