If your enterprise is pursuing digital transformation, it’s likely that things are only getting more complicated for your network. A network management strategy can help you avoid adding a maze of network management tools that add further complexity.
One network management tool would generally be ideal, but it’s often challenging to get everything you need in a single solution. Here are the three considerations that generally lead to the adoption of a management tool:
Ease of Use: IT teams are more pressed for time than ever, so if a network management solution improves efficiency in setting up or modifying monitoring, that’s often a solid vote for implementation. Teams are also looking for solutions that proactively alert them when there’s unusual activity on the network and allow them to easily gather information.
Teams often adopt a new solution because they have an important use case that isn’t covered by the particular tool they’re using. And many teams are looking for solutions with an application programming interface (API) that makes it easy to monitor a new virtual machine or application.
Cost: This is always a consideration when debating using one tool or several in a network management strategy. In many cases, a single tool becomes impossible because the introduction of a flood of new monitoring entities falls outside of licensing structures. Open source tools generally provide good protection against these cost issues.
Functionality: In the cloud era, where threats change by the minute, the evolution of monitoring technology tends to happen slower than the growth of monitoring needs. New tools emerge quickly, and IT teams are excited to deploy them. The nature of monitoring a moving target means that even a tool that works today could be immediately obsolete.
In order to balance these needs with the practicality of avoiding an overly complex and layered monitoring stack, enterprises need a solid network management strategy. Three elements should be included in such a strategy:
- Clear Policy Guidelines: A new network management tool can only be added to improve ease of use, reduce costs, or enhance functionality. Personal preference is not a reason for deploying a new tool, nor is professional experience with a particular tool.
- Replace, Don’t Add: When deploying a new network management tool, make it a general policy that another tool must be removed. When possible, invest in unitaskers, which tend to address groups or types of technology, such as mobile devices or a certain type of traffic.
- Determine Whether You Might Invest in a Manager of Managers: If there are reasons that you need to maintain a more complex set of management tools, consider placing a network management tool over your other tools, working as a single dashboard to alert you to network changes. You can also manage your other tools through this single management tool.
To learn more about solutions available for creating a network management strategy, contact us at Cloud Source. We can help you evaluate your needs and choose a monitoring solution that fits your budget and your practical requirements.