Organizations are seriously hindered in managing their IT Infrastructure for optimal CAPEX and OPEX by their inability to answer the most basic questions about IT infrastructure resource usage. This inability to identify and monitor resource usage leads to a number of problems.

System downtime increases due to unanticipated resource constraints. Even before that application performance may suffer as the applications begin to run short of system resources. Administrative overhead increases as staff scramble find, deploy, and reallocate resources. Meanwhile the organization’s work is being disrupted.

Capacity management addresses the entire end to-end IT infrastructure of servers, switches, various appliances, network bandwidth, and applications. Effective capacity management must keep pace with the growth of all the elements of the IT infrastructure. It also must take into account business and market factors that can impact infrastructure performance and availability

What are tools available for successful capacity management.

What are some of the most critical implementations in running smooth IT infrastructure operations? Datacenter TCO, security management, IT governance, IT service management, server utilization and consolidation, custom applications, help desk, storage consolidation and IT outsourcing?

Server utilization, power consumption, and application uptime appear on many IT dashboards. While these are certainly important, what really matters is how the IT infrastructure supports the business goals. Business owners care about:

• Availability - can my users access the applications they need?
• Performance - does the application deliver an acceptable response time?
• Data accuracy - does the application maintain data integrity?

Again, tracking these business-focused metrics is harder than focusing on ones that are easy to gather. But, the right management software and some automated processes make it straight forward to create meaningful IT dashboards. Will NetEnrich be able to measure what matters to you?

I just downloaded a copy of the threat modeling guide for IT infrastructure, released by Microsoft on June 2009. Not sure if you’ve heard of this, but it is kind of a guideline which helps enterprises assess their security/compliance needs with a 5 step process –vision, model, validate, identify threats and mitigate risks. This apparently helps to prioritize investments in IT security and will need a proactive approach to assist you in your efforts to protect your organization’s assets and sensitive information. This guide provides an easy-to-understand method that enables you to develop threat models for your IT environment and prioritize your investments in IT infrastructure security.

Why should any kind of modeling be necessary?

• For viability and reputation
• To be able to conduct day to day business operations smoothly
• If an attack exposed confidential information, it could be perceived as a one that failed to do what was necessary to protect itself
• Failure to protect customer information could lead to legal obligations

Apparently, the threat modeling guide can be used to do just that. It allows you to determine what threats exist that could affect your organization’s IT infrastructure, helps you identify threat mitigations to protect resources and sensitive information, and helps you prioritize the identified threats so that you can manage your security efforts in a proactive manner.

IT infrastructure threat modeling should be incorporated into an organization’s IT mindset as a matter of policy, much like any other part of the validation, implementation, and installation process. Threat modeling in the name of secure infrastructure should be performed throughout the technology implementation process, much like any other component that is measured for performance, usability, and availability.

Start the IT infrastructure threat modeling process from the onset of any new technology project, because doing so might reveal weaknesses in your architecture or implementation and design planning that could require significant changes to the project. Design changes early in the implementation process are significantly less expensive than a complete reimplementation after a failed attempt that wasn’t well planned, or if an insufficiently secured system achieves production status.

In my next post, I will talk about how NetEnrich can help.

According to Stan Oien, security specialist at Network World, VPN technologies are ubiquitous enough to be utilized by the general rank and file. For SMBs however which is the best VPN to implement? SMBs with limited budgets, who don’t share sensitive data could opt for a standard VPN such as SSL because of cost and this technology is virtually free. These standard VPNs are also highly compatible with most web enabled applications and networks. Further they are simple to install and leverage firewall ports already opened to secure internet traffic enabling users to connect to a network securely via a web browser.

The next big thing is encryption. According to a recent study by the Ponemon institute, there has been an 8% increase in the average total cost of encryption key breaches year over year. If an SMB loses an encryption key or the key becomes corrupted, the SMB may lose access to all of the systems and data housed on the network. The worst case scenario is that the system becomes completely unusable unless it is re-formatted and re-installed. IDC reports that about 2.4 million companies in the US have some sort of branch office and as remote access continues to grow, so will the demand for SSL- especially for SMBs.

IPSec was probably one of the first VPNs that came in the scene in the late 1990s and established itself as a standard to provide secure network-layer connectivity over unsecure IP networks especially the internet. Although it is less expensive, it is a complex architecture. The more sites that connect to each other, the more secure links or tunnels need to be defined and maintained. If IPSec is used for remote access, it requires software on every remote machine that must be installed and maintained unlike the SSL.

Whether it is IPSec or SSL, NetEnrich Secure NOCs offer a highly centralized solution to securely manage a customer’s network. Virtual Private Management Gateway, our security appliance ensures a secure data transfer between the customer’s IT team and the NOC with robust encryptions using both IPSec and SSL which makes any kind of decryptions a complete impossibility.

Also, the traditional VPN or Citrix farms for remote access as utilized have met with limited acceptance in the market due the following problems.

1) The access control is not granular. For example, the time duration and level of access cannot be restricted. As a result, there are security concerns.

2) The remote access cannot be audited in a detailed fashion, which is a compliance violation.

NetEnrich VPMG solves these problems with a unique set of secure remote access control technologies that enforce process compliance at a very granular and highly auditable level.

Click here to download our whitepaper on VPMG.

A recent study by the IEC, infrastructure executive council states that enterprises are changing the way they manage their IT infrastructure. Some of the factors contributing to this change are: Shrinking infrastructure footprints, ubiquitous demands for more effective/comprehensive collaboration; service expectations rapidly redefining as distances increase, from managing availability to ensuring speed and stability of system response; new environments revealing weaknesses in the fit between applications and infrastructure; test environments becoming a less and less reliable predictor of the production environment.

IEC also talks about ‘infrastructure anywhere’ which means overcoming the challenges posed by long distances and aggressive shared services consolidation. Infrastructure anywhere aims to deliver service anywhere. Business gets done while still shrinking infrastructure’s physical footprint and dispersing infrastructure staff to locations possessing advantages in cost or expertise. IEC sees leaders of this movement with priorities which diverge in four specific areas namely service provisioning, performance across distances, collaboration platforms, timely technology development.

NetEnrich understands the service provisioning needs of its customers as the drivers of service and tailors/customizes service needs to deliver the right value and level of service.

For optimum performance across distances, network could be a limiting factor and it needs to be expanded to keep pace with business as operations expand. Globally unified secured NOCs following the sun are intrinsic to NetEnrich service delivery. NOCs are staffed with certified engineers to assist customers 24/7. We operate on a 100% uptime basis with secure network connections at all levels.

Timely technology deployment means mapping the technology maturity to business needs to enable more a more aggressive approach towards disruptive technologies without raising the risk. Our Virtual Private Management Gateway, enables customers to meet their complex needs and assists in augmenting their technology stack.