9 Hot Trends for '99

he Presidents Day weekend of 1997 has not been forgotten by some of those who were working at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo. That was when the base's office networks crashed. It took all of the holiday weekend and several days afterward to restore electronic mail, Internet access and other services to all of the 3,000 military and civilian personnel at F.E. Warren.

The root of the problem? Lack of experienced network managers. The base communications squadron had tried to install too much new hardware and software simultaneously, without enough expertise in the new technologies.

The squadron was aiming to upgrade the backbone by installing high-speed switches with unfamiliar switching technology, change the local area network to Windows NT 4.0 and change the e-mail from Microsoft Mail to Microsoft Exchange software, a more complex product. New equipment that didn't work properly added to the problems. "It was a nightmare," says Mike Behncke, a Space Command contracting officer.

The Air Force Space Command, the parent organization of F.E. Warren, came to the rescue by summoning an experienced contractor, Wang Government Services. Five Wang employees flew to Cheyenne and spent the weekend assessing the situation and beginning repairs.

They borrowed some switches from Cisco Systems Inc. to replace the troublesome ones and called on Microsoft to help install that company's software. At the request of Air Force officials, Wang reviewed the network architecture at F.E. Warren and then helped the Air Force select gear, develop a more realistic implementation plan and install the new networks. Wang got a contract to support and expand the base network.

Now, Behncke says, F.E. Warren is considering outsourcing the network altogether, so Air Force personnel would have little operational responsibility. The primary reasons are the difficulty of finding skilled personnel and the need to focus the base's resources on its primary mission. F.E. Warren is a keystone of the nation's missile defense systems.

Today's networks are much more complex than those of just a few years ago. The communications squadron that ran into trouble in 1997 mostly had expertise in telephone systems, Behncke says. The base's data networks carry a variety of internal data and Internet traffic using several kinds of networking software. "There are so many platforms they have to learn," he says.

F.E. Warren is by no means alone in its network management difficulties. Software companies have rushed to market with software to help organizations monitor their network operations, spot problems and fine-tune performance. These products are still maturing, but market researchers at Business Research Group, Newton, Mass., say that spending on network and systems management products nonetheless will increase about 22 percent annually through next year.

Automation alone is not the answer. It's widely rumored that many network management products installed by big businesses aren't in regular use. Some are too complex and too expensive to operate; others don't provide the right kind of information.

Sometimes effective tools are being overlooked. For example, several inexpensive new software packages simply record the locations and model numbers of network components. The resulting system maps can be invaluable when trouble strikes and a new hire is trying to figure out where the problem is.

Regardless of what tools are used, however, there is no question that today's networks demand much more attention and much more expertise than their predecessors did. Agencies must become accustomed to the notion of managing, rather than just using, their communications systems.