Information technology has evolved to be a separate sector all by itself, delivering business-driven solutions, products, and consulting services. With IT organizations adapting to smarter hybrid technologies, there comes a need to constantly add new devices to upscale a network based on demand. Eventually, the expanding network will reach a level of complexity that—at a bare minimum—requires performance optimizations and the maintenance of high availability. From a network administrator's point of view, these efforts are just not enough to stay ahead of the game.
According to owllabs.com, almost two-thirds of workers surveyed last year reported feeling more productive when working remotely. Larger organizations growing every year aim at expanding across borders. In both cases, an organization's network is likely to be distributed globally. With new working models and newer technologies, emerging challenges push engineers to build highly competent network monitoring software.
Hence, feature-rich—yet simple to use—network monitoring software is essential to keep your network ahead of the curve.
Since IT organizations are highly dynamic (with many network devices and people with different work experiences), it is essential for the network monitoring tool an IT organization uses to be simple yet versatile.
Hence, a well-rooted network monitoring tool helps you achieve an established monitoring practice.
A network administrator and their team should ensure proper functioning of all the network components—from designing the network to optimizing it—on an everyday basis. In a nutshell, network administrators should focus on the following metrics:
Network availability is one of the basic metrics that needs to be monitored by the network administrator, but it is critical for understanding which devices are down or awake. Knowing the network's availability helps you ensure the significant components of your network, like servers and websites, are not down while you are trying to do something important, like fetch information for a client presentation.
Overloaded CPU means an exhausted memory. IT organizations, especially the larger ones, are extremely dynamic and hence forecasting the storage needs well in advance not just avoids unplanned purchases but also helps prevent loss of data.
Keeping all the hardware components in check is essential because. In addition to helping you not lose track of any devices, hardware monitoring helps you determine whether poor network performance might be due to a loose connection or worn-out hardware.
Latency is the delay in response between a network request and network response. Increased latency impacts the network, resulting in poor network and application performance.
Jitter is the delay in signal transmission between the request and response device. This results in poor video and audio experience, which isn't ideal in most cases and is unacceptable during important client calls.
Monitoring the network traffic helps you understand the bandwidth usage in your organization, thereby exposing any unusual network activity like malware attacks.
Although technology is in many ways making life simpler, that's not always the case for network administrators. There are several challenges network administrators face while monitoring their network, including:
Maintaining good network performance ensures the entire network continues functioning seamlessly. An organization with choking network performance will not be able to deliver services to its clients effectively, which affects the core mission of any organization—resulting in a loss of trust.
Proper capacity planning is essential to avoid having the network components overflow. When a server's memory overflows, it could lose its functionality and the data stored in it might start evaporating, leading to loss of crucial data. Not just, improper planning might lead to sudden purchases of devices without proper research, leading to loss of money.
Organizations are growing to be increasingly distributed, so having all the network components in a single frame can be tricky. However, a network monitoring tool with proper map and floor views can help resolve any difficulties related to distributed networks, even across multiple branches and international offices.
There are various policies and mandates for regulatory compliance put forth for IT companies. Beyond incurring fines and penalties, a failure to follow regulations can reflect poorly on the organization.
Many organizations post-pandemic are adapting to a hybrid working model, hence the network monitoring tool should be able to adapt itself to distributed network monitoring with a central probe. With this, the network administrator will be able to unify the entire monitoring experience.
OpManager is a systematically tailored network monitoring solution that helps every network admin perform advanced network monitoring in just a few clicks. With the IT industry continuing to evolve, the task of monitoring an organization's entire network (in an increasingly distributed network boundary) is a huge drain. And without a feature-rich network monitoring tool, this task is almost impossible. Built with in-house engineers that have kept customer concerns in mind, OpManager is truly handcrafted to perfection.
So, here is how it simplifies your everyday work. With OpManager, you can:
Over and above OpManager's features, its affordability and transparent pricing options continue to make OpManager the top choice for over 1 million happy network administrators.
Like any other sector, adhering to policies and complying with regulations is crucial. For IT organizations, this is likely to include the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), the Payment Card Industry Data Security standard (PCI DSS), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the Gramm-Leah-Bliley Act (GLBA). All these compliance policies are put forth to protect users' sensitive information. Not adhering to all these regulations might result in loss of reputation and capital.
However, by integrating ManageEngine Network Configuration Manager with OpManager, you'll be able to manage the entire compliance list, either by using the pre-defined policies or creating the policies that compliment your business.
