MSP For Dummies

Control is Yours!
anaged M Services
on ed Solutions Editi Blue Coat Manag
Application-aware WAN services to reduce cost and complexity
FREE eTips at dummies.com
Nancy Conner
The changing workplace and new era of IP-based networking means that more applications are competing for limited network resources. This is powered by the significant growth in adoption of collaborative applications and services, including next-generation voice, video, Web conferencing, and other bandwidth-hungry real-time applications. Unfortunately, IT organizations are struggling to support these collaborative applications in an era of declining budgets. Many IT organizations lack the resources, both in staff and equipment, to manage application performance. As a result, many businesses are turning to Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to reduce operational and deployment costs, and leverage the skill sets of the MSPs. Thats where working with a Blue Coat MSP comes in. As early as 1998, Blue Coat had a vision for where business was heading. As the world became more global and collaborative and more dynamic and decentralized, Blue Coat developed an infrastructure designed to support and enhance the changing WAN environment. The resulting Blue Coat infrastructure combines three core technologies: visibility, acceleration, and security, the core components of building an Application Delivery Network (ADN). In the WAN world, you need these three technologies working together to provide the comprehensive application and user control required to contain costs, enhance business productivity, and respond to ever-changing threats. In a global business environment, the WAN is the center, allowing users to be productive at any time, in any place. In the meantime, organizations have found that setting up and maintaining a secure, fast, reliable network is difficult and expensive to do. Managed Services For Dummies will help you identify and address todays most difficult networking and resource challenges. We hope youll discover that working with a Blue Coat MSP is a powerful solution that provides your business with a fully optimized and cost-efficient network. If you have any questions, we stand ready to help. Sincerely, Craig Hicks-Frazer VP Service Providers Blue Coat Systems, Inc.
Managed Services
FOR
DUMmIES
BLUE COAT MANAGED SOLUTIONS EDITION
by Nancy Conner
These materials are the copyright of Wiley Publishing, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.
Managed Services For Dummies, Blue Coat Managed Solutions Edition

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774 www.wiley.com Copyright 2009 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6008, e-mail: brandreview@wiley.com. Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FURTHER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFORMATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ. FULFILLMENT OF EACH COUPON OFFER IS THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE OFFEROR. For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002. For technical support, please visit www.wiley.com/techsupport. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. ISBN: 978-0-470-54290-3 Manufactured in the United States of America
Introduction
elcome to Managed Services For Dummies, Blue Coat Managed Solutions Edition. In a global business environment, wide-area networks (WANs) have taken center stage, letting companies do business around the world, using employees in offices dotting the globe. Many enterprises find it both difficult and expensive to manage and optimize the WAN to ensure business operations run smoothly and securely. Doing so requires ongoing investments in hardware, endless updates, and staff training. Wouldnt it be better to have your IT staff work on core business concerns than to spend their time managing the network? And arent security, reliable applications, and visibility essential to your network? Thats where managed services come in. A reliable managed service provider (MSP) has the expertise and equipment to optimize and monitor your network and deliver applications efficiently and safely. And instead of requiring upfront capital expenditures, managed services let you shift network costs to the operational side of things, paying for what you actually use (instead of what someone thinks you might need).
About This Book

Managed Services For Dummies, Blue Coat Managed Solutions Edition, covers the ins and outs of managed services. Chapter 1 introduces managed services. Chapter 2 is all about Application Delivery Networks (ADN), and Chapter 3 talks about servicelevel agreements (SLAs). Chapter 4 wraps everything up with ten or so important reasons to use managed services to get your network up to speed. The content of this book was provided by and published specifically for Blue Coat Systems. The top global service providers are already partnering with Blue Coat to deliver ADN services over the WAN and youre thinking of joining them.
Managed Services For Dummies
Foolish Assumptions
For this short overview, we made a few assumptions about you, the reader: Youre no dummy. If you werent smart, you wouldnt be interested in improving the performance of the applications on your WAN in the first place. Youre an IT decision maker. Youve heard at least a little about managed services, and youre super-interested in what it can offer your organization. You may be a managed service provider. You want to make it clear to your current and potential customers why managed services are a good idea, and you want to help them move from basic WAN services to a spectrum of value-added services, such as WAN acceleration and managed security services. Youre also interested in what Blue Coat solutions have to offer you. You speak tech. Although we make a point of defining terms and spelling out acronyms, this book assumes that you have a general familiarity with computer lingo.
Icons Used in This Book

