If you are a business owner, read scenario 1.

If you work in the IT dept. read scenario 2:

Scenario 1: Staff encounters problem

You are working on a document and when you go to save it you get an error, then you realize you have not received new e-mail in the past 2 hours. At this point you start seeing errors pop up on your screen, and finally you start hearing others complain “what’s going on” ,”are you having problems saving” “I can’t email out”. By this point 30 minutes have elapsed… you then proceed to contact the IT dept., and they start trouble shooting the problem, 30 more minutes pass before IT solves the issue. The result is that your staff has lost an hour of productivity and the company has lost some revenue!

Scenario 2: IT dept.

You are working on an important project that needs to be implemented today.  All of a sudden you get a wave of calls: “I cannot access the internet” “I cannot e-mail out” ,”I cannot save to the network drive” “I have 3 error messages, and I don’t know what to do.” At this point your important project implementation has to be put on HOLD so that you can address the issues of the staff. You begin to troubleshoot while continuing to take more calls of frustrated users. Troubleshooting pin points the problem; you fix the issue, and let everyone know that they can continue to work and that the issue has been resolved. However, you are now an hour behind schedule and you probably won’t finish your project on time.

Both scenarios could have been avoided by simply “MONITORING YOUR NETWORK” – In fact monitoring your network gives you a valuable thing: Knowledge. Imagine if you were able to receive an alert the minute the power goes out or the internet goes down. Then you can communicate with your staff before the incoming wave of frustrated phone calls. You can also receive warnings of possible future problems, which will allow you to act accordingly. What else can you check?  With monitoring software you are able to check on the health of your network on a daily basis. How much disk space is my server using? Is someone who doesn’t have authorization trying to log on to the server? What is the server fan speed and temperature? What patches do I need to deploy? Are the backups successful? The knowledge that you acquire from the monitoring software is what allows you to be preemptive, so that you can foresee and prevent a network outage or so that you can pin point the problem with more accuracy; saving you precious time.

What items can be monitored?

Every single item on your network can be monitored, your workstations, servers, routers, switches, and anti-virus software. Monitoring software also includes inventory asset tracking, which allows you to know exactly what technology your network is running, and it provides information such as the age of the equipment in the network. The inventory asset feature allows you to make informative decisions and to plan ahead, you can begin to plan what equipment needs to be replaced or upgraded. The items mentioned above are the basic features in monitoring software, but you can get a lot more complex features depending on the software that you purchase. For example Cisco offers the Smart Care service which is monitoring software along with hardware, for all your Cisco equipment. This service goes beyond monitoring the basic health of your Cisco hardware, it also allows both you and your Cisco partner to monitor, diagnose, and repair any problem by being preemptive. The Cisco Smart Care service also includes the support of the Cisco Technical Assistance Center, Next Business Day replacement, major updates, remote monitoring, periodic assessments of Cisco network foundation, voice, and security technologies, and much more. Cisco is not the only one to offer robust monitoring software, with a little research you will find a few trusted award winning companies who specialize in network monitoring, However, I should warn that some of these software’s are not cheap and can start at about $4,000 dollars!

So, back to the original question – Why bother with network monitoring?

Because your network is your backbone! The health of your network is key to the success of your business and whether you are a business owner or an IT manager, you want your company to succeed. It cannot be explained any further, if you wait until something breaks to take action you are losing:

  • Valuable time
  • Valuable Resources
  • Money
  • ROI
  • Communication with vendors, employees, and most important CLIENTS!

The cost is too high?

True, I did mention an example of a monitoring software that costs $4,000 dollars, but as mentioned before, that depends on the features of the software and the fact that many provide additional services. However, monitoring software can also be very affordable! In fact, Xennix provides an affordable monitoring plan for your server, desktops, and switches so there is no excuse for IT managers or owners not to monitor their network.

Free Trial?

If after reading this article you are still skeptical, how about a free trial? Yes, I said free! If you are a business owner Xennix can monitor your network, and act before you realize you have a problem, allowing you to focus on your business operations and not on IT problems. If you are an IT manager, Xennix can also give you a helping hand and allow you to focus on the important task at hand; we will make you look like a hero!

Visit www.xennix.com for more information!