Design simplicity sounds appealing. After all, it would be easier to understand, manage, and theoretically expand. But Kevin Myers wrote a piece on why this can ultimately be a failing. He was having a discussion at Network Field Day about the differences in an LTE network versus an enterprise LAN. LTE just seems to work, even though it’s serving a vary large user base. Kevin notes that this is because enterprise networks aren’t often designed by engineers with their intended purpose in mind, rather a vendor supplies the network and the engineer is in charge of implementing within that given design. These are often instructed to be simple, but as businesses merge and needs change, the network designed to be simple is often unable to scale easily to a new complex environment. It’s an interesting read that touches on why a lot of enterprise technology decisions have more to do with culture than anything else.