Throughout the margins in this book, you see little icons that highlight different types of information. When we present something that can save you time and effort, we toss in this icon to highlight it. This icon offers a little extra information of a technical nature. You dont have to read it to follow the book, but its an interesting aside. This icon highlights important information youll want to keep in mind.
Chapter 1
Making the Move to Managed Services

In This Chapter
Defining managed services Understanding how WAN services have changed over time Capitalizing on managed services
anaged services are on the rise. In fact, theyre poised for explosive growth. According to analysts, by 2013, the managed services market is expected to reach approximately $34 billion. Currently, an estimated 67 percent of firms use managed services to reduce costs. And an analyst research firm predicts that security applications delivered as cloudbased services will more than triple by 2013. Sounds like something you should know about, doesnt it? This chapter gets you up to speed with managed services: what they are, where they came from, and most importantly what they can do for your business.
So What Are Managed Services, Anyway?

Simply put, managed services refers to the practice of transferring the day-to-day burdens of network management to an outside service provider (SP), called a managed service provider (MSP). It allows businesses to purchase and deploy WAN solutions through an MSP as a recurring monthly expense as opposed to a major capital investment.

Managed services let you free up internal resources to work on strategic IT projects that relate directly to your core business initiatives. Your business has better things to do than keeping up with constant IT updates, security performance issues, and maintenance. You may not want to divert your resources and capital away from other areas of the business, where theyd be put to better use. Its smarter to focus your resources on what you do best your core business. An MSP may reduce your IT price tag by providing lower-cost alternatives to keep up with the times. By working with an MSP, you shift capital expenses to operational expenses, paying only for services you actually use. Prices and providers vary according to business size, area of expertise, packages offered, individual service, and the ability to meet customer needs.
The Evolution of WAN Services

Although managed services have recently become a hot topic, theyve been around since the 1980s, the era of big hair, shoulder pads, and New Wave music. Back then, managed services were highly customized and aimed at only a small segment of the market mostly massive enterprises that wanted to outsource their entire wide area network (WAN) operations to a service provider. Enter the 90s. Along with Seinfeld, Pokmon, and the dot-com boom, the 1990s also brought changes to managed services. A new crop of MSPs appeared, with a broader vision of what managed services had to offer. These companies offered networkmonitoring services or hosted applications to small and mediumsized businesses. But when the dot-com boom went bust, many of these early MSPs went with it, thanks to heavy capital investments and only a small number of early adopters. It took a new century for MSPs to really begin living up to their potential. MSPs went from offering services that simply transported data to offering network services, security, and application delivery. MSPs typically have evolved to offer these types of new services: Access services: Authentication, proxy, and caching Policy services: Compliance, security, and personalization Application services: Visibility/monitoring, acceleration/ optimization, and hosting
Chapter 1: Making the Move to Managed Services

Heres why MSPs are here to stay: Increasing demand, based on a range of trends including globalization, e-commerce, ongoing cost containment, and telecommuting More focused MSP business models, such as shifting costs to a monthly recurring expense Evolved WAN requirements New Web-based technologies, emerging Web 2.0 collaboration tools, SaaS and cloud computing that have made managed services more powerful and cost-effective
Multiprotocol label switching

Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) is one of the technologies that has catapulted managed services into the 21st century. MPLS uses labels short identifiers attached to data packets to make decisions about forwarding and routing data. MPLS enables high-performance data transfer between WAN nodes, no matter what the data contains or what protocol (such as voice, video, HTTP, or FTP) is used. With MPLS, your network can assign appropriate priority and class-of-service to traffic, whether voice, video or Internet. So Internet traffic, VoIP calls, and video can all run on a converged network without everything grinding to a halt. Case in point, your video conferences and voice calls need a class-of-service with minimal delays and jittering MPLS makes that a reality. In a nutshell, MPLS offers some real advantages: Better traffic management Easier scalability Support for multiple protocols Improved security Guaranteed quality-of-service (QoS) Affordable cost As Chapter 2 explains, Blue Coat solutions enable MPLS+, which gives you even more visibility and control of whats on your network so that you can better prioritize traffic. MPLS+ takes network management and traffic prioritization beyond mere

ports and protocols, letting you focus on applications and ultimately end-user experience. (Find out more about MPLS+ in Chapter 2.)
Value-Added Service Opportunities: Cloud Computing and SaaS

Cloud computing is more than just the buzzword du jour; its a whole new IT paradigm. Thanks to the cloud (a network of data centers offering access to powerful applications and services delivered over the Internet), users can access, work on, share, and store data all without huge capital expenditures from the business. A popular aspect of cloud computing is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS, pronounced sass), which presents an alternative to traditional, on-site software. SaaS is a lot like leasing a car. Instead of owning, licensing, deploying, and maintaining a software application, many organizations are choosing to rent, rather than buy, their software. SaaS applications, usually offered on a subscription basis, are hosted remotely and delivered over the Internet. Examples of SaaS include Salesforce.com, Microsoft Live, and Google Apps. The movement of enterprises to cloud computing and SaaS is likely and offers service providers the opportunity to deliver new value-added services. So the more value service providers can offer in terms of managed services, the more they stand to benefit. These days, service providers must position themselves to do more than deliver traditional services, such as voice and Internet; they need to bundle business-class services that satisfy a range of business requirements. The MSP must offer enterprises the ability to see and prioritize whats on the network and provide SLAs for specific applications, ensuring higher QoS and security levels. Although thats a tall order, its what customers need and expect.
Chapter 1: Making the Move to Managed Services
Fortunately, todays MSPs can address the challenges of optimizing network performance while keeping the network secure. Chapter 2 shows how application delivery networks combine visibility, acceleration, and security to optimize the WAN.
Why Service Providers Are Moving to Managed Services

It makes sense for service providers to offer managed services. Heres a look at some of the trends prompting SPs to become MSPs: Increased corporate demand for managed services: Voice and data are no longer enough. Customers want more from service delivery options and Table 1-1 shows why theyre choosing managed services. A highly competitive SP marketplace: The market is getting more competitive by the minute, so SPs have been adding a range of managed services to their offerings to make them stand out from the rest of the pack. More and more services based on Internet protocols, such as Web-based tools for communication and collaboration: The need to optimize these Web-based services, such as salesforce.com and WEBEX, offers SPs incremental revenue opportunites. MPLS is not enough. Global WAN requires richer application-aware managed services. Service providers have responded to these trends by rising to the challenge of offering managed services that deliver applications with excellent bandwidth management capabilities, security levels, and QoS all at an affordable price. Table 1-1 gives an at-a-glance look at MSP service delivery options and what each has to offer customers. No wonder enterprises are turning to MSPs to save money and manage their networks.
Table 1-1
Dedicated
Service Delivery Options

Description Customer Benefit Dedicated equipment on cus- Shift costs from capital tomer premise or hosted in SP expenses to operating data center with managed ser- expenses vice wrapper Less equipment and fewer people to manage Retain some functions on prem- Cost and management ises (for example, acceleration, savings advanced policy) Scale and community Push standardized functions to benefits cloud (for example, Web filtering) Design for performance Applications fully outsourced Shared, multi-tenant platform Easy to provision, with low switching cost Lowest cost and least management effort
Hybrid
SaaS
What Managed Services Can Do for Your Business

Managed services offer many benefits for enterprises. First, your business can focus on what it does best. After all, theres no point in trying to do everything, especially when managed services save you time and money and offer these advantages: Network monitoring happens every minute of every day of the year. Thats called peace of mind (and you cant put a price tag on that). You can simplify your life with a single point of contact for all network issues. And instead of dealing with multiple vendors (along with the multiple headaches that brings), you deal only with a single provider. Your business can save money. Avoid the costs associated with building your own management and reporting systems and also lower capital expenditure and staff levels in areas that arent central to your business. MSPs have the expertise and state-of-the-art equipment to offer better reliability and QoS than you can get in-house.
Chapter 2
Putting It All Together: Application Delivery Networks

