Buying Enterprise Network Services 2 - Understanding the Work at Hand

This blog is a continuation of my previous post Some Considerations for Buying Network Services. In this entry I am going to provide some thought material to help in understanding the characteristics of the different kinds of work an organization needs accomplished and some associated ideas on how to contract for the work.

Before we get started, one of the problems that I observe is that many organizations seem to deal with "absolutes".  They define a type of activity, for example "Networking", and then decide how to contract for the effort, for example "outsourcing".  Depending on the culture of the organization, this may lead to discussions that contain statements like "well, if  we outsource everything then we won't be able to tell the contractor anything and we get whatever they want to provide the service".  On the other extreme are statements like, "if we continue to use level-of-effort contracts with the government telling people what to do we won't get anywhere as no-one is actually responsible for making things better and we have no idea what all these people are actually doing".

Clearly, the extremes don't work.  So, what actually makes sense?  It can be pretty complicated, but one way to start is to understand what actually needs to get done.  From my experience there are three basic types of work:

1. Services Outsourcing.  All IT organizations do this to an extent, but the question is really the need to understand the right level of what is a Service for an organization.  For networking, the lowest level is buying point-to-point telecommunication capacity and the highest level may be complex service types and levels delivered to the organization's locations with special services related to access to the Internet and Cloud services.  Importantly, Outsourcing contracts need to include specifications for the services to be delivered as well as the contract's interaction with an organization's other related activities.  Examples include, Enterprise IT Operations and Cyber Operations centers.
2. Outcome-based Tasking.  This is the type of work that is designed to develop a capability based on a specification.  An example of this could be installation of a new local area network in a building to a set of performance and reliability specifications.
3. Level of Effort Tasking.  This is the type of activity that maximizes flexibility.  An example is the rapid implementation of a new capability where there is very limited time,  only general requirements, and near real-time changes may be necessary to meet the actual mission need.

Some of the main characteristics of these different types of work of work are:

• Specificity of the work.  This means that the definition of the services or work to be accomplished is much greater for Commodity Services Outsourcing than it is for Level of Effort activity.
• Duration of the work.  Services Outsourcing are generally activities that span five to 10 years.  A Level of Effort activity might only last weeks.
• Changes to the work.  Changes to Services Outsourcing generally requires the definition of a new service, negotiations with the contractor, and contract modifications.  All of this could take months.  Level of Effort activities can change on a near instantaneous basis.

A word on "absolutes" associated with Service Outsourcing.   Although, not as flexible as the other methods, it does not mean that a contractor can do whatever they want as long as they meet the contracted service levels.  Contract service levels is just one part of the what must be specified.  All the required parameters that affect the cost of the service must be included, as well as the verifications mechanisms required for proper oversight of the contract.

What does this all mean?  It means that the hard part of buying Network Services is to actually understand the services needed and all their related characteristics to address the diverse needs of the organization.  These are primary considerations in the types, requirements, and services levels that are part of the overall acquisition architecture, strategy, and roadmap.  More than a  technical issue,  it must also have what is in general more important, and many times neglected, a set of organizational structure and business decisions.

More on organizational and business elements in the next installment (hint: it is an architecture as well).

The new reality of home Internet usage

I occurred to me that I have not checked my home Internet usage in quite some time. In my last post on the topic of Internet home bandwidth usage in https://kaplowtech.blogspot.com/2011/09/more-usage-same-cost-boom.html, it appeared that my bandwidth usage was heading towards the then Comcast cap of 250 Gbytes per month.   My calculation was accurate as was Comcast's change of policy to remove the "cap" before the majority of their customers would have bombarded them with hate and discontent.

So, today I took a look at my home's Internet usage and remarkably the increase was less than 100% over period of the third quarter of 2011 to the first quarter of 2020.  We have Netflix, Prime, and do a fair amount of YouTube streaming, so I would think that our usage pattern is typical.  Of course, starting in September one of my Sons was off to college, so I am pretty sure usage was a bit higher in August 2019  before he moved to his dormitory .

Of course, now he is back and our family of four confined (mostly) to our home is banging on the Internet pretty hard.  We are clearly streaming up a storm and Teams'ing, Zoom'ing, and Webex'ing much of our work that our use increased by over 200% in one month.

