Businesses today largely depend on globally spanning networks and have various globally spanning networks established between data centers’ private and public clouds. These data centers are geographically separated, which creates challenges in managing the network’s manifold. Choosing a network monitoring solution is both comprehensive and essential in your organizational infrastructure to have full visibility on the network and reduce any downtime risks that the system holds. The article will mention ten tips that you should consider while choosing a Network Monitoring solution.
Prioritize and understand your needs
When choosing a network monitoring solution, you should always have clarity on what your basic needs are out of the network management. For example- what is it that you specifically want to monitor, such as email servers uptime monitoring or built-in? What sort of alerting is needed? Do you need an appliance for monitoring your network or want a software-based solution? There are many such questions that need to be thought of, depending on the business type and requirements.
Availability of IT Support team
You have to have an idea of how big your current IT support team is. You should know who all are capable of taking care of the responsibilities for examining reports. The availability of a support team is important so you can easily delegate the duties according to the skill set.
The process
It would be best if you have a complete team ready with a communication plan and a hierarchy process to follow when in a problem. The system should be there so that the team knows who the first person of contact is.
Many Businesses
If you have many businesses running, a stable IT support team is essential so that they can work on any problems that occur.
Able Monitoring System
The Network monitoring system you choose should be able to react positively to any hardware variations that occur. Before reaching any network provider, you should have an understanding of your network and its makeup.
Support Level Agreements
Ensuring internal and external Support Level Agreements is essential. If an external support partner is being used, ensure that you know their escalation process very clearly to help yourself in need.
24*7 Support
If your business supports online retailers or banks wherein your customers would need off-hour support, you should have a backup prepared for that so that there is support ready even after working hour incidents. Please Give it a thought before choosing a network monitoring solution.
Scalability
Business networks are evolving constantly and seamlessly; hence your monitoring solution should be the one that can cope with such changes effortlessly. Network support will have to change and flex the variations in the business.
Automated Discovery and Configuration
A multi-site network is where new devices are added every now and then calls to have an automated network management solution. The automatic configuring and discovery feature will allow the monitoring solution to connect with the newly added devices without human intervention easily.
Customization based on Needs
The requirements and processes vary from network to network and business to business. Hence, Customization as per the need and requirement of the process has to be a significant feature in the network monitoring solution. The feature will help deal with any incidents and match the outputs by making essential changes in the network management system.
Final Thoughts
There are multiple network management solutions available in the market at all sorts of prices but may vary in features that they provide. As we all know, customer satisfaction is the base of any business; hence, monitoring the networks well will help the company reach their customer and staff satisfaction levels.
When the employees have a clear idea about their roles and duties in the network support and what is the course of action if any problem occurs, they perform relatively well and are confident in handling their job roles.
Your knowledge about the network management system’s expectation holds equal importance as to the clarity of your business thought and the frontline map of how things will work. You have to have a support team ready 24*7 to look after any uncalled-for situations hassle-free, with things staying in their control.