In This Chapter
Exploring ADNs Seeing the traffic on your network Getting your applications moving Enhancing network security Graduating to MPLS+
or service providers, application delivery may sound simple, but theres a lot more to it than simply making sure that SaaS applications make their way from the cloud to your employees desktops. Service providers are now in a better position to deliver these services thanks to better technology: When you can see and prioritize each application, then delivering critical applications more efficiently is easier. In this chapter, you find out how Application Delivery Networks combine visibility, acceleration, and security to provide fast, secure delivery of business-critical applications using existing bandwidth.
Getting Familiar with ADN

ADN stands for Application Delivery Network. But spelling out the words doesnt begin to define what an ADN can do for your business.
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An ADN does more than simply deliver applications. It gives you control over the network by letting you see and prioritize network traffic, proactively respond to assure performance, and safeguard against malware and other threats. Heres what an ADN lets you do: Peer into the network (no crystal ball required). See the applications traveling across the network. Get a look at users and their interaction with applications. Find performance issues and address them proactively. Optimize the good traffic mission-critical applications, real-time voice and video, SSL, and other enterprise traffic to the speed of business. Protect against todays Web-based threats from malware and other threats. Increase productivity by making sure that the user experience is just as good as it would be at headquarters no matter where that user is working.
ADN Managed Services: The Blue Coat Approach

