Take the isaac Challenge!

We would like to invite you to join Enterasys at Interop Booth #927 to take the issac Challenge!

Last year we introduced Enterasys isaac, a patent-pending, first-of-its-kind technology that gives IT the ability to manage network devices via Twitter, SalesForce.com Chatter, and Facebook. The technology enables customers to use familiar social media interfaces to manage their networks.

To participate in the challenge, stop by Enterasys’ booth, pick a port to plug your laptop into, then follow @isaacinterop on Twitter. You will interact with isaac, finding the malicious network user, quarantining the user, and restoring service to the network. Once you have completed the challenge, tweet #isaacInterop and be entered in a drawing to win a Kindle Fire.

Please check out the other demos while you are there, including Enterasys’ new Mobile IAM virtual appliance – designed to manage and protect today’s BYOD environments.

We are excited to see everyone at the show!

Best Practices for BYOD Done Right

With over 40% of employees utilizing their own devices at the workplace this year alone, it is no wonder that the single largest issue facing the enterprise today has become how to deploy and manage the chaotic world of BYOD.  A BYOD solution should deliver a uniquely comprehensive approach to handle the entire process of automating onboarding, profiling, securing, managing and troubleshooting inherent to a BYOD deployment.  Here are some BYOD best practices to consider to help you get BYOD right the first time.

Device Management that goes Beyond the Device: The very first step in any BYOD approach is to understand what devices, and more importantly which users, are requesting access to the network.  On-boarding, authentication, profiling and usage policies should be based on device and user, location, point of access and authentication type.

Comprehensive, Policy-based Security:  With different users doing very diverse tasks on a variety of devices in a BYOD environment, the ability to implement user-based Policy becomes an essential component of a BYOD deployment. A solution that offers flexible and configurable policy management and implements the policy at the edge of the network, provides enhanced security, control and performance for BYOD.

Integration with Leading MDM and VDI Vendors:  Because it is impossible to assure that all personal devices implement the same application-level security as a trusted corporate laptop, it is essential that a BYOD solution implement strong network-level security.  In addition, a solution that provides APIs to leading MDM and VDI vendors allows IT to “lock down” devices at the client level for comprehensive device security.

Don’t forget about the User Experience:  The proper deployment and configuration of the wireless network is essential to delivering a high user experience in a BYOD environment. A BYOD solution should optimize distribution of the processing load between Access Points (APs) and wireless controllers to deliver exceptional performance while remaining easy to manage. 

Deep Visibility for Troubleshooting and Cost Control: In a BYOD environment, the trouble spots from end user device to network core increase four-fold, therefore the ability to quickly identify the source of the trouble spot and isolate the problem becomes a critical requirement to reduce both the number of trouble tickets as well as the time required by IT to diagnose and remedy the problem. A BYOD solution that can automatically segment trusted employee usage, enterprise-critical business processes and guest access activity will guarantee the appropriate allocation of network resources and application capacity to insure predictable user experience.

Flexible and Scalable to Handle the Dynamic Nature of BYOD:  There will always be new devices, new applications, and new users, so a BYOD implementation must be able to handle the unknown as easily as it handles the existing installed base of devices and users.   By implementing the correct set of BYOD on-boarding profiles during the original installation, user and device policies, and capacity-planned WLAN deployments, you will insure a future-proofed network.

Enterasys offers a secure and comprehensive BYOD solution for all classes of users, trusted and guest, on any consumer device, delivering the highest user experience, with the right set of connections and resources for that user - ensuring you get BYOD right the first time.  Please visit www.onefabric.net/byod for more information.

University of KwaZulu-Natal Goes Mobile

Wireless has become a must have for higher education institutions not only in North America, but around the world. In this video case study you can hear how the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in South Africa implemented the latest 802.11n WiFi equipment in one of the largest WiFi installations on the continent of Africa.

Do You Know Your Net Promoter Score?

Net Promoter Score, or NPS, is gaining traction as a way for companies to identify customer loyalty by simply asking one question:

Would you recommend a company to a friend and/or colleague?

Using only one question in a survey may seem like a novel approach, especially since most companies typically use far more than one question in their surveys. However, I think asking this one question really brings focus to the age old way people typically use in deciding who they do business with - using word of mouth recommendations from people they know and trust. Asking only one simple question not only makes it easier and more likely for customers to respond to the survey, it gets right to the point of determining whether a person thinks enough of a company to recommend it.

While the NPS score is certainly not the only way to measure customer loyalty, it certainly provides a glimpse into how customers view a company. Most of the companies rated with a high NPS have these traits in common:

● Follow a customer-centric philosophy and go out of their way to provide value to their customers with high quality solutions and services.

● Utilize in-house resources in their customer support functions, typically staffed by long-tenured product experts.

● Make these experts available to their customers when they call for assistance.

It seems there are many benefits of a high-NPS rating – both for the highly rated companies and for their customers. Here are a few of them:

● Customers feel their needs are either met or exceeded, which leads to an increase in satisfaction and customer loyalty.

● Companies develop a repeat customer base that not only continues to buy from them, but also recommends them to their co-workers and colleagues.

● Customers gain quick and consistent access to product experts. No one wants to call into a support desk and quickly realize they know more about the product then the person who answers the phone.

I welcome your thoughts on this topic and I am curious to ask if you know your NPS score and if you know the NPS score of those companies that you do business with?

Impact of the new iPad on BYOD trends

Apple has introduced the new iPad, the third generation of its category-defining mobile device. Key features of the iPad include the new Retina display, Apple's new A5X chip with quad-core graphics and a 5-megapixel iSight camera with advanced optics for capturing amazing photos and 1080p HD video. This all adds up to a significant performance advantage over previous iPads and competitive tablet devices.

