Daily Network Monitor

By Ennio Carboni

As President of Ipswitch Inc.’s Network Management division I have had the opportunity to speak with many of our customers about their experience using WhatsUp Gold.

Now, because WhatsUp Gold can be deployed and utilized in a variety of ways, each new story I hear varies from the last. But I have noticed a few common themes over the years. One such theme sounds like this:

“The phones stopped ringing as soon as it was deployed on the network.”

In fact, a few weeks ago I had a new customer call up our sales team and rave about the silence he and his team have enjoyed since they implemented WhatsUp Gold on their network. No more phone calls about the network being slow, that this server is down, that the Internet isn’t connecting, etc.

Because of the powerful systems and performance monitoring WhatsUp Gold delivers, these guys are finally the first to know when something is wrong on their network. They can now fix an issue before it affects their users.

This latest customer interaction reminded me of our history with job-search-giant, CareerBuilder. As a longtime user of WhatsUp Gold solutions, our product has literally grown along with CareerBuilder’s company.

In its early stages in 2003, at a point when the job search site was just one-fifth the size of the market leader, they brought in WhatsGold to solve their basic monitoring needs. As they’ve grown and matured, becoming the nation’s largest online job site, WhatsUp Gold has stayed a step ahead to continue to provide them the tool-set and functionality they need to manage a network that now includes close to 1300 devices.

Despite the evolution of technology and the increasing complexity of networks and managing solutions, we know that with most of our customers it is still the little things that make such a big difference. Mark Fouraker, Technologist at CareerBuilder, touches on just that in a favorite quote of mine from this customer story:

“My favorite story about WhatsUp Gold is when I was in an important meeting and was getting silent alerts on my pager about an impending issue on our network. I was sneaking out at breaks to troubleshoot and address the matter, eventually resolving it. The bottom line is that no one outside of a few people in operations had any idea there was even an issue at all. It’s just a beautiful product.”

A story like this is really powerful, in my opinion, because it shows how technology can evolve and customer needs can change, forcing us to continually adapt and innovate our product to meet those changing needs. It also shows that business relationships can certainly last as long as it remains mutually beneficial, with a bit of give and take from both sides.

Popularity: 50% [?]

By dferrick

As a marketer, I’m always interested in hearing what people have to say about promotions. Does a buy-one, get-one offer motivate you? How about a % off discount? Or what about a prize? Does it really make a difference? Do you care? 

With our latest major product release in May, WhatsUp Gold v12,  I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, new features and new functionality to brag about. But once again the pressure was on to get more people to ‘try’ and ‘buy’.  I got it! Let’s do another gimmick “Is your network healthy? Try our software and be entered to win a Wii FIT” and “Buy and be entered to win a 1 of 12, 1-terabyte Hard Drives.”  So I ask you …does this type of promotion motivate you? Or are you of the mind-set, I just want the product. Give it to me at the best-price.  

We’re currently running a promotion on our website for a “free copy of VoIP Monitor.” What’s the catch? Well, you need to buy a new license of WhatsUp Gold (v12). Good I guess for those who are already ready to purchase and just happen to have VoIP, but does it motivate people to “try” the software first?

I’d be interested in hearing from IT professionals.

Popularity: unranked [?]

By Peter Christensen

Talk about VoIP for the masses, Costco announced yesterday that the Syspine Digital Operator from Quanta Computer wil be available from Costco.com immediately. Focused on small businesses of under 50 employees, the Syspine Digital Operator A50 is a single-solution device that will connect up to eight standard telephone lines. It features a high-end, server-grade, fan-less design and can be installed anywhere. Businesses can add up to 50 individual Syspine IP310 business phones to create a complete, integrated small business phone system with no additional licensing fees.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1406182/
syspine_voip_phone_system_now_available_at_costcocom/
index.html?source=r_technology

Very interesting, but does raise some questions. Specifically, how does an SMB manage the system in an integrated fashion and make sure that the network is able to handle the additional VoIP traffic on an ongoing basis? Network management and monitoring are now even more critical to business success especially if all voice communications are now network based.

SMB IT personnel need effective network management and monitoring to provide visibility into what is going on on the network to ensure that the combination of data and voice do not degrade network performance and impact business continuity.

Popularity: 1% [?]

By Peter Christensen

The SaaS web-based application delivery model provides corporations with hosted set of business centric applications without a need to purchase, maintain or customize the application to fit their unique needs. 

Many organizations have adopted this model for sales, procurement, CRM and human resources applications for example. Unlike the traditional software acquisition model, where a corporation invests in an application and is required to build the infrastructure to support the application, SaaS requires negligible upfront investment beyond user training. Application maintenance, upgrades and development are the SaaS provider’s responsibility. This is a very attractive value model for many companies. 

When SaaS web-based applications are being evaluated and purchased by a corporation, the IT and network management functions are usually not included in the planning, evaluation and decision process, as IT is perceived as a roadblock. Most frequently, this effort is driven by the business unit or department accessing the application.

This lack of cooperation can cause problems to IT and network management after the application is brought on-line. IT and network management discover the application is deployed and being accessed after the fact. Usually when users contact IT or network management to complain about application performance as the application is bandwidth intensive or existing network infrastructure is near capacity. Another factor to consider is since all SaaS based applications are connected through the Internet outside of the managed corporate network infrastructure, they are subject to any number of issues including forwarding delays, connection reliability and traffic contention. 

Business units evaluating SaaS as an option need to include IT and network management to allow for resource planning and monitoring of end-to-end SaaS specific application traffic to ensure that availability and performance expectations are achieved.

Popularity: unranked [?]

By Peter Christensen

We recently wrote an entry on Blogger predicts the death of death that highlighted the death of IT. 

Au contraire, my friends, IT is a strategic asset and in most cases a competitive differentiator, and there are plenty of examples from the Fortune 500 all the way down to small businesses. Within the context of IT, it all comes down to predictable and reliable delivery of information to both internal and external consituencies. The foundation of predictable and reliable delivery of this actionable information is the network infrastructure. Unfortunately, many IT executives view the network as a utility rather than an asset, and while this is certainly understandable, it is the right view?

The real test is when the network or a server goes down. How is it viewed then? The new reality is down-time is money, no ands, ifs or buts.

IT and networking professionals need to highlight the criticality of the network as a business asset and not just a utility.

Popularity: unranked [?]

By David Karp

Browsing around, I found this piece in India New England (yes, that’s the name of the publication) called Network downtime can be big expense for business.  Tim Hebert is definitely singing our song.  To wit:

Unplanned downtime is what keeps IT professionals, executives and business owners awake at night. Natural disasters and utility failures only account for three percent of all outages. Hardware failures account for less than 10 percent of all network failures. Systems errors account for less than eight percent of failures; application errors, 19 percent.

Industry experts estimate that almost 60 percent of network failures are caused by human error. This problem can be attacked through better training for IT organizations and end-users, better network documentation, better change-management controls and processes and better network monitoring and management.

Sixty percent of network failures caused by human error?  Wow.  There’s no citation to back that up, but it has the ring of truth.  After all, if downtime came from more controllable sources, there wouldn’t be so much of it, right?

In any case, Tim’s piece makes clear the case for effective network management and network monitoring.  I hope IT managers take heed and make a small investment in protection against what could be a huge loss.

Popularity: unranked [?]