This article discusses a set of products and services that will be used in large organizations. Before we get into the trends bit, let us first define the Enterprise. There are as many definitions of the enterprise as there are people attempting the definition. For the purposes of this discussion, we will define the enterprise as any organization that has a physical presence in more than one geographical region and which requires its IT infrastructure to be available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Heterogeneous network

Increasingly, enterprises, and even smaller corporates, are using heterogeneous networks. That is, they are mixing and matching operating systems (OSs) on their network servers, instead of having one OS on every server.

Initially, the case for deciding on any one OS across the network was very strong, particularly from the point of view of interoperability and system administration. But today, almost no one will subscribe to that view. There are two major reasons for this. First, migrating from one OS to another is an even more difficult and time consuming task than making them interoperate. Second, it is an accepted fact today that each OS and the applications that run on it have their own areas of strength. And no single OS tops in all network requirements. Combined, these two factors are ensuring that enterprise networks are strongly heterogeneous.

SAN

Storage Area Networks (SAN) are the direct result of the explosion of the number of servers on the corporate network, each with their own terabytes of data. Managing all this can be quite a nightmare. With SANs, the storage part is separated from the servers and set up on a separate system, with high speed (fiber channel) connects to the rest of the network. This way, the server is left to handle the applications it is running, without having to bother about managing the data also.

Not every Tom, Dick, and Harry will need, or be able to afford, SANs. SANs are for those who have a huge amount of live data on their servers, running into terabytes. Also, the bill for setting up a SAN can be pretty stiff, running into a couple of crores just to get started. So you know why there are not too many SANs around.

ASP

In the world of the Application Service Provider (ASP), you would not buy applications—you’d rent them over the Net. Again, you will not rent full applications, but only those parts that you need to use. For example, if your need is word processing, you will not buy Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect. Instead, you will rent a word processing application. And while renting it, you will not rent the thesaurus if you do not want to use it. Basically, the service provider will set up and maintain the application. You will access it over the Web, ideally on your browser. Your data could also reside in the servers of the ASP.

ASPs were supposed to become big business this year, but did not. This is primarily because of paucity of bandwidth. You need quite a bit of bandwidth to run an application off a server and store and access all your data there. We are not yet ready with all that bandwidth. Even where the bandwidth is there, concerns of data security kick in. Not everyone is sure that they can entrust their valuable data to someone else to store. Also, there has to be significant savings in cost or effort for corporates to switch over from the current owned model to the ASP model. ASPs are still in the process of convincing corporates that that indeed is the case.