Thought of the Day

Every so often a conversation crops up in our house that immediately sparks thoughts of a network analogy in my mind, or how every day occurrences keep you grounded and your ego in check, like ‘What a leveller pets are, yesterday I was presenting hyper-convergence to a large global bank and today I’m cleaning cat sh!t off a carpet’ you know thoughts like that.

Well today I had another such thought, like most people I’m a busy person, my general routine is up at 05:45, and hour in the gym come back, walk the dog, shower, change for work, and be in my home office just before 09:00. Well that’s the ideal. The reality is often a little different, with ingredients like getting dressed in the dark, running a bit late at the gym etc.. Now as you can imagine depending on where I am in the above cycle, my appearance can, at best be described as a little odd. But this morning me and my 16 yr. old daughter crossed paths in the hallway as I was about to walk the dog, and I was greeted with the words ‘Oh my god dad, what do you look like, your not going out like that are you!’ at which point I did have to check myself in the mirror to realise that I was in shorts, polyester green socks (probably a Christmas present from years ago, just because they are really quick to slide on) a T shirt with the slogan ‘I run because I really like Beer’ one slider and one welly (which I was halfway through changing into) Apologies for that mental picture for anyone still eating breakfast. The fact is I looked like I had been dragged through a charity shop backwards.

But then I got to thinking I probably look like many of the Enterprise Networks I see, very rarely does any client have the luxury of buying all their infrastructure at the same time and ensuring all their security, tooling, observability, NOC / SOC are all holistically designed to seamlessly work in harmony with each other. That may have been the case once, if you were luckily enough to have started greenfield, but different hardware, software refresh cycles, domain silo’s, OEM politics, even whichever vendor a CEO was playing golf with that week all effect decisions. And before too long sadly your network is looking like that mental picture now sadly burned into your brain.

The problem isn’t aesthetics. The problem is that complexity quietly taxes every decision, slowing change, increasing risk, and turning strategic choice into compromise.

Well what’s the answer? or at least ‘an answer’ there are obviously assessment services you can undertake, have holistic reviews to see where gaps and overlaps are, But again the reality is, it’s first best to define what you want to look like, have a clear picture of what you want your final look to be. That’s then becomes your ‘North Star‘ that you are working towards, it maybe a 3 year or 5 year plan and you actually never reach it as it’s a rolling window, and that NorthStar will evolve as technology evolves. And then every decision you make from then on is guided by that NorthStar. no need for ‘rip and replace’ you just need a ‘mirror’ and the discipline to stop buying clothes that don’t fit the outfit they are trying to become.

This isn’t an architecture exercise, it’s a leadership one, clarity of intent matters more than technical perfection.

So perhaps worth taking a step back having a good look, and ask yourself, what clothes is your network wearing?

Have a good weekend!