What should be on every branch office manager's "worry" list

Branch Office Best Practices Newsletter By Robin Gareiss, Network World, 08/08/06

I’ve had a few inquiries lately about the key challenges enterprises and midsize businesses are facing in the branch offices. In other words, what should be on every branch office manager’s (or Chief Branch Officer’s, where they exist) “worry” list.

That list certainly can get pretty long at times, and it can vary depending on whether you’re looking at short-term, tactical issues, or longer-term, strategic issues. In talking to hundreds of IT executives in the past three years, a few key areas always rise to the top:

* Security: Branch office security is a key issue (no surprise). Without an IT person on-site, organizations have found potential holes in the wireless LAN infrastructure and even in physical security when an application server or database resides in that branch office. Leading organizations are implementing remote management tools that let the central IT staff regularly monitor suspicious activity in the WLAN infrastructure, and they're centralizing moving servers/databases to the data center to better control who has access to those machines.

* Collaboration: Branch office employees often feel disconnected from the rest of the team. So organizations with numerous branch offices are starting to look seriously at tools that help them stay connected and more importantly, be as productive as possible. More affordable local access costs and better-quality IP video conferencing systems are driving organizations to look more seriously at that technology. Other collaborative tools include audio conferencing, Web conferencing, presence, enterprise IM - or tools such as Parlano and Jabber’s enterprise IM with business-grade ‘chat rooms’ that allow links to files, real-time or late-arrival access to the chat session, and built-in compliance/security options.

* Management: IT staffs are managing a growing number of branch offices (they're growing on average 8.9% a year) with an average of seven networking devices in each site. They're moving servers to the data center, but that doesn’t help on the network side, where switches, routers, firewalls, PBXs, VPNs, and more are crowding the branch office requirements. We're seeing more interest in all-in-one devices, which combine switching, routing, security, bandwidth optimization, and wide-area file sharing in a single or two devices. Several vendors have products in this category: Switching/routing/security includes Cisco, Juniper, Nortel, NetDevices, and several others; bandwidth optimization/WAFS includes Expand Networks, Nortel, and Packeteer.

There are several sub-categories under each of these uber-topics, such as cost reduction, simplifying design, and troubleshooting/support. One key problem with many organizations is that they have an inconsistent strategy: Some locations get collaborative tools; others don’t, some locations have one type of security, others have something different. We've found the most success when organizations have a unified strategy that they apply to all branch locations - and that’s a goal that’s much easier said than done.