Harnessing the power of the infrastructure
AS IT INFRASTRUCTURE has risen to new prominence in the age of the Internet, so too has the role of the Chief Technology Officer at network consulting companies. In his role as CTO of Callisma, George Orlov helps define strategy for customers who are grappling with issues of bandwidth, security, directories, and convergence. In an interview with InfoWorld Editor in Chief Michael Vizard, Orlov discusses these four networking trends and the impact they will have on the enterprise.
InfoWorld: What's the biggest trend in the networking segment of the industry?
Orlov: Everyone is moving to optical. It's a disruptive technology that allows you to provide pure, raw data bit-rates for 1/100th the price of your current T1, T3, DS3, or OC3 line. If you invest in this new technology, you are able to substantially undercut the competition. If you're an existing customer or existing service provider [and] you don't enable your network to provide these vastly larger data transport rates at a vastly lower cost, you will get decimated.
InfoWorld: How will this affect customers, as opposed to service providers, at the enterprise level?
Orlov: Most enterprises don't have private networks, although it's getting to the point where if they're in a campus environment it's cheaper to lay their own fiber than to continue to buy point-to-points from the existing service providers.
InfoWorld: How well are most people dealing with security and networking issues?
Orlov: No one's shop is as secure as they want it to be, nor is security as far up on their radar screen as it needs to be. It's like earthquake insurance or earthquake preparedness. You never really think about [being insured or prepared] until the earthquake happens, and then everyone is scrambling around saying, 'Why didn't we prepare?'
InfoWorld: Do most customers adopt a hide-in-plain-sight security strategy and then hope for the best?
Orlov: No one overtly says, 'We're going to hide in plain sight.' But security is much more complex than buying a firewall and plugging it in. Many people say, 'I've got a firewall, now I'm safe.' Well, 75 percent or so of breaches come from insiders, and a firewall doesn't help you [in those instances] at all. It's layers of policy, process, and other things -- long before you buy the hardware or the intrusion-detection systems or the managed services -- that are important.
InfoWorld: Is the real threat the enemy
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