Application Performance Management

 “In today’s environment, networks have become very complex. With higher network speeds and connectivity solutions, new technologies and methodologies on how companies can run their business in the cloud provides a set of challenges for a Managed Service offering.”

So say officials of Datacom Systems (News - Alert), who have published a recent study on the subject.

Earlier this year at VoiceCon in Orlando, Datacom Systems showcased its VoIP offerings, according to TMC’s (News - Alert) Hans Lewis, “which provide a secure, reliable, and scalable platform to support VoIP monitoring and recording applications.”

Organizations are consolidating and centralizing their resources to reduce cost structures, improve efficiencies and centralize management, as you probably well know. And if you’re doing that, you’ve no doubt already found that “keeping operations running with minimal disruption and limited staffing to manage and maintain the network resources is a constant challenge.”

There’s a lot of expense, time and hassle involved in managing and maintaining tools for security, business continuity and compliance requirements, getting the IT staff trained and all that. “Even consolidating data centers and reducing staff” doesn’t solve the problem, the Datacom study found, since “the need for specialized appliances at central and remote sites are still required to assure they can meet all the business requirements and compliance or regulations that may be enforced for their business.”

Managed services provide a company a way to reduce staff at remote sites and to identify network issues 24/7, according to the study, “in order to maintain the business operations from a centralized location. With the proper tools at the central location, trained technical staff are able

to perform remote problem resolution or identify resources that may need to be deployed to solve a problem.”

“What is the most effective way to provide the necessary data back to the central location?” the study asks, finding that since the remote networks still need to ensure they can satisfy the security, business continuity and compliance requirements, “there is still a need to place tools on site.”

It found that in fact, the most traditional approach for the network tools to be connected into the network makes use of SPAN Ports or Port Mirrors to gather data: “Once collected, traffic gets routed back to the central location for additional analysis. Although this may work, there is an alternative way to route traffic more effectively.”