Planning enterprise networks to meet critical business needs

This paper presents a set of analyses that start from the business goals of the enterprise and map them to a set of technical network design requirements (as well as a corresponding set of applications requirements) as well as verifying the correctness of the derived architecture. To do this, one must start by interviewing key business and technical decision makers to understand their drivers, their views of the role of technology in the enterprise, and their views of each other and their roles in the decision making process. In many cases this may in fact, be the first time that the business and technical management have had a formal discussion or interchange about enterprise networking. Following these interviews, a six step process can be followed to derive both an enterprise architecture and the products and services necessary to implement it: (1) determination/quantification of key business drivers and goals; (2) determination of networked applications supporting the business goals; (3) network requirements quantification; (4) network architecture development; (5) product and service selection; and (6) verification of the design. This paper focuses on why and how to link enterprise network requirements to core business needs and provides an overview of key analyses for determining enterprise network requirements. These analyses lead to the successful deployment of an enterprise network that truly supports the enterprise rather than simply connecting it.