Network software is a term that represents any software for networking that helps a network administrators perform a specific operation with ease. The term 'network software' can include a wide range of software solutions, each of which offering a specific function that together helps network admins gain complete control over their IT infrastructure. Network software tool offers capabilities to monitor network health, measure performance, anticipate potential outages, take proactive decisions, and to manage and resolve network faults. The networking software system also enables you to visualize the network to understand its architecture, and secure your IT infrastructure from attacks.
With organizational networks becoming increasingly agile and dynamic, it is important to deploy a reliable network software in computer networks that can keep you informed of any emerging network issues. Since network is the backbone of every business nowadays, it's important to invest in efficient computer network software platforms to ensure network optimization.
ManageEngine OpManager: Proactive network software solutions for complex IT infrastructures
OpManager - a comprehensive networking software, makes the tedious process of network and server monitoring simple by allowing you to monitor, troubleshoot, visualize, and secure your network all in one place. The functions of network software enable you,
Easily troubleshoot network issues: With OpManager network software solution, all the data needed for troubleshooting is available in a single place, which will help you analyze and make decisions quickly and effortlessly. OpManager also lets you take control of your software network with proactive measures like multi-level thresholds and instant notification support.
Reduce management overhead: OpManager network software is an integrated network performance software that offers multiple add-ons. Once you've picked the add-ons you need, you will only need to update and renew one tool, which saves you time.
Secure your network: Internet-connected devices on enterprise networks can be hacked in as little as 3 minutes. That's why it's important to have strong firewalls and an efficient firewall monitoring tool as a part of your network software to help you secure your network. OpManager's Firewall Analyzer add on analyzes the effectiveness of the firewall rules, provides detailed information on all possible network attacks and security breaches, monitors user activity, records incoming traffic, and detects sudden spikes in bandwidth consumption.
Automate tasks: OpManager allows you to automate activities like discovery, adding monitors, setting up notification profiles, and a lot more, which is time consuming and inefficient when done manually. With this network software's network automation workflow, it's easy to maintain a healthy network infrastructure. Repetitive, time-consuming, labor-intensive tasks can be completely automated using this network software solution using its more than 70, builtin workflow actions.
Effortlessly manage configurations: Configurations and network changes can lead to network outages or performance issues several times a year, without the right network software in place. With OpManager's Network Configuration Manager add-on, you can make sure your networking environment is secure by monitoring configuration changes. Attain a complete record of the who, what, and when of configuration changes using this network software. You can also perform bulk configurations, schedule device configuration backups, track user activity, and prevent unauthorized changes by receiving instant notifications.
Customize dashboards: With OpManager’s customizable dashboards, you can assess the current status of your network with critical metrics from routers, switches, firewalls, servers, services (physical and virtual), applications, URLs, printers, and other infrastructure devices by setting them as widgets. With this network software dashboard, you can monitor performance and identify network errors as soon as you log in.
Leverage Business View: The Business View provides a graphical representation of your network to help you understand device dependency. With the Business View, you can ensure the availability of devices across your network and troubleshoot issues as needed.
Use both Zoho Maps and Google maps: These provide a geographical view of your network when you place Layer-2 maps: These provide a visual representation of your network by showcasing all the devices connected to your network. They also help you identify the critical devices in your network.e devices on the map according to their geographical distribution.
Use 3D floor and rack views: OpManager lets you create a three-dimensional copy of your server rooms. Checking for availability and other critical metrics is much easier in these views.
Generate advanced reports: OpManager tracks and logs all the network performance monitoring metrics like health, and availability. With the help of this information, OpManager acts as a network analysis tool that generates more than 100 built-in reports. These reports are intuitively grouped and classified. With this network software's Advanced Report feature, you can create custom reports based on your preference. You can also schedule the reports to be sent to your email address so that you are updated without any additional effort.
Easily deploy OpManager and scale as needed at a cost that's affordable: This network software allows you to scale as and when your enterprise grows. You can scale up to 10,000 devices and 5,000 interfaces without compromising on reliability. You don’t need any costly consultation or training to install OpManager. On top of this, OpManager network software also offers a transparent device-based pricing model.
Get the benefits of an integrated solution while working in silos
OpManager has multiple add-ons through which you can expand the tool's utilities based on your needs. These add-ons help you manage configurations, bandwidth, firewalls, compliance, storage, applications, IP addresses, and switch ports. With one-click integration to ITSM tools (ServiceDesk Plus, ServiceNow, and Jira ServiceDesk), communication tools (Slack), webhooks (MS Teams, Telegram, etc.), and REST AP- based integrations, you can proactively manage faults.
If you're looking for a unified software suite to manage your IT operations, OpManager Plus is for you. While you can choose to integrate OpManager with any add-ons that you need, OpManager Plus comes with all the add-ons enabled, including network performance monitoring, bandwidth and traffic monitoring, configuration and compliance management, firewall management, IP address and switch port management, and application monitoring—all in a single console.
New to ManageEngine network software? Download a 30-day free trial of the network software solutions and explore the various capabilities offered.
FAQs on Network software
What is network software?
