The outside specialist’s job in IT is part-technician, part-detective. You’re trying to get to the bottom of surreal mysteries like “who murdered the company’s web app”.
The suspects (including the likely killer) are all rooting for you to solve the case before the next crisis hits. There’s no passing the buck: the in-house IT people and other partners are all eager to see the problem solved. But until we can pinpoint the problem, operations are on hold. The result: loss of productivity or even business continuity.
The clock is running down fast by the time we get the call. Often, the culprit isn’t a ‘who’ so much as a ‘what’: implementation problems, a software update that renders a feature inoperable, or vice-versa, or an essential change in a protocol that makes an app do funny things.
A recent example: we were called in to troubleshoot a web app for a municipality. An internal building permit app which used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Maps just wasn’t working. The app was accessed from mobile devices through a secure Area Private Network (APN), the mobility component was provided by Rogers. (It wasn’t a random call: we had helped the city develop their APN two years prior.)
The app worked perfectly, for years – until one day, it stopped working. On a normal day, building inspectors would fire up the app on their tablet or smartphone as they arrived at a physical location and use it to get to work. Instead, the maps were stalling and only loading up partway if they did anything at all. As a result, the permit system reverted to pen and paper, slowing down permit approvals and holding up many construction projects. The city needed a solution fast, so they called us, the outside specialists.
After eliminating all the obvious factors, the next order of business was deep diving into the app to understand how it behaved over the network architecture, and what it’s dependencies were. Part of this process involved conducting a deep packet analysis. We spent a couple of days analyzing the app, trying to reproduce the problem and troubleshooting. That helped us get to the root of the problem fast, showing us that the issue was related to an external dependency.
A piece of javascript code incorporated into the app was accessed from an external website. The problem appeared to be caused by a security setting that the external website provider had applied.
We knew we were getting closer to solving the mystery, but more network engineering detective work was in the offing.
Once we figured out what the problem might possibly be, we took the app offline and built a small replica of the city’s network in our laboratory. This would prove we could consistently reproduce the issue and drill down to the exact setting on the website provider’s side that would solve the issue. Our theory was right – and the problem was solved by changing the setting.
With this particular project, there were several stakeholders with a lot of combined IT expertise: Rogers, as the cellular provider, the networking group for the municipality, the city’s software developer and the website provider. They each had their own area of focus.
An outside specialist like us is able to come in and act as a liaison, talking to each ‘suspect’, investigating the scene and ultimately connecting the dots.
Aside from technical knowledge, the best outside specialists are able to leverage very different kinds of networks: the experts and colleagues that they know across the IT sector, including highly-specialized people who can get results a lot quicker than an IT generalist.
Sometimes, there’s an advantage that comes just from knowing the vendor relationships, understanding who’s leading which project and how industry insider relationships work.
For companies considering working with an outside specialist, that’s where the added value comes in: you get a big-picture person who can see how all the different pieces of network architecture connect. They know the people they need to reach. When the clock is running down, knowing those things gives your organization a head start in solving the problem. That means less time spent twiddling thumbs and more time working.
Need an outside specialist to help you solve a problem with your web app, cloud or network infrastructure? Give us a call today.