The surprise for market watchers is that the new device does not carry any of the expected labels such as 'iPad3', iPadHD or iPad2S labels. It's simply 'the new iPad.'

Branding issues aside, many current iPad owners are expected to upgrade to the new offering, and in addition to consumer demand, growth in iPad sales is also forecast to come from enterprise sales and the burgeoning education market.

Last year (2011), Apple claimed around 62% of the tablet market. Its share should breach the 70% mark in 2012. Consensus among research organisations seems to support sales of 70 million iPads in 2012 - a significant 71% year-on-year rise. Steve Jobs' influence can clearly be seen in Apple's success, so much so that despite the continuing proliferation of Android tablets, the market can expect a sizable drop in Android sales and market share, from around 35% in 2011 to 26% in 2012, according to research group IMS.

Apple's iPad success is also expected to drive down PC sales, which have been on the wane for the last 12 months. At the iPad's launch, Apple CEO Tim Cook showed the audience a graphic indicating that Apple shipped more iPads in the fourth quarter of 2011 than any single manufacturer sold personal computers.

This trend is opening the doors to a significant BYOD (bring your own device) market. Research in the US reveals that almost 40% of corporate employees use mobile devices to access their company's networks, regardless of whether their organisations have official BYOD policies or not.

There is little doubt that demands for increased mobility by an increasingly knowledgeable and 'IT-savvy' workforce will shape the IT priorities, strategies and implementations of most organisations going forward.

The results of this trend are already evident. Companies are grappling with issues related to managing the increased complexity of their networks, at the same time struggling to deliver a secure, high quality user experience.

Enterprises need to address these issues with BYOD. In particular, there is the need for an architecture focused on unifying the access edge to simplify the burden placed on IT departments and deliver consistent application services across wired and wireless infrastructures.

In other words, improve the simplicity and ease of use to ensure a predictable mobile user experience, encouraging the secure and optimised use of BYOD devices.

Importantly, the architecture needs to provide a comprehensive edge solution without the high costs typically associated with multiple vendor solutions or the complexity that would require a large IT staff to deploy. With an integrated approach, enterprises will be able to benefit with a fully integrated solution that delivers 30% lower capex and 70% lower opex costs compared to competitive solutions.

Organisations can thus be confident that their BYOD solution will secure the iPad - and other tablet use - on any network now and into the future.

Play Buzzword Bingo at RSA

This week I had the opportunity to attend the RSA 2012 conference in San Francisco. My conference experience started with supporting the Trusted Computing Group breakout session on Monday. I worked a table providing demonstrations of integrated physical and network security with two of our technology partners, Hirsch and Infoblox.

The four hour session was well attended, standing room only for much of the day. There was tremendous interest among the attendees in the evolution of the various TCG standards and attendees had many questions during the demonstrations.

The general atmosphere was that there was momentum in vendor implementation of the standards and best practices from early adopters were very useful to attendees evaluating the solutions these standards enable.

I spent Tuesday in meetings and walking the show floor, evaluating the products and solutions being marketed this year. I noticed a lot of abuse of specific terms by many vendors, even this author has been known to abuse a few of these. :-)

To make a game of it, I started jotting down terms that really are over-used and noted how often I saw them. I’ve compiled this table for your entertainment if you happen to be attending the conference. I’m interested in how quickly you can call “Bingo” with this card. Please comment on this post with how much time or how many aisles you walked to get Bingo.

The general themes of this year’s show demonstrate vendor’s attempting to align themselves with two market forces – virtualization, aka cloud, and BYOD, aka bring your own device. The trouble I experienced is many vendors are adding these terms to their products without fully addressing the requirements many customers I’ve consulted with have. By badging on extra terms such as “comprehensive”, “persistent”, or “complete” it would somehow endow their products with magical status. There are many good solutions available, but sorting through the hype is quite the challenge.

I hope you enjoy this game I’ve created and more importantly the show.

Cheers

What I learned at the VMware Partner Exchange Conference

The 2012 VMware Partner Exchange conference was a fantastic event. As I blogged earlier, the event was well attended and the speakers for the event were engaging and provided a clear vision of where VMware believes the market is headed and how to execute on that.

A key takeaway I had was the consistency in communication from the keynote to the last session I attended. VMware is very focused on being the leader in the transformation its technology is bringing to the market.

In the last blog I briefly touched upon one of the largest influences to impact IT - the millennial worker. Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware credits the millennials as demanding a new consumption model of IT. To be successful, IT needs to change to accommodate the user experience that the millenials are demanding, a post-PC era that is more about the application and less about the device.

This means an evolution will occur beyond just virtualization of servers in the data center. 2012 and beyond will see a larger focus on virtual desktops and even application virtualization. Virtual desktops are gaining traction and attention. Brian Madden's recent blog post asked the question of "locked desktop vs unlocked desktop" and should IT be prepared to offer both or just one to end users.

In my experience, I believe we will see an evolution that will include both virtualized applications and virtualized desktops. Who implements which will vary based on the types of data being generated, where that data will be stored, and which compliance mandates an organization must deal with when evaluating that data.

It won't be a single consumption platform, but to be successful a single management platform to unify governance and user entitlements. Self-service provisioning and recording will be critical to ensure that compliance managers survive audits.

We must be prepared to take the step of decoupling applications from the physical infrastructure to migrate and evolve. One memorable quote from the conference sums it up quite nicely, the key attributes of success will be reliability, nimbleness, and openness.

What are your goals for the millennial worker and how are you evaluating virtualization technologies for your environment?

I'm interested in your responses.