I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Matt Bolton, vice president of the network management division at Quest Software (News - Alert), Inc., about some of the developments facing the network monitoring and management industries. The following are his insights:
The proliferation of new applications, communication devices and network users makes network monitoring more challenging than ever before. Making matters worse: IT managers are inundated with different software products, each promising to be the perfect solution. IT managers often are attracted to the appeal of “free,” which can be fine for individuals and small networks. Move a little higher up in the food chain, however, and you can be looking at price tags of $100,000 or more. So, how do you find the right solution for your business? What features should it include? Obviously, it should provide quick ROI, and include automation and a short mean time to repair (MTTR), but here are some other things to consider:
Simple Integration
Seamless integration into your existing software will decrease your deployment costs, resources…and time!
More Than Monitoring
Maximize reliability through analysis. Look for network management systems that help predict problems, and have automatic remediation and remote capabilities. This is especially important for areas such as network traffic and cloud management, which, if not working properly, can result in costly lost productivity.
Policies
Use a system that helps IT managers enforce best IT practices and compliance policies to make maintenance and management of the network easier.
Centralized Dashboard
Switching between multiple tools and software can be tedious and time consuming. Replace multiple tools with a single product that has a web-accessible comprehensive platform, with automated configuration and a centralized dashboard from which you can monitor and manage your network.
The Ability to Manage
Your network management solution should provide scalability and real-time views, and allow you to manage your entire network – including devices, traffic, applications, and cloud assets.
At the end of the day, IT managers should have the ability to not just monitor the network, but to monitor, manage, fix, analyze, predict and remotely access network problems using a single solution.
Both Gigamon (News - Alert) and Quest Software offer network monitoring and management software offering many of the features mentioned above.
Erin Monda recently graduated from W.C.S.U. with a degree in professional writing. She primarily writes about network technologies, including cloud computing, virtualization and network optimization, however she also has a focus on E911 technologies and legislation.
Edited by Erin Monda