A bird's-eye view, MCI offers network managers automatic self-monitoring capabilities

Customers of MCI's Enterprise WAN Managed Services offering will soon get an idea of their networks' status by logging on to a secure World Wide Web site, thanks to an automated network monitoring system from Concord Communications.

MCI is expected to announce today that it will incorporate Concord's Network Health solution into its suite of services. The system is designed to analyze and present network data in a concise, graphics-based format, letting customers quickly see and understand their networks' status.

The system will also provide MCI network managers with a similar view, allowing them to proactively optimize service, said Kevin Conklin, vice president of marketing for Marlboro, Mass.-based Concord.

"If you're in the business of providing service and your customers know more about what's going on with your network than you do, it's obviously an embarrassing situation," Conklin said.

The Network Health system will automatically monitor the efficiency of different parts of MCI's frame relay service such as bandwidth use, discards and errors, network volume, situations to watch and an analysis of customer equipment performance (see figure).

"With that data, customers can economically schedule bandwidth that fits the usage patterns of their companies," said Conklin. "It also gives customers the ability to shift network assets to parts of their operations that are running at peak capacity.

"With Network Health, MCI is now able to provide its customers with the information they need to run their networks smoothly and determine the effectiveness of their IT infrastructure," said Stephen Von Rump, vice president of enterprise marketing for MCI.

The Network Health product began as an internal network monitoring system, Conklin said, and U S West, Sprint, Nynex, Southern New England Telecommunications and Pacific Bell use it for monitoring their internal networks. "Some of them are definitely looking at the product as a managed service offering for their customers as well," he said.