Organizations are concerned that 2009 and beyond will mean slow growth, decreased budgets, and challenges justifying investments in back end operations such as improvements made to IT infrastructures. As dollars allocated to IT departments become scarcer, enterprises must rethink their strategies and approaches surrounding the process of where these precious funds will be spent. Network Rightsizing is the answer many organizations are seeking.

 

Network Rightsizing is a simple concept; evaluating current IT infrastructure with the goal of reducing costs while improving efficiency and effectiveness. Network Rightsizing takes a snapshot of a current organization's environment and then looks for ways to optimize performance while trimming down costs.

 

Make Your Environment the Right Size for Your Needs

Network Rightsizing focuses on the state of the existing environment, rather than planned technology refreshes or net new product deployments. Taking the time to review a current environment offers some of the biggest promise of eliminating waste and cost while providing an opportunity to boost performance. Key areas to be reviewed for potential improvements include:

 

• Maintenance and Support Fees
• Infrastructure Waste/Unused Technology
• Antiquated Technology
• Wired vs. Wireless
• Staffing Resources
• Server Consolidation
• Bandwidth Utilization
• Performance Issues
• Power Consumption/Green Technology
• Vendor Consolidation

 

Steps for Rightsizing Your Network

Network Rightsizing begins with an assessment to aid enterprises in evaluating their network posture. This begins with an inventory of systems and processes and interviews with key stakeholders. In order to obtain global network visibility multiple assessment tools are leveraged to actively collect all relevant data via Network, Host, Leak and Device Fingerprint Discovery. Network, security managers and executives can accurately visualize what's on the network, drilling down to analyze potential areas of risk and identify appropriate potential actions. Based on these results a technology efficiency deliverable is created to outline cost savings recommendations across the entire network.

 

Accuvant's Approach

The benefits of Network Rightsizing lies in the fact that it can deliver strategic value while enabling IT teams to cut unnecessary costs out of their operations. With Network Rightsizing, IT departments can research technology systems so that they can serve distributed users and bandwidth without massive local investments or very expensive network connectivity. For many Accuvant customers, the payback period is a matter of months due to substantial cost savings.

 

Accuvant's teams of consulting experts are committed to helping clients deliver cost savings without having to re-design an entire network. Our professionals have years of experience designing and implementing a broad range of solutions. The unique perspective they've gained from working in a variety of client environments can provide powerful insight into how to improve your own.