Network performance management

1. Network performance management
Any IT Manager worth his salt knows a corporate network cannot run efficiently without
some degree of network performance management. But with corporate networks
becoming progressively more complex and being required to support increasingly
sophisticated applications, how many can confidently claim their network monitoring and
performance management systems are still up to the job?
Today's enterprise networks have evolved into highly complex systems dependent on the
reliable performance of thousands of interconnected applications and devices. In the
event any one of those components degrades or fails, the performance of the business
itself is in jeopardy.
Bandwidth-hungry applications such as VOIP and IPTV, real-time online communication
and collaboration tools, cloud computing, and social networking are now common
features of the business environment and are placing immense pressure on the corporate
network. Meanwhile, increasing network complexity has produced many more potential
points of degradation and failure, from a bulldozer slicing a cable in the countryside to a
misconfigured firewall device clamping down on business critical network traffic through
the data centre.
But whilst IT managers may be aware of the risks associated with network degradation or
downtime, the shocking truth is they often rely on legacy network performance
management tools which cannot scale to handle their entire networks, are unable to
monitor real-time degradation events or are simply too expensive to deploy over more
than a small subset of their networks.
Our customers tell us there are two main reasons why they fail to update their network
performance monitoring tools; either the IT team doesn't have the resources to oversee an
upgrade project (let alone manage the reports the tools will generate), or they have no
budget. Let's address each objection in turn.
Lack of bandwidth:
With many IT departments overworked and understaffed, it's easy to understand the
concern that upgrading network management software will take up management time
they simply don't have. As networks have become more complicated, many IT managers
have found managing applications across networks has fragmented into a wide array of
monitoring product and technology choices, and disparate processes. As a result, the
reports they generate are becoming increasingly difficult to decipher and interpret. One of
our customers recently spent eight weeks trying to create a specific report using a legacy
network performance management application. After two months of frantic hair-pulling,
he gave up and finally resorted to creating a report himself by hacking their networking

2. monitoring software's backend Oracle database and pulling the detail into an Excel
spreadsheet - a messy work-around which took another two weeks and wasn't reusable.
However, more complex networks don't have to translate into more complex reporting.
Performance management systems have come leaps and bounds in recent years and tools
are now available which have not only evolved technologically but are much more
intuitive and easy to use. So, the specific report required in the above customer example
can now be created instantly and automated using a new advanced performance
management system. The latest technology can scale from the smallest to the very largest
networks and can be easily extended to monitor new device types as they emerge on the
market. Ubiquitous modern infrastructure components, such as new routers, switches,
access points and load balancers are automatically discovered as soon as they are added
to the networks. With this level of visibility into the entire network, the IT department
must be able to view raw historic network performance, understand what is happening in
real time and make projections with detailed reports which can be generated in seconds
rather than hours.
Lack of budget:
So what about the cost argument? In the current economic climate, companies are
understandably reluctant to invest in anything other than the most business-critical
applications. But look at it this way, if a business doesn't have visibility into the profiles
of applications which are consuming bandwidth in their environment, how do they assure
their availability, and guarantee their performance over the network?
Saving money by not updating network monitoring software is a false economy. The only
alternative for those organisations with poor visibility into their infrastructure is to
blindly throw people, time and resources at an IT issue in the hope it will go away.
Trying to troubleshoot a performance problem without the right tools steals productivity
from IT and business users alike.
The network is now the foundation of any IT infrastructure. It doesn't matter how good
your applications are, whether you virtualise your data centre, or you have the most
powerful servers in the world running your data centre. If those applications or their
individual components can't communicate with each other or their servers cannot
communicate with each other or with backend databases, the application simply won't
work - no matter how powerful or expensive it might be. In a nutshell, if the network is
not running effectively all this great technology is simply a wasted investment.
Years ago network monitoring was a massive investment which would often take years
before any return was realised by which time the technology had moved on. Today it's a
different story; network performance management systems can be significantly less
expensive and can deliver demonstrable value almost immediately. Five years ago
network performance might have been seen as an IT department issue but today, clients
also need open access to network performance data to monitor service level agreements
and provide better customer service.

3. Comprehensive network performance management is no longer a luxury but a business
necessity. Modern technology is not only capable of unlimited scalability, managing
every single network element - it is also affordable and easy to use, even for users who
aren't network management specialists. When faced with the facts, the arguments that
network performance management is too costly or time consuming just don't wash any
longer.
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