The Digital Edge

One Company's Journey Out of Darkness, Part V: Seeing the Light Also on Thwack!

As organizations roll out network management software and extend that software to a number teams they begin to gain additional insights that weren't visible before. These additional insights enable the business to make better decisions, recognize more challenges and/or inefficiencies, etc.

For this customer one of the areas in which we were able to vastly improve visibility had to do with the facilities team. This manufacturing site has its own power station and water plant among other things to ensure that manufacturing isn't ever disrupted. In working on other projects with the team, it became obvious that the plant facilities team was in the dark about network maintenance issues, etc. This team would mobilize into "outage mode" whenever the network was undergoing maintenance. After spending time with this team and understanding why they had to react the way that the do, we were able to extend a specific set of tools to them that would make them aware of any outages, give them insight into when/why certain devices were offline, and provide visibility into when the network would come back online. This increased awareness of their needs, combined with additional visibility from network tools has reduced the average cost of an outage significantly as well as solved some communication challenges between various teams. We were also able to give them a dashboard that would help discern between network and application level issues.

This is a brief of example as to how we can all start to build the case for network management tools and do so in a business relevant way. Justifying these tools has to be about the business rather than simply viewing red/yellow/green or how hard a specific server is working. A diverse team can help explain the total business impact better than any single team could. For admins looking to get these tools look for some of these business impacting advantages:

We always seem to look at this as network downtime, however as in the example above there are other downtime issues to be aware of and all of these can impact the business. Expanding the scope of network related issues can increase the perceived value of any networking tool. Faster time to resolution through the added visibility is a key contributor to reduced downtime. Tools that allow you to be proactive also have a very positive effect on downtime.

This seems rather self explanatory, however enabling helpdesk to be more self-sufficient through these tools can reduce the percentage of escalated tickets. These tickets typically carry a hefty price and also impact the escalations team to work on other issues.

Many organization talk about SLAs and expect them from their carriers, etc. but how many are offering this to their own company? I'd argue very few do this and it is something that would benefit the organization as a whole. An organization that sees IT as an asset will typically be willing to invest more in that group. As network admins, we need to make sure we are providing value to the company. Predictable response and resolution times are a good start.

Unplanned outages are a massive drain on resources from help desk to admins to executives, everyone is on edge. These also often carry the financial impacts of overtime, consulting fees, etc. in addition to some of the intangibles like work/life balance, etc.

IT organizations who have followed this segregated path of each team purchasing the tools they need tend to have some areas that have sufficient monitoring as well as areas in which there no visibility exists. Predictably these gaps in visibility tend to reside between areas of responsibility or the "gray space" within an organization. Common examples of gray space could be the interaction between applications, clients and the transport between the two, the network and mobile devices, guest devices/users and their traffic patterns, help desk and network issues.

In a collaborative environment, the team is able to review the entirety of the tool set and discuss where gaps may exist. It is important that the right players have a seat at the table for these discussions - this will range from traditional network, application, security, and help desk teams to some of the newer teams like the mobile device teams. Spend some time exploring pain points within the existing work flows as these may stem from lack of knowledge that could be supplemented by one of the tools. There may be tools that aren't shared and that is quite alright, taking a phased approach to implementing tool sets on a wider basis will help ensure that these groups are getting tools that impact their ability to do their job.

With my customer we found the following to work:

Consolidate network and wireless management tools to create "single pane of glass"

Troubleshooting tools helped the help desk resolve issues faster and provided them with access to info that could be more difficult to walk end users through providing.

Increase awareness of Netman and ensure contractors know how to use it

Expand access to IPAM solution to include help desk and contractors as it helps with network address planning and troubleshooting

Increase awareness of available scripts and create internal portal so that others know where to find them and how to use them

Integrate NAC via its APIs so that it shared data with Infoblox and Palo Alto improving network visibility for guests and improving Infoblox reporting

Integrate NAC with log aggregation tool so that it has more device data

Expand log aggregation tool access to all senior IT staff

Improve ticketing system notification to include facilities for outage window

Create documentation repository on Box.com so that all IT members can reach it

Visibility into the Nexus data center infrastructures is lacking

Legacy cloud managed switches floating around that need to be dealt with. These have a great management platform in their own right, but they aren't integrated properly

Mobile device visibility and management at this point

Server visibility tools have not been shared with anyone outside of server team at this point as we are evaluating

Application performance management

The development of organizational tools should be an iterative process and each step should bring the company closer to its goals. The total value of a well integrated management system is greater than the sum of its parts as it can eliminate some of the holes in the processes. While many positive changes have been made, there are still many more to work through. This company has opted for a pace that enables them to make slow steady process on these tools while having to maintain day to day operations and plan for many future tools. Brand new tools will likely be integrated by VARs/System Integrators to ensure full deployment while minimizing impact on the IT staff.

