What Are the Traits of an Effective Network Administrator?
In order to provide the level of reliability that management has come to expect, network administrators need to continue to exhibit some of the same attributes that they have always exhibited (e.g., tenacity, attention to detail and responsiveness). Network administrators, however, also need to be adaptable enough to change as the job evolves. This includes having the desire and ability to learn new technologies. In addition, because the job now requires ensuring the availability of applications, a level of software fluency is also a requirement.
Even though the role of the network administrator has changed significantly over the last several years, there is no reason to believe that the job will not continue to change. With that in mind, the following is a set of ten attributes for what it will take to be a successful network administrator on a going forward basis.
1. Adaptability
Technologies change over time. Network administrators must feel comfortable enough with their abilities so that they do not resist the replacement of a well-understood legacy technology with an emerging technology.
2. Desire to Learn
Going forward, network administrators will be faced with a widening array of technologies that they will have to support. In order to be successful, network administrators must look forward to learning about these new technologies.
3. Ability to Learn
Being both willing and excited about learning is necessary for success, but it is not sufficient. To be successful, network administrators must have the capability to learn about new technologies primarily from on-the-job experience supplemented by whatever the network administrator can gather from reading a manual or a book.
4. Software Fluency
As a minimum, this means the ability to understand the information flow in today’s n-tier applications as well as the information flow in the emerging set of Web services-based applications. In some cases this also means the ability to read software code in enough detail to understand at a conceptual level what the code is doing.
5. Tenacity
This never goes out of style for a network administrator. The bottom line is that the problems that a network administrator deals with can be daunting and simple solutions will often not work. To be successful, a network administrator must be tenacious enough to stick with a problem until it is resolved.
6. Attention to Detail
Outages of any sort are no longer acceptable. As a result, network administrators must make sure that anything they do, such as changing the configuration of a router, is done correctly and that it does not cause a network failure.
7. Responsiveness
While eliminating problems is certainly the goal, it is not always possible. In those cases where there is a problem, it is important for the network administrator to respond quickly to the problem – ideally before the end user is impacted.
8. Recognizing IT’s Role
A relatively small percentage of companies are in the business of providing IT services. For all of the other companies, the role of IT is to allow the business to function. Successful network administrators must realize this and not be smug about technology.
9. Understanding the Business
In order for network administrators to be able to demonstrate business value they need to have a good understanding of the company’s key business processes. This type of understanding is necessary in order to ensure that IT provides the maximum business value.
10. Business Acumen
Getting buy-in from senior management requires more than just detailed technical knowledge. It also requires being able to develop a business case — whether that is to demonstrate the ROI of an investment or to demonstrate how an investment in IT improves one or more of the organizations key processes.
In order to relate the value of network management to what senior business managers care about, network administrators must be able to recognize that the role of IT is to support the business and not to deploy IT for IT’s sake. They must have an understanding of the company’s business and have enough business acumen to establish the connection between network management and the company’s business objectives.
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