The Triangle

Issue date: 2/4/05 Section: Sci-Tech

Media Credit: http://www.exinda.com The Exinda Optimizer.

Exinda Networks latest development may lead to the next big jump in productivity on the job. The Australian company, which specializes in network management and monitoring software, said on Feb. 1 that it has developed software to monitor employee bandwidth usage. While bandwidth-monitoring systems that track usage and monitor URLs visited by wandering employees are not new, Exinda's software translates the lost time and wasted bandwidth into a dollar figure.

Con Nikolouzakis, director of Exinda Networks, believes his software will make sure employees are held accountable for their time. With this software, employees could be handed a bill at the end of the month to account for wasted resources. Additionally, Nikolouzakis says his software can be used to reduce bandwidth for a particular user. This software can also block access to individual sites.

This feature is an addon to the Exinda Optimizer, which allows LAN administrators to assign priorities to network traffic. For example, Telnet sessions can be allotted more bandwidth than email.

Each employee's total internet use could be monitored and turned into a percentage of the company's total bandwidth. If an employer wants to crack down on an employee, he or she could ask the employee to explain for the URLs that were visited.

The employee could theoretically be held financially responsible for the sites that were determined not to be business critical. This software could also be useful for companies to analyze their bandwidth usage. It can create reports in many different formats, like HTML and PDF, making it a useful tool to do resource evaluation.

Employee bandwidth abuse and monitoring has been a hot issue in corporations everywhere. Technology has given employees a way to conduct non-business operations on company time. Over 80 perecent of companies have Internet access policies, or IAPs, according to a Websense survey. These agreements between employers and employees generally allow for limited personal use of the network, with the company reserving the right to monitor all activity and completely block some sites.

Of course, technology is a two-way street. In some cases, it has given employers an extra set of eyes to monitor employees with. The Massachusetts highway department wanted to give snow-plow drivers GPS-enabled phones. The drivers threaten to stay at home during the first major-snow storm. Eventually, concessions were made and the drivers agreed to use the phones on a temporary basis.

Technology allows us to be very productive with our professional and personal lives from anywhere. Exinda's new technology is just the next step on the road to finding a balance that is fair for both employers and employees.

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