One Company's Journey Out of Darkness, Part V: Seeing the Light Also on Thwack!

Lean IT teams often do whatever they can to get by and my customer was no exception. One of the biggest challenges they had in approaching their network management strategy was to understand what they currently had. We had to work through the "day in the life" of a number of individuals to identify the core tools used, but were constantly surprised by new tools that would appear or were used so infrequently that the team would forget about them until a specific use case arose.

The team found open source tools to be of tremendous use, especially Netman and MRTG. These provided much needed visibility and the price was right given the lack of investment in monitoring tools at the time of deployment. The relatively complex nature of deployment of these tools did limit adoption and we found that often these tools lagged behind from a configuration standpoint. New equipment would be deployed without necessarily being integrated into the tool, likewise old equipment when replaced was not always removed from the tools. Lack of policy and discipline in a busy IT shop had effectively limited the effectiveness of these tools. This was further compounded by only a small subset of the team having access. Additionally, as an outside resource, I had no idea what "normal" was when looking at the tool (e.g. is that router down or has it been removed?).

These tools are something most are familiar with products like Cisco's Prime Infrastructure, Aruba's Airwave, VMWare's vSphere Operations Management (VSOM), etc. Each of these tools had been deployed widely and would tend to be used by those who's job responsibility primarily covered the area managed by the tool, however others that could benefit from this tool very rarely used it if at all. These tools tend to be fairly expensive and offer many features that are typically not leveraged very well. Additionally, most of the tools have robust AAA capabilities that would enable them to be shared with help desk teams, etc. but these features had been overlooked by the team, despite having been properly configured for their own purposes.

Some investment had been made in third party tools, typically around a specific need. A good example of this would be the Kiwi Cat Tools for ease of device backups. While this functionality existed in other tools, the company wanted a single location for all device configuration files. The customer found that numerous tools existed, but it took the entire team to enumerate them and in a couple cases multiple instances of the same tool had been purchased for usage by different teams.

Certain members of the IT team who were comfortable with writing and using scripts would develop their own toolsets, however these would often not be shared with the rest of the IT team until some specific project jogged the author's memory who would then offer up some script that had been written. In all cases these were very specific and had never been fully socialized, the team decided to develop a website internally to reference these tools and their use cases.

Working with each of the administrators and their areas of responsibility it was easy to understand how they've gotten to this point where substantial investment had been made in a myriad of tools without putting a strategy in place. Each of the teams had acquired or deployed tools to make their lives easier and tended to go with whatever was vendor aligned or free. Taking a step back together from it all and looking at the system in its entirety provided a much different perspective - is this really how we'd design our management infrastructure if we built it from the ground up? Clearly not, so what next? Looking at the tools current deployed, it was obvious that substantial duplicate functionality existed as well as a number of gaps, especially as it pertained to any one specific team's visibility.

Enumerating the existing tools, processes and use cases highlighted how much organizations actually do spend on tools while complaining that they don't have the visibility needed. Open lines of communication between teams, the development of an official or virtual "tools team", and careful consideration of products purchased are key to the success of running the IT team properly. Highly custom scripts and those who can write them can be of great value to an organization, however this value is wasted if the team at large isn't aware of these scripts and how to best utilize them.

Image from Meridian Mobile App Platform Datasheet

Campaigns are the traditional push messaging of the beaconing world and allow for interaction with end users. Campaigns can be configured to run once, on a set schedule, or for a particular zone. Again Aruba does a brilliant job in making this easy to implement and understand. These push messages can make your visitors aware of a guest network, offer incentives, make them aware of current promotions, etc.