Imagine, for a moment, a three-legged stool. When you need to sit down, one leg or two legs wont do the job youll totter and fall over. You need three legs to provide a complete solution that does the job right. The same principle applies to application delivery: For optimal performance and control, you need a three-pronged solution: Visibility: Simply put, you cant manage what you cant see. Whether youre monitoring end-user experience or giving a lower priority to nonessential traffic, you need to know whats on your network to keep business running smoothly. Acceleration: They call business-critical applications critical for a reason: Your business depends on them to do business. Time is money, and you cant afford to have employees sitting around waiting for sluggish applications
Chapter 2: Putting It All Together: Application Delivery Networks
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to do their thing. No matter where users are working at a branch office, from home, or on the road businesscritical applications should perform as well as they do at headquarters. Your users expect it, and your business depends on it Security: These days, security is a multifaceted issue. You have to guard against malware, attacks, information leaks, information theft. Its a wild n woolly world out there, and you have to be ready for anything. Covering just one or two of these issues isnt enough. Fortunately, Blue Coats approach to ADN managed services has you covered in each of these three crucial areas.
Visibility
Seeing is more than mere believing; its key to knowing whats on your network. Only then can you set policies and become a traffic cop to control whats passing across your network. When you gain visibility into the network, you get these advantages: See all the traffic on your network. In any large distributed enterprise, hundreds of applications use the network for communications every hour of every day. Your employees need only some of these applications to do their jobs. Others, such as Hulu or iTunes, are recreational and probably have no business value. And downright dangerous stuff, such as malware, is always knocking at your networks door. Visibility lets you discover and classify what you do want from the productivity-sapping (and even dangerous) traffic you dont want. With Web-based content, visibility is key to get the most out of MPLS. As more local WAN traffic moves out onto the Internet, visibility is key in getting the most out of MPLS. Keep an eye on end-user experience. Your employees expect applications to have the same quality experience as if on a LAN. So visibility means more than just knowing that business-critical applications are on the network; it means having the intelligence to proactively assure that even real-time traffic is uninterrupted.
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Visibility is absolutely necessary to making sure that next-generation voice and video traffic works as it should. So you can set application-specific SLAs and quality-of-service levels for critical applications. Zoom in on network problems. When performance slows down, can you see whats causing the problem? A spike in application usage? A protocol issue? Who knows? Your IT people do, if they have visibility. And that means they can take immediate steps to get your applications zipping along again.
Acceleration
Your goal is simple: Keep business-critical applications running quickly and smoothly, while slowing or blocking everything else. But thanks to the variety and sheer number of applications on the network, achieving that goal can be tricky. Consider, for a moment, the different kinds of applications that run on your network. Youve got internal bulk applications (such as e-mail and file access), external applications (corporate training videos and SaaS apps, such as Salesforce.com and Google Docs but also online games and other recreational apps), and real-time applications (such as video conferencing, VoIP, and credit-card transactions). To make things more complicated, your enterprise may have multiple locations around the globe. All those applications and branches require a flexible approach to optimizing your WAN. Plus, with data consolidation and compliance, you need acceleration to give users a LAN-like experience, no matter where they happen to be. To make sure that your employees, wherever they happen to be, have access to the applications they need, you need acceleration that includes Byte and object caching: Caching speeds up the network by storing data or an entire object in a local cache and then sending a token over the network in its place. Compression: This technique minimizes file services data going over your WAN by using an algorithm to take out predictable information before the data gets sent. At the other end, the same algorithm puts that info back in place. Compression saves bandwidth and backhaul costs.
Chapter 2: Putting It All Together: Application Delivery Networks
13
Bandwidth management: Prioritize secure Web (HTTPS) interactions between applications, content, and different users and groups. The priority you assign affects when traffic gets sent and how much bandwidth the traffic uses. Protocol optimization: How chatty are the protocols on your network? Protocol optimization parallelizes communication that traditional travels serially, making those chatty applications more efficient and improving response times.
Security
The Web is changing. Thanks to SaaS applications and cloud computing, more business content is crossing the Internet or being stored on the Web. Sites such as YouTube may be used for legitimate business purposes as well as time wasting. And even trusted Web sites may be harboring hidden malware. With so much HTTP traffic, port 80 is a wide-open door into your network. And because not all Web traffic is equal, its essential to have a security solution that classifies that traffic, knowing what to accelerate, what to treat as run-of-the-mill, and what to keep out. MPLS+ has you covered. They say, You snooze, you lose, right? The bad guys certainly arent sleeping. Theyre constantly looking for new ways into your network. In fact, 2008 saw the discovery of about 16 million new kinds of malware. And that means your security strategy needs to address known threats while evolving quickly to be ready for potential threats before they hit. For example, viruses used to sneak into your network via e-mail attachments. That threat still exists, of course, but thanks to the rise in business-related HTTP traffic, hackers got the idea of injecting malicious code into legitimate Web sites. In fact, 90 percent of malware now comes from download pointers hidden in popular Web sites that people think they can trust. As more businesses embrace cloud computing and subscribe to SaaS applications, its more important than ever that Web access is both reliable and secure. Thats where MPLS+ comes in. An ADN with MPLS+ will help you control the applications and content that come in from the Web, give you visibility and control over SSL (the secure socket layer), and prevent data from leaking out of your network.
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Putting It All Together

As this chapter shows, an ADN brings visibility, acceleration, and security to optimize your network. Visibility lets you see whats on the network. Armed with that knowledge, you can prioritize traffic, accelerating the good stuff, and beef up security. When you combine the Blue Coat benefits of an ADN with the benefits of multiprotocol layer switching (MPLS, discussed in Chapter 1), you get MPLS+. And thats good news for your network. Traditionally, MPLS has used custom access control lists to set priority by class-of-service (COS). That means lots of hard work trying to group similar traffic together and giving that class of traffic a single priority level. But routers arent all that smart, and you need to do most of this work manually. For example, routers cant distinguish between the different kinds of traffic within web protocols like HTTP or HTTPS protocols between, say, someone using a Web-enabled business application and someone accessing a personal Webmail account, such as Gmail or Hotmail. Both kinds of traffic go through a Web channel (such as port 443), but because COS traditionally assigns the same priority to all traffic on this port, personal and recreational traffic gets the same high priority and acceleration that business traffic receives. This setup isnt a good use of network resources! Thanks to enhanced visibility and the ADN solutions, MPLS+ gives you the ability to fine-tune prioritization right down to the level of specific groups and users thereby choosing what traffic speeds up and what doesnt. This fine-tuning is particularly important for Web traffic, an ever-growing percentage of all traffic on the network. With MPLS+, traffic essential to your business, such as CRM or database apps, is recognized as such and given higher priority. Personal and recreational network use watching online videos, checking personal e-mail, and so on receives no higher prioritization or acceleration. You can apply other policies, too for example, to set policy or ensure security and compliance. MPLS+ gives providers of ADNs and managed service the chance to offer a new generation of managed network services that are truly focused on the application, not the packets, which paves the way for cloud and SaaS application services and for significant profits and ultimately happier end-users.
Chapter 3
Managed Services and SLAs

