Network Computing

The Computer’s in the Network

Anil Valluri

The second day at Technology Senate 2004 featured a track dedicated to Network Computing (NC). The objective of this round of presentations was to help a CIO work out ways to unleash the power of NC to transform every aspect in an enterprise. Few tools help you meet competitive pressures and discover new opportunities quite like network-based technologies. However, the relentless pursuit to push the technology envelope further presents fresh and constant challenges. So for CIOs seeking anytime information access, the need of the hour is an expert overview of the architectural framework, best practices and methodologies prevalent in NC today, which is just what this track provided.

Invisible network

Parijat Chakraborty, Senior Manager, User & Communication Research, IDC India, talked about the invisible network. The idea behind such a network is that the IT infrastructure should be managed and must function in such a way that a user is oblivious to what goes on behind-the-scenes. The emphasis was on processes and management strategy. He talked about the advantages of moving towards NC architecture, and how organizations can leverage NC to gain IT-business alignment.

Information architecture

Anil Valluri, Director, solutions organization client, Sun Microsystems India, made a presentation which highlighted an NC architecture roadmap. The roadmap aims to bring adaptability, improved efficiencies and reduced costs to an enterprise. The session covered a number of angles such as ways to unleash the power of NC to transform every aspect of an enterprise, the norms for developing an NC-enabled organization, and the key to better network services, data center performance, managing identity information, and lower system costs.

Practical approach

Prof S Sadgopan

Prof S Sadgopan, Director, IIIT, Bangalore gave a presentation about shifting towards NC, and discussed the best practices in migrating to it. His session took a brief look at its evolution, the need for NC, the preferred strategy for the shift, narrated some installation success stories, mentioned the pitfalls to avoid, and listed the technical and management challenges encountered along the way.