Enabling an infrastructure with serious location capabilities isn't cheap at roughly $1000 per access point (MSRP), so the use cases need to be substantial. HALO is a premium engagement and location offering that will not be adopted by the masses, however those who can leverage it effectively stand to offer tremendous value to their customers, patients, stakeholders, etc. Hospital environments to be the single most valuable environment for HALO, especially after RTLS tags are added to the mix. This environment is highly mobile and ripe for disruptive location technologies that can automate work flow and enable meaningful interactions and engagement. Hospitals today leverage multiple location systems that facilitate portions of work flow, however very infrequently are they integrated together well enough to gain additional actionable insights. There are a number of point products addressing nurse rounding, locating wheelchairs and beds, theft prevention (babies and assets), etc. Some of the "bleeding edge" use cases include playing a loved one's voice over IP speakers to coax an elderly patient back into bed or having a display cheer up a child who is battling cancer when they near the screen. In theory, this HALO module is enabling a world in which we know where every associated wireless device is down to a matter of feet, without necessitating RTLS tags. This opens the data floodgates for actionable intelligence at unprecedented levels.

One of the major limitations to the Low-Energy Bluetooth solutions is that they are almost exactly backwards from RTLS solutions in that mobile assets are required to interact with fixed (usually) assets. This typically means an app on a Smartphone (carried by a mobile user) is the typical mode of engagement and this is an active process. A few use cases of cropped up recently in which a BLE-beacon is strapped to a patient to monitor them as they move through an environment. To accomplish this the interaction points along the way require a tablet mounted to the wall to pick up on the patient's tag and initiate the engagement work flow. This reverse BLE-solution is somewhat innovative and solves a specific problem, however we need a world in which mobile assets are interacting with other assets on demand and relative proximity to each other should be irrelevant as long as I have access to the back end data. I believe that HALO is positioned to do exactly this as it evolves and in doing so will allow the use of Wi-Fi based geofencing capabilities indoor, reducing or possibly even eliminating the need for traditional fixed beacons. At the very least this will provide us new deployment options and can be combined with a BLE infrastructure to offer infinite interaction capabilities.

The items above all point towards enabling the Internet of Things (IoT) and allowing real time interactions between devices to the betterment of the healthcare environment. An example of this could be the lifecycle of an infusion pump. These devices follow a predictable cycle in which they move from being clean through being attached to a patient and ultimately wind up having to be cleaned again before being released back to the care areas. In this scenario, alarms could be triggered by a device that has not been put in a maintenance mode and is following an unexpected path, possibly avoiding a dirty pump being brought to a patient, etc.

Thursday October 1st marks day two of Wireless Field Day. Follow us live at http://techfieldday.com/event/wfd8/ and if you want to join in on the conversation, reach out to me or any of the other delegates as we can ask questions on your behalf. Follow us on twitter at #WFD8. I will be blogging about the event throughout the next two days, so stay tuned for additional information. Video recordings will be made available shortly after Wireless Field Day comes to a conclusion.

Today marks the beginning of Wireless Field Day 8! Follow us live at http://techfieldday.com/event/wfd8/ and if you want to join in on the conversation, reach out to me or any of the other delegates as we can ask questions on your behalf. Follow us on twitter at #WFD8. I will be blogging about the event throughout the next two days, so stay tuned for additional information. Video recordings will be made available shortly after Wireless Field Day comes to a conclusion.

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I've been watching the content published on Wireless Field Day ever since I had first heard about it late in 2011. The presenters have to be on point given their demanding immediate audience and the results are fantastic. The team is interested in real world performance rather than marketing spin. Going under the hood and digging into the inner workings of the technologies in a public setting is such a great way to build confidence in a product and it enables me to better set expectations for my customers when I am out educating them on the market. I recently went to the site to check out the upcoming event and found that there was interest in finding new delegates for Wireless Field Day, so I reached out and am so glad that I did. After a few discussions, I was officially offered a delegate spot for Wireless Field Day 8 and couldn't be more thrilled about it.

For me, this is where the work begins. I am honored to be part of this group, but also feel challenged to step up and contribute like some of others in our great community do. Thank you WFD, I am excited and humbled by the offer and look to make this the best WFD yet.

Tune in Oct 30-Sept 2 at the site below.

Event info: http://techfieldday.com/event/wfd8/

Designed to be cross-platform, Google's Eddystone supports the Nearby API and is available on GitHub under Apache 2.0 license.

