When it comes to opening a new a box of chocolates, I always grab the caramels first, while my son heads directly for the chocolate fudge. And then it’s usually a race to the bottom.

Everyone has different tastes, and everyone has different needs. This is particularly true in the application economy. The user wants a richer experience. The line of business manager wants faster innovation. And the CIO wants greater performance.

All these requirements have one thing in common – metrics. To achieve better outcomes, we need better visibility.

As the network becomes increasingly complex with software-defined and virtual components, capturing and analyzing these metrics is getting harder. And that means the business risks are getting higher.

A problem with the network isn’t just a problem for the CIO. It’s a problem for every business stakeholder and every customer. It’s a problem for productivity and profitability.

Single view, multiple uses

To navigate the metrics maze, organizations need to take a consolidated approach. They need to trade in their multiple point solutions for a single view of performance.

From capacity and utilization to quality of service and traffic throttling, this single view must be able to meet the requirements of multiple stakeholders. For example:

Cindy the CIO: Accurate performance management metrics will help Cindy make the right network investment decisions, so she can meet the current and future needs of the business.

Bill the business stakeholder: Real-time insight into network performance means Bill can track the health of customer apps to safeguard the company’s revenue and reputation.

Oliver the operations manager: From setting thresholds to discovering root causes, metrics provide Oliver with the intelligence he needs to not only resolve network problems faster but also prevent them from reoccurring.

Natalie the network planner: With visibility of current capacity and future utilization, Natalie can time upgrades and build-outs to ensure there is no degradation in performance.

Fit for the future

By unifying network performance management, organizations will be able to turn real-time metrics into predictive analytics – and reactive measures into proactive decisions.

The ability to plan for the future is fundamental in the application economy. It’s estimated that by 2020, there will be 26 billion Internet connected devices. Every new device and every new user means new opportunities. These opportunities will require more bandwidth starting at the edge all the way to the core.

Organizations will only be able to seize these opportunities if their networks have been optimized for a connected and digitalized world. And that means Cindy, Bill, Oliver and Natalie need to be empowered not encumbered. They need to know if they are getting a salted caramel or a chocolate fudge before they take off the wrapper.

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