March Madness Should Not Rest Solely on IT’s Shoulders

March 26, 2015 No Comments

Featured article by Steve Riley, Deputy CTO at Riverbed Technology

The start of the annual NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament has begun and should present a rare luxury for IT departments: a potential problem they can actually anticipate and prepare for, not a sudden and unexpected middle-of-the-night fire drill. However, every year after the tournament ends we see the same statistics about the problems employees caused by streaming games over their companies’ networks. One of the primary reasons for the recurring problems is just how much that burden increases every year as more games are available in high definition on an ever-expanding selection of devices. The solution is not to try to add additional bandwidth to accommodate the spikes in usage, nor is it to try to block all recreational video streaming. There are several steps companies can take to keep network performance from faltering without ruining employee morale. Some fall under IT’s area of responsibility, but others require other typically non-tech savvy departments and personnel, such as HR and business unit or remote office managers, to play the role of point guard.

Not too long ago, streaming an NCAA tournament game meant an employee had to squint at a low bandwidth feed playing in a small pop-up window. Today, not only are those streams in full-screen HD, but thanks to the “TV Anywhere” initiative the NCAA and its broadcast partner Turner Sports launched just last year, every single game is available on any connected device, including tablets and smartphones. This language in the press release the NCAA issued last year should make IT administrators start to perspire:

“NCAA March Madness Live will offer free streaming across all devices…and is designed to be either a primary or companion viewing experience available to fans across a collection of screens including online, mobile and tablet. NCAA March Madness Live will feature social and interactive components to provide portable access to the tournament.”

So not only is every game available to stream in HD, but fans are encouraged to watch a game on one device, and simultaneously use a second device to view different angles and interact in real-time on social media platforms! An employee could watch just one game on his computer, his smartphone and his tablet. One user, three streams, and each stream requires about 650 Kbps and up to 1.8 Mbps for HD.

During last year’s tournament, fans watched 664 million hours of live games on their TVs and online, including 64 million live online streams during the first two weeks. That represents a 40 percent increase over 2013, including a whopping 71 percent increase in the use of mobile devices.[i]

How IT Can Prepare

Here are four steps IT can take before this year’s tournament begins on Thursday, March 19 (not counting the play-in games earlier in the week that are at night and should not place a strain on networks:

1. Figure out what “normal” looks like: Get a baseline of network capacity and how to control flow to and from remote offices and other external sites. Ideally IT can use a single management console to establish the automated baseline of performance from multiple gateways across the enterprise infrastructure, including the WAN and LAN, and see exactly why performance has fallen below that baseline.

2. Provide dashboards to remote sites: providing the appropriate business unit leader or site manager with visibility into network performance at the specific site can help IT better monitor the entire network. That person may not be part of the IT team and not as technically proficient, so the dashboard should provide a detailed, yet simple-to-understand real-time view of what application(s) may be causing lag.

3. Know your network and understand potential bottlenecks

4. Tame network bandwidth between offices and Internet choke points

How the Company Can Prepare

Employees cannot be blamed for recreational video streaming, which includes YouTube and other applications they may not think are in the same class as streaming live sporting events, if they are not aware of company policy (if one exists) or do not understand the potential negative impacts on the business. The responsibility for remedying both scenarios does not fall on IT alone. IT is responsible for maintaining the performance of the network and systems, not for monitoring employees’ activities and disciplining violators. However, IT’s input should not be marginalized.

Business leaders and HR should take the lead in establishing and communicating a policy for an acceptable network usage based on IT’s recommendations for ensuring quality of service (Qos) that includes both company-issued and personal devices. Employees must also understand the consequences of violations.

IT can take the lead in educating employees on the direct correlation between network lag or outages and the company’s ability to make money. Go old school and step up to the white board to do the math. For example, if a web server is a revenue generator, take the number of orders or dollars per hour (e.g., “normally we take in $50,000 per hour”) and then subtract the dollars that won’t come in if throughput for the Internet connection is reduced by 90 percent. The network isn’t completely inaccessible, but with only 10 percent available to the public and users, the number after the “equals” sign should be an effective and easy-to-understand lesson.

Perhaps most importantly, make it clear that the policy and the negative impact network performance can have on the business is not limited to March Madness or World Cup matches. The policy should guide employees’ usage of recreational network usage during any workday.

The distinction between work and not work is evaporating. Employees want to be able to check their bank statements or send emails to their doctors or family members while at work, and are answering emails and access work files when they’re at home. Trying to deny access to any applications or systems except those approved for work is not only a waste of IT resources, but it can also lower morale. At the same time, saturating the company network with traffic that isn’t related to the business can negatively affect revenue. It’s not just an IT issues, it’s a business issue.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., a global outplacement and executive coaching consultancy firm, it is unlikely that a few days of March Madness distraction will impact the company’s bottom line. Taking a hardline on office online streaming, on the other hand, could have a dramatic impact on the bottom line, if it leads to increased turnover or causes employees to become disengaged, which will not only lower work both the quantity and quality of work output. The firm recommends instead that employers figure out creative ways to use events like March Madness to increase employee engagement and boost camaraderie, such promoting a company-wide office pool that is free to enter, and streaming the games to one or two big screens in a recreational or conference room.[ii] That can bring people together and let them have fun without taxing the network.

Steve Riley is Technical Leader in the Office of the CTO at Riverbed Technology. Steve actively works to raise awareness of the technical and business benefits of Riverbed’s performance optimization solutions, particularly as they relate to accelerating the enterprise adoption of cloud computing. His specialties include information security, compliance, privacy, and policy. Steve has spoken at hundreds of events around the world, including RSA, SANS, Black Hat Windows, InfoSec US, (ISC)2, SIIA, IANS, TechEd, DevConnections, The Experts Conference, Cloud Expo, Cloud Connect, CloudCamp, and Interop. He is co-author of Protect Your Windows Network, contributed a chapter to Auditing Cloud Computing, has published numerous articles, and conducted technical reviews of several data networking and telecommunications books. Before Steve joined Riverbed, he was the cloud security evangelist at Amazon Web Services and a security consultant and advisor at Microsoft. Steve is a global moderator of Kubuntu Forums, a support community for Ubuntu’s KDE-based distribution. Besides lurking in the Internet’s dark alleys and secret passages, he enjoys freely sharing his opinions about the intersection of technology and culture. Contact him at steve.riley@riverbed.com; check out his occasional writings at http://blog.riverbed.com.

[i] Greg Quick, “Mobile viewership soars in setting March Madness record,” Mobile Sports Report, April 1, 2014 http://www.mobilesportsreport.com/2014/04/mobile-viewership-soars-in-setting-march-madness-record/