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Network software is a broad term that includes multiple types of software solutions. The different network software in computer networks perform different functions to help the network admin gain complete control over the IT infrastructure.
What are the types of network software?
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When it comes to business networks, based on the size and network architecture, network software can be classified as,
Network software for enterprises - With enterprise network software, you can monitor large enterprises by deploying probes at each site. These network software solutions may offer agent based or agent less monitoring to effectively monitor the nook and cranny of IT infrastructures. Built for large scale enterprises, Enterprise network software help you automate device discovery, network scanning, and generate a diverse set of actionable reports to enhance capacity planning and cut costs on network maintenance.
Network software for SMBs – With use appropriate features these network software tools for small and medium businesses, can help you deliver quality service to your clients. They can consistently monitor and troubleshoot network performance issues, resource utilization, and reinforce IT security.
Network software for MSPs – Built for agile MSP networks, these networking software are gaining traction among MSP. These network software solutions are highly scalable and may support collaboration within teams to improve their efficiency. One of its notable capability is that, these network software system enables you to visualize performance issues across the complete IT infrastructure and also for a specific remote site.
What are the drawbacks of deploying legacy network software in organizational networks?
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An crucial issue with legacy network software is that, functions of these network software do not meet the requirements of today's networks. Here are some challenges,
Lack of complete IT infrastructure visibility: Every individual network software performs a particular function and caters to a specific need. Each of these tools helps the admin analyze and visualize the respective areas within the network. Since the admin has to make decisions at the organization level, they need to visualize the entire network in one place, which is only possible with advanced networking software.
Difficulty identifying the root cause: Identifying the root cause of any issue is important so that the same faults can be avoided in the future. While using multiple networking software, identifying the root cause becomes a tedious, time-consuming task, since the admin has to go through data generated by all these tools to understand the problem and reach a conclusion. Thus a network software that can seamless integrate and corelate with other networking solutions is crucial for effective network management.
High management overhead: All the deployed network tools have to be consistently updated to the latest versions and renewed periodically so that they can perform at their full capacity. Licensing for these tools will depend on various factors, which also have to be taken care of, which makes the process of keeping track of and executing the updates, renewals, and licenses for multiple networking software time-consuming and inefficient.
Costly: On using multiple network software as standalone products, organizations have to cover setup, maintenance, labor, and renewal costs for these tools, which can get very pricy.
Customer reviews
OpManager
OpManager - 10 Steps Ahead Of The Competition, One Step Away From Being Unequalled.
- Network Services Manager, Government Organization
Review Role: Infrastructure and Operations Company Size: Gov't/PS/ED 5,000 - 50,000 Employees
"I have a long-standing relationship with ManageEngine. OpManager has always missed one or two features that would make it truly the best tool on the market, but over it is the most comprehensive and easy to use the product on the market."
OpManager
Easy Implementation, Excellent Support & Lower Cost Tool
- Team Lead, IT Service Industry
Review Role: Infrastructure and Operations Company Size: 500M - 1B USD
"We have been using OpManager since 2011 and our overall experience has been excellent. The tool plays a vital role in providing the value to our organisation and to the customers we are supporting. The support is excellent and staff takes full responsibilities in resolving the issues. Innovation is never stopping and clearly visible with newer versions"
OpManager
Easy Implementation With A Feature Rich Catalogue, Support Has Some Room For Improvement
- NOC Manager in IT Service Industry
Review Role: Program and Portfolio Management Company Size: 500M - 1B USD
"The vendor has been supporting during the implementation & POC phases providing trial licenses. Feature requests and feedback is usually acted upon swiftly. There was sufficient vendor support during the implementation phase. After deployment, the support is more than adequate, where the vendor could make some improvements."
OpManager
Great Monitoring Tool
- CIO in Finance Industry
Review Role: CIO Company Size: 1B - 3BUSD
"Manage Engine provides a suite of tools that have made improvements to the availability of our internal applications. From monitoring, management and alerting, we have been able to peak performance within our data center."
OpManager
Simple Implementation, Easy To Use. Very Intuitive.
- Principal Engineer in IT Services
Review Role: Enterprise Architecture and Technology Innovation Company Size: 250M - 500M USD
"Manage Engine support was helpful and responsive to all our queries"
Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS) is an Indian business process management (BPM) organization headquartered in Bangalore and part of the Hinduja Group. HGS combines technology-powered automation, analytics, and digital services focusing on back office process.
One of the largest radiology groups in the nation, with a team of more than 200 board-certified radiologists, provides more than 50 hospital and specialty clinic partners with on-site radiology coverage and interpretations.
Vabi is a Netherlands-based company that provides "real estate data in order, for everyone." Since 1972, the company has focused on making software that calculates the performance of buildings. It has since then widened its scope from making calculations.
Recognized as a May 2019 Gartner Peer Insights Customers' Choice for Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics Software. 
Network Management and Monitor Vendor of the Year 2018, 2019. 
Entered the 2019 Gartner NPMD Magic Quadrant. 
Ranked #2 in the Infotech Research Software Reviews Data Quadrant 2018. 