How to evaluate a network monitoring tool?

Network downtime can prove to be exorbitant to your business, affecting your organization's finances, operations, and reputation. Studies estimate that the average cost of downtime is about $9000 per minute; that too excluding the cost of SLAs and penalties. This shows how important networks are to your business

To ensure network health, you need a robust network monitoring tool. But there are so many options out there, and what works for one IT environment may not work for another. So how will you find the right one?

This blog is here to guide you through these considerations and help you find the network monitoring solution that fits your ITOM needs best.

Understand your network requirements

Ask yourself these questions to assess the unique needs of your network before evaluating the tools.

What is your network architecture?

Think about your network. Do you have a hybrid setup, with an on-premises setup, and cloud based instances? If the answer is yes, then you need a one-stop-solution that provides comprehensive support and unified visibility from a single console.

What is your IT budget?

Your budget can make or break your choice. In this world of economic uncertainty, stretching your budget without proper plans can be risky. Define your needs, set a realistic budget and shortlist tools that align with both the parameters.

What's your scalability plan?

As your business grows, you might plan plan to scale up the network. Keeping this in mind, it is wise to then select a network monitoring software that is able to scale up its resources, device support without compromising on performance and efficiency.

Are you meeting compliance requirements?

Compliance is not an option but mandatory for every organization, especially if your company falls under the BFSI, healthcare or government sectors, where there are strict regulations in place. The right network management software is one that not just captures the data, but stores logs, provides audit-ready documentation, and enables your company to align with the industry standards.

Factors to consider when selecting a network management software

1. Observability vs network monitoring

Today, networks span across on-premises infrastructures and cloud platforms (both public and private). To digitize their business operations, companies embrace modern technologies like SD-WAN, containerization, and virtualization. All this leads to a complex, distributed, and hybrid network environment. Traditional network monitoring tools solely track surface-level metrics in isolation, which leads to data silos. This is where Observability steps in. From collecting rich telemetry data, correlating them and identifying patterns, observability tools detect issues before they affect end-users. But here’s the question: are you ready for the trade-off? Many observability solutions price their offerings based on the volume of data and insights they process. This can mean exorbitant costs for an enterprise-wide, distributed network. So before investing, it’s worth asking—will the insights you gain truly justify the spend and are they aligned with your business goals? If the answer is yes, then an observability-driven monitoring tool becomes a powerful enabler—helping you detect, diagnose, and resolve issues before they snowball into downtime or business disruptions..

2. Tailored insights for every stakeholder

Monitoring tools are generally used by multiple stakeholders which include everyone from IT admins, network engineers to CTO and CIOs of the organization. Each role requires different kinds of data based on the duties they discharge. For example, NOC team members and admins might require details of alerts for troubleshooting and quick escalation. While C-suite executives care about trend reports, compliance status, and performance dashboards. With the right data to the right person in an appropriate format at the right time ensures swift decision making..

3. Deployment approach

Each organization follows a different deployment method based on the compliance mandates, scalability requirements, and data privacy concerns. Some companies prefer on-premises setup for regulatory reasons, others might prefer cloud options to reduce CapEx. For example, even if you can afford your own data center today, as your network grows, it could become challenging to increase the compute and storage resources needed to meet the growing demand. That’s why it’s important to choose a vendor that also offers the flexibility to migrate to private or public clouds when your business needs evolve..

4. AI and Automation

In this AI age, automation has gone past performing simple tasks like restarting services, running scripts, or escalating incidents. With AI in IT Operations (AIOps), your monitoring systems can analyze incoming stream of data in real-time, detect patterns to identify issues quickly. AIOps solution can also perform event deduplication and reduce the alert noise. Apart, from this topology Topology-based correlation, Time-based event correlation are now possible with AI. Consider vendors who invest in AI/ML capabilities such as predictive analytics, anomaly detection, and intelligent incident response. However, it is important to stay cautious of the AI hype. Focus on the AI capabilities that really solve your unique needs and not buy into the buzzwords. Finally, pay attention to pricing models. Some vendors market AI as a separate module that requires additional licensing. Always clarify pricing metrics before investing..

5. Integrations

Network monitoring tools usually help you detect problems in your network and give you direction as to how to troubleshoot, but to turn it into actions, you need other complementary tools that work in tandem with network monitoring tools. So, when considering an ITOM tool, consider will it in provide integrations with IT Service Management (ITSM) system, like ServiceNow or Jira Service Management, or link up with collaboration platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams to bring everyone together? The ultimate goal is that your ITOM tool should integrated with other tool seamlessly, that you feel like you are working in one unified system and not juggling multiple tools to manage network issues..

6. Reporting and compliance

Monitoring tools that store historical reports, logs and generate audit files enable you to ensure compliance with industry standards and meet SLAs. Based on the regions or the industry sector, the compliance requirements vary. For instance, GDPR in EU mandates the storage of data in regional data centers to ensure data privacy. Healthcare providers must comply with HIPAA to safeguard patient data. Non-compliance can lead to SLA breaches, hefty penalties and reputational damage. A good network monitoring tool helps minimize these risks by maintaining log histories, generating audit reports, and raising non-compliance alerts to flag violations before they escalate..

7. Support

Investing in a robust tool with a rich feature set is not just enough, the vendor should provide active support whenever needed to ensure timely issue resolution, and guide on product usage as your monitoring needs evolve. Does the vendor offer on-site onboarding? Will they train your IT staff, perform regular health checks, and actively help you achieve your business outcomes? These factors should be just as critical in your evaluation as the tool’s features themselves. Gather feedback of peers from popular review sites like Capterra, GetApp, TrustRadius and get insights from analyst platforms like Gartner to evaluate the support system of the tools you consider. .

OpManager: The right solution for businesses of every size

ManageEngine OpManager is a solution that ticks all the boxes mentioned above, bringing everything together in a single, comprehensive platform. With observability-driven monitoring, flexible deployment options, centralized visibility, automation, and extensive reporting capabilities, OpManager helps organizations eliminate silos, improve efficiency, and simplify network monitoring. It offers out of the box integrations with hundreds of major third party tools, ensuring faster incident response and smooth workflow across your IT infrastructure.

Do not take our word for it! Explore it yourself with our free edition and get a first hand experience of OpManager..