In the age of digital Darwinism, technology – Cloud, SDN, Virtualization, DevOps and so on – has greatly impacted the way IT operates today. Every IT function today demands agility and clamours for mobility. And as we evolve further into the virtual world, challenges galore for Networking teams keep their KPI roster green day in and out.
Network – The mantra for enterprises to thrive ahead!!
Leaders across the globe have realised that there’s no end state of digital transformation. Hence, the mantra for success for businesses is simple today – adapt and evolve continuously! You cannot afford to remain static. And, to practice the same mantra – transforming your enterprise network is the first step.
Not just functions of your business are network dependent, but most importantly, your customer’s expectations – high speed, instant access and 24/7 support – also demands a fast, agile and safe new age network. SD-WAN has already embedded the bedrock of the virtual world in enterprises. It has allowed enterprises to keep believing in the same mantra – Adapt, evolve, and be agile, by delivering bespoke user/customer experience through a network.
And as more enterprises become software-defined – migrate applications to the cloud, tools, and the processes – networking teams like yours also feel the need to do things differently – manage and monitor enterprise network with agility, backed with intelligence.
Tracking limitless minutiae about the network.
If you think you’re the only one who is challenged to monitor and manage enterprise networks today, you’re wrong! Every network team today grasps for better network visibility (insights) and understanding of what network KPIs to focus on.
Addressing network issues before it impacts users and customers depends on how well you monitor and observe your enterprise network. The efficacy of a well defined monitoring strategy depends on clearly defined metrics, and how well, network teams keep the KPIs green. In turn, network teams are able to support a range of disciplines efficiently. From operations to planning Network is Always-ON for each function.
Monitoring is about the metrics that matter; a prerequisite step in a series of steps that may include data normalization, storage, visualization, alerting, analysis through applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence, which, in turn, may support a range of disciplines from operations management to capacity planning.
KPIs to ensure network assurance
Network monitoring is just one area, IT monitoring includes compute, application and storage as well. What KPIs to focus on depends on which area you are monitoring. A successful monitoring strategy must address application assurance, network assurance and infrastructure assurance. These assurance areas are discussed in more detail in the following sections.
The most common challenge in network monitoring and analytics in teams is to able to tally logical overlay to the physical underlay. In turn, this impacts other services as well as application performance. Therefore, monitoring functions must provide service and application performance insights (e.g. Usage, response times, bandwidth consumption), must be able to identify data with respect to both the overlay network (e.g., 5-tuple, VNI/VSID, virtual port, etc.) and the underlay network (e.g., 5-tuple, VLAN, port, node, etc.). Analytics should allow networking teams to analyze metrics in terms of both the overlay and underlay network.
Below image showcases a list of KPIs for your network teams In order to develop a monitoring strategy;
Apart from being the main catalyst in fueling digital transformation, adding programmability, and enabling automation, SD-WAN-based network infrastructure allows more visibility when Network is integrated with multiple sources and application. Data from a centralized analytics platform help networking teams monitor and resolve problems faster.
If you’re interested to know how Lavelle Networks SD-WAN solution suite can help your Networking teams to efficiently monitor and manage enterprise networks, get in touch with us.
