Configuration Analysis: The New Niche

Sometimes all you have to do is ask. So that’s what Frost & Sullivan did on behalf of Telcordia Technologies Inc., which wanted to know what large IP network administrators thought of their network change and configuration management capabilities. The answer came back: not much.

The Frost & Sullivan survey found that more than 60 percent of Fortune 500 enterprises were not satisfied with the ability of the existing network change and configuration management (NCCM) products they had for managing their IP-based networks. Basically, they think their systems ought to do more.

Debbie Wong, consultant with the Business and Financial Services Group in North America at Frost & Sullivan, said the research showed network and security administrators are struggling with existing solutions to adequately maintain their networks, which are growing increasingly more complicated in the face of increased users, devices and security threats.

“To date, the crowded NCCM market, which our research shows is dominated by a handful of key players, has not adequately addressed the needs and concerns of IT managers during a time when superior usability and functionality has never been more crucial,” Wong said.

Current NCCM products are great for performing upgrades, doing backups and providing roll-back capabilities to previous software loads, according to a Telcordia whitepaper, but they don’t have the capability to detect errors in a configuration.

Wong added that the void has led to the creation of a new category of products: network configuration analysis. These products will address the security, compliance and assurance issues left wanting by today’s NCCM products.

In the survey, the average score given by network managers of their current NCCM product was the equivalent of a D+ (68 percent.) Mostly, the products are difficult to use, while one of the goals of network providers is to reduce the skill-level required to operate their networks.

Eighty-four percent of survey respondents don’t bother to use secondary or complementary NCCM products that might fill some of the gaps in capability. Instead, they worry about things that they need not worry about, such as their readiness for IPv6 support. Readiness for IPv6 averaged as the top concern among survey respondents.

“In all my experience, I have yet to find in the U.S. an enterprise running IPv6. And I have yet to come across anyone who says they need it today. There is nothing flipping the switch to say, you have to have this now,” said Rajesh Talpade, chief scientist in Telcordia’s advanced technology group.

But they are right to worry about configuration performance, Talpade said, since IP networks are composed of many types of equipment from many different vendors and each piece of equipment has to be provided with configuration scripts.