Strategy is about resources
All strategy is about resources.
What do you have?
What do you need?
How will you use them?
The only strategy that exists, is the one implied by the above. Slides, documents, speeches, and any other form of communication is not strategy, per se. There is a role for inspiring the troops, but let’s call that leadership, rather than strategy. Strategy is what you are and are not doing; strategy is how you are or are not using resources. Anything else is an illusion.
Knowledge & Wisdom
Knowledge is critical to great resource allocation:
Problem
Options
Opportunity
Traps
Most importantly, clarity on what success looks like. That one unifying thought around which everything self-organizes; that becomes the focal point of decisions and actions.
Network resources include:
Routing engines (CPU & memory)
Link capacity
Switching capacity
Queuing capacity
Forwarding table capacity
Planning capacity
Operations capacity
Budgets for all of the above
Understanding the problem includes understanding what leads to exhaust of network resources. Resource capacity, and budget envelopes, are key constraints in a network strategy. Strategy entails achieving success within these constraints and/or the probability of raising the ceiling of these constraints. Understanding the problem also includes understanding how complexity arises over time.
Understanding the options includes understanding the capabilities of network solutions and functional groups such as planning and operations. Pursuing one strategy may require significant capacity and/or capabilities in the planning function. If that does not exist, and there is no path to getting it, then such a strategy is not a realistic option.
Good strategy pounces on opportunity. Understanding when a problem can be attacked or a resource acquired, and then acting quickly.
Good strategy recognizes traps. One path forward may be seductive, but it may also be a trap. Lowering timers may lead to quicker updates, but it may also lead to routing engine exhaust. There are always tradeoffs. These tradeoffs must be driven by priorities and the focal point of the strategy, the critical outcome.
Strategy is dynamic, not static. Not blowing in the wind, changing at a whim. However, when conditions are favorable, plans should be modified.
To paraphrase Sun Tzu, know yourself, know your network, know the problem you are attacking, make many calculations and preparations before the battle begins, avoid protracted campaigns to overcome problems, do not tilt at windmills, deploy your resources where they will move the needle the most, consider the combined effect of everything you are doing; do these things and you need not fear the challenge.
Network Architecture
The fundamental responsibility of network architecture is to define success in networking terms.
It is the ability to engage with business/mission owners and negotiate/agree on a realistic definition of outcomes. What is the value proposition that the overall organization intends to deliver? What will be necessary for the network to support that value proposition and value chain?
In addition to resources, physics and economics are constraints. Latency of X is required? The universe has a speed limit. Need to lower latency? Then distance has to be reduced. Time = distance / speed. Want to move massive amounts of information every second? Bigger links and route forwarding may be needed. Want to maximize optimal routing? Bigger route engines may be needed to support bigger routing areas and a higher volume of control plane information processing by each router.
Network architecture defines the big levers of achieving success; key resources and how they are organized in space/time.
Network Design
How specifically will the architecture be engineered and implemented? Network design.
Requires detailed, in-depth understanding, of implementation behavior and idiosyncrasies. If we do this, how will this or that router respond in reality. Which implementation capabilities can be utilized to achieve architectural goals? The in-depth understanding can exist in tools or in people. The in-depth understanding can be obtained over time as well: start out cautious and adjust implementation dials over time.
Leadership
Good leaders know when they are throwing resources at lost causes.
Don’t have a strategy based on operations excellence if there is no path to the necessary operations capacity and capability. This will exhaust resources, including people, and the battle will be lost. Leadership inspires, nurtures, listens/learns, and disciplines execution / execution resources.
Conclusion
Network strategy is about defining success, understanding the problem domain, having a well-understood architecture, executing within constraints, and jumping on opportunities, while avoiding traps. This is what all strategy is about. In networking, we just have our own taxonomy for referring to these things.