Anyone interested in creating awareness of who they are, what they are doing, or empowering a device to do the same in a given location now has the ability to advertise to passersby. This has many implications from brand awareness to interacting with a specific device. Most importantly this can happen on the smallest of scales, increasing the chance for adoption and interaction since there is no dependency on a mobile app. Check out the Physical Web Cookbook for many newer ideas.

Google Eddystone supports multiple frame types enabling users to interact in a variety of ways. These frames are designated in the Service Data field associated with the Service UUID by using the high order four bits of the first octet. Github provides all this information in much more depth.

The Proximity Beacon API is a new interface enabling users to manage their beacons via the cloud and use a REST interface. This enables monitoring of the telemetry data previously mentioned as well as reconfiguration of the beacons.

Geolocation is defined as the process of physically locating or the actual location of an object on Earth. In defining contextually aware networks, it is no longer enough to know whether someone is on-net or off-net. Where they are "off network" is important as well and can offer additional insights and opportunities for engagement.

Geolocation primarily leverages a Smartphone's built in Global Positioning System (GPS) and uses the installed application and either Wi-Fi or cellular backhaul to report current location for users that have opted in to this offering. This enables the operator of a contextually aware application to engage with the customer outside the "four walls" of the organization. At this macro scale, location is typically measured in meters however results vary wildly depending on the type of location being deployed.

Assisted GPS uses a secondary system to increase the accuracy of the GPS satellite reporting. In the case of Smartphones the cellular network is responsible for assisting. This enables the phone to download information about the GPS satellites in order to quickly determine its position and provide updates at an interval frequent enough to be useful for engagement purposes. The newest smartphones are able to use both the US Department of Defense GPS system and the Russian GLONASS system to further increase accuracy. These solutions are limited in scope from an engagement perspective as they require clear visibility to the sky, so they tend to not function in large downtown areas. Recent testing has shown that A-GPS offers approximately an 8 meter accuracy range, which is typically accurate enough for any of the geolocation use cases. IT is important to note that accuracy in dense urban centers may still be challenged at times.

One of the most important aspects of constructing a contextually aware network is the concept of geofencing. A geofence is a virtual construct that overlays a logical "fence" on the world map and allows decisions to be made as a device crosses the geofence or is inside or outside that geofence. A virtually unlimited number of geofences can be constructed, but it is important to know when engaging with the customer is meaningful and wanted. Since the geofence is virtual, no equipment is required at any location defined by a geofence.

Let's assume for a moment that you are headed out on a gambling vacation to "The Vegas Hotel" on the south end of the Las Vegas strip and have installed their mobile concierge app. Upon landing at McCarran airport and taking your phone out of airplane mode, it is able to recognize its GPS coordinates via A-GPS and the concierge app wakes up. Once awake, the app prompts you to meet your hotel shuttle outside baggage claim #2. Once you meet your shuttle and arrive at the hotel, you could also cross a geofence. This hotel side geofence lets the hotel know that you have arrived on their property. A property geofence allows for analytics around when customers are on or off property, insights into the shuttle service travel times, etc.

Geoconquesting is the ability to leverage geolocation and fencing to pursue those who are patronizing a competitor's location. This information may be used for direct customer engagement via their installed application or indirectly by providing information that can tailor how future marketing is done to sway the customer's future decisions as to where they spend their money and/or time. Let's assume that the "Vegas Hotel" highlighted above is running a strategic marketing campaign to capture more business on the south end of the strip. Geofences could be established around competitors properties for analytics purposes to help an organization better understand how much time their customers are spending on property versus at a competing site. Typically this can then be used to entice users to come back to their establishment.

Geofencing is a very powerful component of context aware networking, however the engagements need to be used sparingly as there are many users who feel this type of engagement could be an invasion of privacy if they weren't expecting to receive messages. There are many use cases for the back end analytics enabled by geofencing from location enabled work flow automation for a mobile fleet to targeted interactions with customers to predicting whether or a patient might arrive for a doctors appointment or not and early adopters of this technology have a distinct competitive advantage versus those who do not have the same capabilities.

An Intro to the Contextually Aware Networking Blog Series (Published 12/28/2014)

Part I: Building a Contextually Aware Network: Beacons (Published 12/28/2014)

Part II: Building a Contextually Aware Network: Geolocation (Published 1/2/2015)