So far, the performance of these services has been good.  It appears that the Internet is much more resilient than some people would have you believe or to give credit to the companies and their staff that build and operate the hundreds of networks that make it possible.  Of course, there was this BGP hijack, and a proliferation of cyber attacks, but that is another story…

Finally, I am not paying a proportionately higher Internet service bill than nearly 10 years ago.  What the future in pricing holds I do know know.   Perhaps new  services including wireless and new satellite systems may enable enough competition to keep prices down. 

Some Considerations For Buying Enterprise Network Services

Under the current circumstances, and with acquisitions activities moving to the right, there is a bit of time to actually do a bit of thinking about how to meet enterprise network needs.  Maybe  some of our government organizations will take this additional time to consider how they could structure to improve their network acquisition and services performance.

If you get anything out of this post, I want you to ask yourself and your organization two simple questions:

• "Are we buying our enterprise network service the best way possible?"
• "Is my organization structured for effective enterprise network services acquisitions and operations?"

These simple but direct questions should lead you down a journey that will probably end with the conclusion that, no, you are not buying our network services the best way, and it's time for a change.

So, what I am going on about here?  Aren't there telecommunication leaders in the enterprise networking space that solve networking services for large enterprises?  Don't they provide the capabilities and options are critical to success?  Well, the real answer is not really a yes or a no.  This is because the answer is not just about them, it is also the business model that your organization selects to specify, acquire, and operate services.

First, here is a quick review of the major trends in telecommunications solutions for enterprise networks.

As I wrote previously, as far back as 2009, the expanding use of Internet-based services to meet Enterprise networking requirements continues.  The traditional dependency on a single service provider's MPLS/VPN network exclusively for bandwidth and to ensure quality of service is rapidly changing to a blend of services with Broadband Internet (i.e., the Cable company) and wireless (i.e., 4G and now 5G).  There are several factors driving this change: 

• The cost of Broadband Internet services have a capacity per price ratio that depending on location ranges from two to as much as 100 times better than MPLS/VPN services (that is more bang for the network buck).
• The quality of these services has improved dramatically (as proven today by millions of people working at home due to COVID-19 with the use of Internet access-based Software as a Service and high-quality video teleconferencing services).
• The cost effective use of multiple services to improve effective network availability at a site due to a service failure (in most cases the share risk of failure between, for example, 4G/5G and Cable provided Internet is small).
• SD-WAN technology is enabling policy-based use of  these services to improve the network performance experience of users and their applications.

Of course you say, my enterprise network service provider can do all this for me.  As a buying organization, we can pick a blend of my selected services provider's MPLS/VPN service as well as wireless and even Broadband Internet and I am good to do.  In addition, my selected provider offers SD-WAN service.   My organization is all set.

Well, you are, sort of.  As I have found in many areas of Information Technology delivery, it is more about the business model than technology.  If you are large commercial or government enterprise, these are some of the business areas and questions you should consider:

• Are you a "one-and-done" organization?  That is do you perform a competitive acquisition activity once, set pricing, and then ride the solution for five to 10 years?
• Are you an "outsourcing" organization?  That is, except for service requests, status, and trouble management you let your selected service provider to it all.
• Are you an "engineering" organization?  That is, you have network engineers that want to design and engineer the network?

Each of these business processes lead to a different set of principles for buying network services.   Here are some to consider:

• Do you want to avoid the complexity and effort required to perform a transition from the periodic "one and done" network service provider?
• Are you concerned maintaining cost competitiveness during a "one and done" contract?  Global network services pricing, including U.S. domestic services, decreases every year.
• Are you concerned that your organization's engineering staff can not keep up with a combination of technology and working with multiple vendors to pull a solution together and as important sustain the system?
• Did you develop an operations architecture on how to integrate your total Information Technology (IT)environment?  For that matter do you have an IT architecture?
• And most important, is the organization getting the network performance and availability needed to get the mission done with clear incentives for all parties to ensure continued performance.

The place to start is to create a set of objective outcomes for the organization as part of building a strategy:

• Stop the need doing network acquisitions every several years (when you actually get around to putting together the acquisition documents, make an award, and perform a potentially costly and disruptive provider transition).
• Enable the ability to continually shop for price and take advantage of reducing costs without complete redesign of the network.
• Build an engineering staff that is fully integrated into a comprehensive business process that both leverages and builds their skills, and addresses the need to keep the organization's technology current.
• Build a comprehensive network (and really IT) architecture that leverages a full range of network implementation and operations options tailored the various network services required.
• Build and provide network services that meet and continue the organization's evolving needs.

This is a bunch to consider, and in future articles, I will focus on potential government organization structures and approaches to meet the above outcomes.