In This Chapter
Exploring SLAs Understanding why traditional SLAs arent enough for todays
managed services
Discovering what application-aware SLAs can do for your business
any a business deal has been cemented on the basis of a simple handshake. But when it comes to managed services for the network your business depends on, a handshake isnt nearly enough. Managed service providers and customers use service-level agreements to define what customers can expect. Just as managed services are evolving (see Chapter 1), so are the SLAs that govern those services, as this chapter explains.
Proactive Planning: ServiceLevel Agreements

A service-level agreement (SLA) spells out the agreement between the managed service provider (MSP) and the customer. An SLA makes sure that both parties MSP and customer are crystal clear about the services, priorities, responsibilities, guarantees, and warranties that comprise their relationship. For each part of the agreement, the SLA defines the level of service the customer can expect. For example, the SLA might indicate the time window for how quickly an MSP must respond to a service outage, or it
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might give the hours for the MSPs network operations center. The SLA also specifies penalties imposed when the service provider fails to provide the agreed-upon levels of service. SLAs may specify minimum and target levels of service. A minimum level of service indicates the base level of a service; a target is a measurable value that indicates what the average level of service should be.
Out with the Old: Old-School SLAs

Traditionally, SLAs have put the concerns of service providers before customers needs. Thats not surprising because theyre often written from the service providers perspective. These SLAs dont give you much say about end-to-end application performance over the network or user experience. Old-style SLAs often apply one-size-fits-all metrics to all a service providers customers, with little or no customization to address a particular customers unique requirements. Such SLAs also tend to focus on what the service provider knows it does best, emphasizing things like network resiliency and availability. Of course, you need to have your network up, running, and available. But you also have other crucial requirements like security management and the performance of critical applications. You cant mess around with these things; you need to be absolutely sure that your MSP can offer you high performance, security, and full support of Web applications. A recent study by the Aberdeen Group found that nearly half of organizations using managed services are not satisfied with service-level guarantees of application performance.
Ring in the New: ApplicationAware SLAs

As Chapter 1 explains, customer expectations have evolved right along with the changing landscape of managed services. Straightforward hardware and network management used to
Chapter 3: Managed Services and SLAs

be enough. Not anymore. Today, customers need and expect application performance and security management from MSPs and SLAs are changing to reflect that. As the term suggests, an application-aware SLA spells out levels of service not just for the network, but for the applications running on the network. By defining acceptable application performance from the end-users perspective, you know that your MSP can keep critical applications running smoothly. Application-aware SLAs are also more focused on security and security events than traditional SLAs.
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What does an application-aware SLA look like? It might, for example, measure application availability based on what percentage of the time a specific application is available, through measures such as these: The number of transactions attempted and responded to The number of successful attempts to connect with a server Granular reporting capability on application availability at specified increments
Real-Time Reporting
From the customers point of view, application performance and network security are what count. MSPs that offer applicationaware SLAs have a real advantage in setting themselves apart from the pack and meeting customer expectations. When youre trying to keep applications running smoothly and manage security, real-time reporting offers a big advantage, letting you address performance slowdowns and security threats as they happen. So to satisfy user expectations, smart MSPs are delivering reporting solutions.
Performance
Nobody installs and maintains a network just for the fun of it. Rather, a network is the infrastructure that supplies the applications and data the business needs. If end-users are sitting around drumming their fingers on the desk waiting for a slug-
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gish application to respond, the network isnt delivering the required level of performance. An Application Delivery Network (see Chapter 2) offers the visibility, acceleration, and security customers need in order to make sure that business-critical applications perform the way they should. This visibility allows flexible policy controls all the way down to the user level, making sure that application performance meets business objectives. You also get service-level metrics and statistics in comprehensive reports, letting you manage users experience by identifying problems immediately and resolving them fast. The Blue Coat ADN infrastructure continually measures application response times, letting IT know when performance dips below acceptable levels. The ADN also tracks metrics for use, delay, availability, jitter, and loss.
Security
When it comes to security, just a little late is too late. Security has to happen in real time. And so does security-related reporting. An ADN offers security capabilities that include filtering Web requests and content, Web virus scanning, malware detection and quarantine, content and certificate validation, data-leak prevention, SSL traffic inspection, and control of iffy traffic such as instant messaging, peer-to-peer sharing, and streaming audio and video. The Blue Coats approach to ADNs, emphasizing visibility, acceleration, and security, offers a suite of technologies that makes it possible for MSPs to incorporate service levels for performance, security, and reporting into application-aware SLAs.
Chapter 4
Ten or So Ways ADN Managed Services Benefit Your Business

