LAN sprawl can be controlled by context 3 August, 2009 By Chris Talbot

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The Loudhouse Research report commissioned by ConSentry on "LAN sprawl" was based on interviews with 200 IT decision-makers in mid-sized and large enterprises in the U.S. and U.K. The research found that IT lacks the controls needed to manage the growth of LANs, which continue to build out in a variety of ways, said Michelle McLean, senior director of product marketing at ConSentry Networks.

The Loudhouse survey found that 93 percent of respondents said users are now more likely to require access to different parts of the network at different times for business reasons, and 92 percent of respondents see an increase in the need to manage users with multiple profiles/IDs to support cross-functional needs of their organization. McLean said they're grappling with users having multiple profiles on the network, which she noted was a surprising finding. It's a very high statistic, she said.

Also surprising was that two-thirds of respondents said decisions to innovate the business processes are often made without considering the impact of the network, McLean said. This is actually changing how the network needs to provide services, and it's forcing IT to look into how to keep control of the LAN, she said.

Additionally, 66 percent of respondents said the proliferation of devices and applications makes it harder to audit the network.

Respondents cited several areas where they need to improve the level of control because of the dynamics in their network environments. The most commonly mentioned area was the need to improve control for security (by 72 percent of respondents), followed by access to specific areas/job functions (68 percent), access to specific applications (65 percent), general user access (64 percent) and ad hoc network access (63 percent).

Multi-dimensional growth is leading to LAN sprawl, according to research conducted by the Yankee Group on behalf of ConSentry. Organizations are seeing growth in smart/mobile devices, remote working employees, the number of applications supported by the network, approved business applications, permanent/static users, dynamic users, personal devices, non-user IP devices and even non-approved applications for personal use on the network. All of these factors are creating a challenging environment for IT departments.

IT needs a way to understand who is doing what and then be able to layer in control, McLean said.

In fact, respondents identified the greatest risks for maintaining control (in descending order) as the ability to control access in remote locations, the inability to enforce appropriate usage policies, user-introduced applications, and non-employee access to corporate data.

Context is a key requirement for control of LAN sprawl, the Yankee Group report found. With environments becoming increasingly dynamic and virtualized, as well as limited financial resources, IT departments need to take a different approach to controlling LANs, McLean said. Every organization is looking to be more efficient.

The Yankee Group study concluded that to align business networks with business processes and to be able to maintain full control and visibility, the network's role must evolve from being passive infrastructure to being the underlying orchestrator of services and the central point for providing policy enforcement.

"If the network's really going to change, then we need to look at switches ... and how they're built today and how they need to evolve," McLean said. Switches today operate on a very finite number of parameters, but they'll need to be able to understand context, she said.