Organization: Yale University School of Medicine
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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.novell
Date:         Fri, 8 Jan 1993 14:56:25 -0400
Reply-To:     Novell LAN Interest Group <NOVELL@SUVM.BITNET>
From:         Rick Beebe <RBEEBE@SURGERY.MED.YALE.EDU>
Subject:      Re: "User firms plagued by LAN money pits"

>>The January 4 issue of the leading Network World newspaper has
>>a well-written, detailed story entitled "User firms plagued by LAN
>>money pits."  The subtitle reads "Forrester study finds cost of
>>local net support eating up corporate cash but offers tips for
>>relief."  The article has a graph of annual charges for different
>>kinds of support on a 5,000-user network.
>
>This would be a lot more useful if it reviewed a 500 or 1000 user
>network; I doubt that there's more than a couple hundred LANs with
>5000+ users on them. Those would be Fortune 100 companies and
>universities, most likely. The F100 companies can (and most have)
>figure out how to support a network efficiently (after all, these
>are the support organizations which have been getting cut over the
>last few years) within their infrastructure, and the universities
>enslave students to do most of their work (boy, if that isn't
>flamebait... :-) ). It's the medium-sized networks, say 100 to 2,000
>users, that are the most disorganized--big enough to justify one
>or two people full-time, but too small to justify the expense of
>experienced, trained people.

I think that the article/study is relevant for smaller companies too. The
article is referring primarily to pc-type networks (ie Netware, Lan
Mangler, etc) rather than the more "generic" network (like a company-wide
ethernet). Their assertion is that most of these 5000+ user networks are
collections of disparate departmental networks that are most still locally
managed. Therefore, a large company may have 50 100-user networks out
there (hence the 5000 users), with 50 managers who spend a great deal of
time doing mundane things like adding users and unjamming printers. Their
primary money-saving tip is to consolidate servers (give 'em all to MIS).
It's easier and cheaper for a central support group to manage 20 250-user
servers. Plus, if you need fewer managers, they can (and should) be better
trained, better paid professionals; not "Bob" the guy who has a computer
at home. The users get better (or at least more consistent) support,
there's less redundancy, and the company saves 20% (their estimate).

Here at this University, students manage a relatively minor segment of
the network: portions of the student appletalk network. The "generic"
network which runs all over campus is managed by a central authority and
there are 20-30 departmental servers of various flavors all locally
managed. Some users get good support (mine, for instance :>) and others
get almost no support. There's a great deal of redundancy both in labor
and hardware. I think centralizing the servers would be of great benefit
both to the users and the University. On the other hand that's not the
way things work around here. And of course, if your central management
group isn't competent, everyone loses.

What I would worry about is that a company concentrates all its servers in
one area, but still doesn't take them seriously enough to provide proper
management, proper protection and proper safeguards. Us PC guys get no
respect...


  ......................................................................
   Rick Beebe                                            (203) 785-4566
   Data Network Operations
   Biomedical Computing Unit                  beebe@biomed.med.yale.edu
   Yale University School of Medicine              beebe@yalemed.bitnet
  ......................................................................
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