In the application economy, a lot is riding on the corporate network. Users and customers rely on applications constantly. Network downtime has always had costly ramifications, but now even brief periods of lagging performance can have serious consequences.

When it comes to network management, the reality is that many IT teams are struggling to deliver the levels of performance and availability required. These teams are wrestling with legacy tools and approaches that either fail to deliver the insights needed or that make it too time consuming to get those insights.

Flying blind

For example, a Gatepoint research survey found that respondents’ satisfaction was lowest for their ability to do event correlation between multiple management tools.

This event correlation is increasingly critical. It’s not enough to monitor the network. IT teams need to get the correlated insights required to quickly do fault management and root cause analysis, so they can determine where in their complex network environment the cause occurred, and how to address it.

Quite simply, many teams are flying blind, unable to effectively manage their environment, and the result is that service levels are compromised, IT teams are plagued with operational inefficiency and they lack the flexibility they need to adapt to fast-changing business dynamics.

A (relative) calm before the storm?

While networks haven’t exactly been a picnic to manage recently, it’s looking like some serious disruption will be coming soon—making the challenges above even more daunting.

This is particularly true for the many organizations that are employing – or already have employed – technologies such as software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV). If capabilities like event correlation are causing frustration now, what happens when entirely new layers of complexity are introduced?

After an extensive assessment of early SDN adopters, here’s EMA analyst Shamus McGillicuddy’s takeaway: “It is becoming quite clear that existing network management tools and practices are not fully prepared to support these new architectures.” (Source: Enterprise Management Associates, “Managing Tomorrow’s Networks: The Impacts of SDN and Network Virtualization on Network Management – Report Summary,” December 2015)

Change is coming to a network near you

There are always some clear arguments against making a tool change, or making any new investment for that matter. It takes staff time and effort, and the allocation of precious budgets, to make it happen. While this near-term hit isn’t trivial, I think the reality is that for many IT shops, putting this effort off will seriously exacerbate both ongoing and long-term challenges. In other words, adapting to SDN after it has been introduced may be a recipe for disaster.

Customers who have adopted CA Spectrum are well positioned today. They’re well equipped to address the network availability and performance demands posed by today’s networks, and those presented by the networks of the future.

For more, see our recent blog post on the changing requirements associated with SDN, and how CA Spectrum equips customers with the capabilities they need to adapt.

The post Future-proofing your network and infrastructure monitoring appeared first on Highlight.