In This Chapter
Focusing on your strengths Saving money
e can come up with a whole lot of reasons to switch to ADN managed services. This chapter lists ten or so of the best.
Focus on What You Do Best

Nobody can be all things to all people and neither can your business. Do you have the skills and resources to set up and maintain a critical communications network? And if so, how much does that cost compared to outsourcing? (Dont forget to factor in hidden costs, such as staff time and technical support.) It makes more sense to direct resources to the things your company does best while simultaneously optimizing your network by leveraging the expertise and resources of a managed services provider. Let your internal IT staff focus on core competencies, rather than juggling whatever IT challenges happen to come up today.
Do More with Less

Think about all the money you currently spend on your network. Then, before you get a headache, think how much you
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can save by shifting capital expenses to operational expenses. Pay as you go and pay only for what youre actually using. It makes good economic sense.
Get Better Quality-of-Service

With an Application Delivery Network, you can maximize application performance by using granular quality-of-service (QoS) controls to regulate traffic and increase the capacity of your WAN through application-specific optimization techniques. You can get the most out of your WAN investments with MPLS+.
Gain Peace of Mind

As Chapter 3 notes, one of the most recent trends in managed services is the development of SLAs. These SLAs come with strong verification and reporting capabilities so you know that your MSP is living up to its side of the bargain.
End Up with Better Management

You cant manage bandwidth if you dont know whats on the WAN. But with enhanced visibility, you can see all the traffic on your network, allowing you to set policies and priorities that keep your business-critical applications moving while slowing down lower-priority traffic and blocking threats. Better visibility also means that you can monitor end-users experience of the applications they work with. Plus, you can get reports that let you understand user behavior how employees are actually using the network on a day-to-day basis. You can sum up the benefits of better visibility in one word: control. And when it comes to managing network traffic, thats exactly what you want.
Speed Up Business-Critical Applications

Enhanced visibility gives you a detailed picture of whats on the network, so you can speed up the applications that are central
Chapter 4: Ten ADN Managed Services Benefits
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to your business, while slowing down or blocking everything else. An ADN can optimize legacy applications over the WAN and deliver a host of SaaS and Web 2.0 applications securely and reliably.
Fine-Tune Network Policies

With hundreds of applications zipping around, how does the network know what traffic you consider good, what you consider bad, and what doesnt worry you all that much? To complicate matters further, some traffic watching videos, for example may be business-related in some cases and purely recreational in others. You can set all the policies you like, but they wont do much good without the technology to back them up. With the visibility an ADN offers and support for authentication, you can set granular policies right down to the level of groups and users. MPLS+ lets you combine understanding of the user with understanding of the application so that you can better line up your network with your business needs.
Keep Users Connected Anywhere

