Web-based network monitoring in outsourced infrastructure management

Customers weighing whether to entrust important IT functions to service providers won’t settle for anything less than 24x7 availability and top performance from their systems, networks and applications. Service providers are anxious to promise that level of uptime to attract new business, but they cannot expect customers to take uptime and performance as articles of faith. Before enterprises will trust service providers to host important parts of their IT infrastructures, they must know at all times exactly how their hardware and software investments are performing in the service providers’ data center. Service providers, on the other hand, must instill trust in enterprises so they are comfortable with outsourcing infrastructure operations.

Web-based monitoring and management helps service providers close the trust gap. Web-based tools allow customers broad access to a full range of monitoring and management information wherever and whenever they need it. Real-time access to infrastructure performance information establishes trust by enabling customers to see the same data service providers see. Immediate access to fault and performance information strengthens a client’s confidence in their service provider’s ability to properly manage their assets.

Whether via a portal or a standard browser, Web access is more affordable and easier to manage than a wide area network (WAN) or dial-up link via a client-to-management application. Web access from anywhere allows clients to monitor and manage their outsourced IT functions as aggressively as in-house. Decisions on important matters such as capacity planning are made with an understanding of their demands and resources, both in-house and with service providers.

Conditions point to service providers

Larger enterprises have not completely warmed to IT outsourcers. Although more and more enterprises are outsourcing peripheral and non-mission critical applications (e-mail, data storage, etc.), most are still reluctant to trust mission critical data and applications to service providers. However, current economic realities have forced enterprises to re-think their earlier skepticism about outsourcing IT management. Some of these realities include:

• Infrastructures so complex that preventing downtime has become more expensive and labor-intensive than ever before

• The need for a dedicated infrastructure management staff

• Demands for peak performance and around-the-clock availability for networks, systems and applications

• The economic benefits of paying a service provider a monthly fee to manage infrastructures versus hiring a team of IT staffers and buying the hardware and software to manage systems, applications and networks.

Service providers have traditionally hosted a variety of connectivity services such as voice lines or high-speed data lines. However, they typically provided only up-down status reports on those services. Now that enterprises are asking providers to host and manage services such as e-mail, Web servers, e-commerce applications and online catalog data, service providers must provide more than just the monthly service level agreement (SLA) updates that show the T1 delivering 99.99% availability. Enterprise customers need performance trends, operating capacity and other vital details to make sound business decisions about their IT investments.

The steady trend toward more complexity – especially in IT infrastructures – is particularly daunting for multi-national enterprises. With far-flung IT infrastructures and obligations to customers and staff, their IT management efforts are around-the-clock in several times zones. Web-based monitoring and management offers the flexibility and wide reach enterprises need to effectively foster their relationships with service providers.

For example, an SLA report might indicate that a client’s virtual private network (VPN) is operating at 70% capacity with a high level of availability. But that information doesn’t answer many important questions that could affect performance in the near future. Does the VPN normally operate at 70% capacity? Or is this a sign of an impending problem that could lead to performance brownouts?

Enterprise IT managers require detailed information about their infrastructure’s performance to proactively address problems before users or customers experience service problems. Without it, IT managers relying on outsourcing providers may find themselves blindsided by a raft of user complaints when unforeseen performance trends affect quality of service. Even worse, with no performance insight IT managers could draw the wrong conclusion and purchase new VPN capacity, for example, to address a temporary spike in activity rather than a long-term problem.

Web access gives enterprise customers a complete set of performance information for routers, servers, network interfaces, applications and other infrastructure elements. It empowers them to make informed decisions about IT resources in a service provider’s data center without surrendering complete control of their vital data. Using this information, CTOs can more accurately determine when to buy new capacity and justify the expense.

In the case of the enterprise whose VPN is operating at 70% capacity, a Web portal could provide IT managers with a window to the VPN’s normal operation levels. The window would reveal whether 70% signals bigger problems to come or just a temporary spike in activity. Armed with this information, IT managers could make the right decision about whether to add new capacity before the problem becomes a costly emergency or leave the VPN as is.

For telcos working hard to stay competitive in a bleak economy, offering these types of managed services provides a new revenue stream by winning new customers and selling more to existing customers. The key to this type of program is to empower enterprise clients with direct, immediate access to the same performance information as service providers. This builds trust and gives enterprises confidence that their IT assets are delivering peak performance and that they’ll avoid future problems with their hosted applications.

Mike Marks is director of service provider product marketing at Concord Communications Inc.

Visit Concord Communications online.