Even with daily news about technological innovations, the companies IT infrastructure is increasingly being treated as a commodity.
This is due to the access level to equipment, which makes the strategic and competitive differential, in general, not in the technology acquired, but in the planning and these assets management. In the data communication area , more specifically in computer networks, a new practice has been highlighted by allowing the technology park optimization and by reducing or even eliminating acquisition costs.
This practice, called Network Tuning, refers to the term ‘tuning’ and reflects the specialized professionals work. It starts with Network Health Check, in order to diagnose the current state and, from specific tools and methods, draw an actions detailed plan to be taken to correct failures and boost their performance levels. Through Network Health Check (NHC) it is still possible to verify compliance with the manufacturer’s recommendations and good practices in the global protocols, always aligned with the business need, size and purpose.
As the name suggests, this diagnosis could be viewed as a medical checkup, in which the patient undergoes tests and exams, and after the result, recommendations are prescribed that ensure the patient health. In a second stage, the Network Tuning would have a board specializing image in high performance athletes, who, within the analyzed patient capacity, will recommend behavioral changes, indicate medications and special supplements, and raise the training level, seeking high performance, while ensuring health and well being.
For the IT area most anxious and curious, it is worth remembering when it was possible to increase the operation frequency of a processor by jumpers combinations means, doing the famous overclocking (yes, you were already a tunner when it turned its Pentium 120Mhz into 133Mhz!). Already, for the more lazy, the example can be given recalling the film success ‘Fast and Furious’, film that created a real fever about autotuning (concept applied to automobiles), that was nothing more than a young experts group who, by applying numerous techniques, study, experience and technology in a touring car, made it able to compete with models originally created for competitions.
It is in this sense that Network Tuning brings companies a differentiated approach to their resources use. It allows actions that can go through a simple rearrangement – when the recommendation is to move an equipment – to the most complex configurations, which can vary from firmwares updates, channel and frequency adjustments, as well as bandwidth occupancy, among others. Network Tuning is a modern and intelligent option already adopted by leading companies for offering an undisputed cost benefit, since it minimizes or cancels acquisitions and designs capacity, in addition to allowing scalability for any size companies.
In general, corporations are not familiar with network optimization, as IT culture addresses best practices with a focus on applications, such as: virtualization, hardware or software application balancing, and other products targeted to this niche. The fact is that they end up ignoring the main item in this chain, which is precisely the network, which allows all data transmission, optimized or not. This environment limited view becomes the institutional projects ‘big villain’, the new applications development, the environment management, and the incidents handling that, as a result, frustrates both internal and external customers by seeing a lower-than-expected result.
The Tuning role is, in addition to working with network acceleration and optimization, to intelligently manage existing resources. This practice can and should be explored by companies, since it is often easier to apply a tuning and agile solution to a performance problem than to add physical resources involving technical supply and logistics teams.
However, when searching for this service, those responsible for IT infrastructure must pay attention to the business partner selection criteria, which, in turn, must have the market certifying bodies main credentials and prove knowledge in the recommendations implementation, through success stories. Finally, the main reasons for this adoption are the immediate gains in productivity and the end-user satisfaction guarantee, which sees technology as a great ally and no longer as a problem.
* Guilherme Garibotti is Account Delivery Manger at Nap IT, leading the way in service new lines, infrastructure and business consulting.
