[Editor’s note: This blog is sponsored by Infosim®, but the content is entirely my own] As enterprises advance from exploratory mode to actual deployment of software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV), they need to be thinking about how they will manage these new technologies. Over the last two years, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) [...]
Greg Ferro recently blogged about how attempts to define software-defined networking (SDN) are a waste of time. He wrote: You can’t define “Software Defined Network” because its not a thing. Its not a single thing or even a few things. Its combination of many things including intangibles. Stop trying to define it. Just deploy it. [emphasis mine] [...]
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by HelpSystems on February 2, 2016. Network monitoring is about more than just the network. The network management team needs visibility beyond switches and routers to ensure infrastructure health and performance. Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) research has found that 25% of IT organizations experience server- and storage-related service outages [...]
[Author’s Note: This post is sponsored by Edgeworx. The content is entirely mine.] One of the benefits of using a managed services provider (MSP) is the ability to add and subtract services as needed. MSPs typically have multiple areas of expertise that an IT organization can lean on. For instance, the organization could start by using the [...]
Most network managers are still many years away from turning on Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) in their enterprise local area networks (LANs). Private non-routable IPv4 address ranges can happily exist behind a network address translation (NAT) gateway for the foreseeable future. However, things could change. At any time, someone above your pay grade might [...]
Many small and midsized IT organizations rely on a mix of freeware and open source software to manage their infrastructure. These free tools can be effective and economical choices for smaller networks. But how do you know when it’s time to upgrade to a commercial product? Scale is one of the first indicators that you [...]
You may not have noticed, but log analytics has become table stakes for network management toolsets. Last year, Enterprise Management Associates® (EMA™) surveyed network managers about the data sources that have become important to engineering and operations tasks. Log files consistently scored higher than anything else, including flow data, packet analysis, and SNMP metrics. Fifty-nine [...]
Champions of big data analytics extoll the virtues of massive data stores. Enterprises have so much unstructured data that could help them improve operations and generate new revenue, they say. The more bytes, the better. Some might assume that enterprises will simply push every byte they can find into a Hadoop cluster or data warehouse. [...]
The Open Networking User Group (ONUG) is a community of IT executives that are using their combined buying power to influence the networking industry. Members hail from companies such as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Fidelity Investments. ONUG’s goal is to specify requirements and reference architectures for products that are open, more affordable and [...]
As an analyst who focuses on network management research, I am particularly intrigued by software-defined networking (SDN). As SDN architectures are deployed in data centers, local area networks and WANs, network management practices will have to evolve. For instance, SDN may make it easier for cloud administrators to provision network services and connectivity for a [...]
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