The proliferation of branch offices, outsourcing, telecommuting, and an ever-more-mobile workforce means that your endusers may be anywhere in the world. At the same time, your applications may be housed in a central data center or out there in the cloud somewhere. As applications and data cross the network, it takes time for the packets to travel. This network latency can combine with issues, such as too little bandwidth and recreational Web surfing to create sluggish applications and file transfers. Plus, when business-critical traffic crosses the Internet, optimization becomes more of a challenge. An ADN provides the visibility, acceleration, and security that lets you control user experience and access no matter where your users happen to be.
Enhance Security
Your companys digital assets customer lists, trade secrets, financial data are some of its most valuable, and you need
22

to keep that information safe. In addition, you need to keep all kinds of malware out of your network and make sure that traffic and applications crossing the Internet remain secure. With ADN infrastructure from Blue Coat, you get the security benefits you need, including scanning to protect against malware; filtering of Web sites and content; a centrally managed, distributed security gateway; granular policy management; and real-time reporting even for mobile workers.
Get Real-Time Reporting

Whats happening on the network not an hour ago, not even five minutes ago, but right now? With an ADN, you know, because you have real-time reporting. Measure Web traffic performance, errors, and streaming traffic levels. Assess security risks, get anti-virus reports, and track iffy activity by users, all based on real-time scans.
Make Branch Offices Direct-to-Net

Some companies approach the issue of branch office security by backhauling all traffic from the branch to headquarters and from there out to the Internet. But this approach can cause performance problems, particularly when the backhaul is a long haul. An ADN lets you eliminate backhauling and go directly to the Net. A Direct-to-Net approach speeds up application performance while reducing traffic on the WAN.
Get the Most out of Your Network

MPLS+ combines the advantages of an ADN with the benefits of MPLS, offering the spectrum of managed services in a single platform. With MPLS+, you get unmatched visibility, acceleration, and security and thats the way to get the most out of your network.
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As more applications move onto the network, bandwidth use grows, and WAN investment becomes more critical. Increasingly, customers will look for managed acceleration, visibility, and security services to deliver applications, improve performance, and create a compelling user experience.
Navigate the ins and outs of managed services Optimize your network performance using managed services Free up your business to focus on what it does best using managed services Join other businesses taking this route
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BLUE COAT MANAGED SOLUTIONS EDITION

Managed Services For Dummies, Blue Coat Managed Solutions Edition

About This Book

Managed Services For Dummies

Icons Used in This Book

Making the Move to Managed Services

So What Are Managed Services, Anyway?

Managed Services For Dummies

The Evolution of WAN Services

Chapter 1: Making the Move to Managed Services

Multiprotocol label switching

Managed Services For Dummies

Value-Added Service Opportunities: Cloud Computing and SaaS

Chapter 1: Making the Move to Managed Services

Why Service Providers Are Moving to Managed Services

Managed Services For Dummies

Service Delivery Options

What Managed Services Can Do for Your Business

Putting It All Together: Application Delivery Networks

Getting Familiar with ADN

Managed Services For Dummies

ADN Managed Services: The Blue Coat Approach

Chapter 2: Putting It All Together: Application Delivery Networks

Managed Services For Dummies

Chapter 2: Putting It All Together: Application Delivery Networks

Managed Services For Dummies

Putting It All Together

Managed Services and SLAs

Proactive Planning: ServiceLevel Agreements

Managed Services For Dummies

Out with the Old: Old-School SLAs

Ring in the New: ApplicationAware SLAs

Chapter 3: Managed Services and SLAs

Managed Services For Dummies

Ten or So Ways ADN Managed Services Benefit Your Business

Focus on What You Do Best

Do More with Less

Managed Services For Dummies

Get Better Quality-of-Service

Gain Peace of Mind

End Up with Better Management

Speed Up Business-Critical Applications

Chapter 4: Ten ADN Managed Services Benefits

Fine-Tune Network Policies

Keep Users Connected Anywhere

Managed Services For Dummies

Get Real-Time Reporting

Make Branch Offices Direct-to-Net

Get the Most out of Your Network

Want more information on

Blue Coats Application Delivery Network infrastructure? FREE DOWNLOADS

Application Delivery Network

Also download your free eBook of Managed Services For Dummies at

Managed services improve WAN

service levels and boost

Managed services for

ISBN: 978-0-470-54290-3 Not resaleable

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