Benefits (and Detriments) of Standardizing Network Equipment in a Global Organization

Fri Dec 23 20:36:10 UTC 2016

Hail NANOGers!

A global hospitality organization with 100+ locations recently asked us how
to weigh the importance of standardizing infrastructure across all their
locations versus allowing each international location to select on their
own kit.

My first instinct was to jump on my favorite search engine and look for an
authoritative document covering the topic. To my surprise I have not been
able to find such a thing. So I've begun to write one myself, and as I
start I've realized that:
 a) This is likely to be a document that will be helpful to the wider
community, and
 b) This is likely a topic that many of you have a great deal of knowledge
and personal experience.

If you have pointers to an existing doc, please share.

If you have a case study, lesson learned, data point, or even just a strong
opinion; I'd love to hear it!

My intention is to put this together BCOP style, but with more of a focus
on why rather than how this time around. Feel free to reply on or off list.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Cheers,
~Chris

PS - I won't use any direct quotes without advance permission and I'll
provide attribution to all that contribute meaningfully.

-- 
@ChrisGrundemann
http://chrisgrundemann.com