It’s a little bit like systems and applications.  Today, it’s easier to add applications to a network, than to get scullers into their boat.

In both cases, if you don’t do it properly, something is going to give.

In response to COVID-19, many companies had to accelerate their digital transformation plans, implementing changes in weeks, rather than the months or years it would have taken pre-pandemic.

This has been possible because of the flexibility afforded by new cloud technologies, but it is also creating complex and distributed application architectures. It’s also creating the perfect environment for “things to give”.

In large organisations, the potential for problems is greater today because many network systems administrators and technologists are now working in a hybrid environment, and may no longer have the end-to-and visibility on which they depend.

At a time when stakeholders are using internet-connected devices from just about anywhere, at just about any time of day, being able to maintain full visibility into network becomes critically important. So does being able to easily manage the flow of all traffic requests within your environment.

On top of that, as industries and businesses moved from farm to factory over the years, to cloud and now back home again, dependence on applications skyrocketed. Today, the average North American company has no fewer than 10 applications running on its network – and manufacturing companies often have hundreds, if not thousands. But again, “How can you get them to work together effectively and efficiently?”

It starts by being able to see what is running, where, and how at any given time.  Much like the coxswain who needs to see the most critical things going on at key times, systems administrators need visibility into the things that matter most.

Network experts agree that minimum visibility requirements include having systems in place that let you see:

• Devices that are active on your network at any given time, with alerts when a new device connects to your system.
• The end-to-end user journey, from login authentication, to user profile and data/application access verification, data source and queries, all while looking at and assessing APIs, messaging queues, etc.
• Network performance and security issues – with a way of determining what is critical, requiring your team’s immediate and full attention, versus what can wait a bit.
• Topology mapping – ideally been created dynamically, helping you visualize performance across your application ecosystem at any given time.

Thanks to the increasing complexity of enterprise networks, IT operations managers can be bombarded with alerts. To help reduce network noise, is important to also implement software solutions that only bring the most business-critical issues to the forefront to be addressed, with “minor” issues being resolved automatically, or flagged for secondary follow-up.  Obviously, you want to be the one to define “minor”, not a third party who may have no understanding of your business and its day-to-day operations.

Also important:  Being able to automatically collect data from multiple sources, including event logs, user experience, and other metrics you track, from all applications on premise, as well as public and hybrid clouds, so that you can correlate the data and derive insights that will help you better manage your network, operations and business overall.

No small task.

Luckily, there are software applications that can enable you to see how things are performing at any given time, according to the parameters you set – with reporting features that let you determine exactly where a problem occurred, and when, so that you can remediate the problem, according to your needs, personnel resources and priorities.

Although access and security often get the most attention, performance can be mission-critical. The same resources can also be used to optimize the performance of your network at any given time – again according to the parameters you set.

When choosing your solutions, may also want to consider having:

• Context-sensitive visualization interfaces, making it possible for you to correlate insights across domains.
• Full-stack up observability, creating a single repository for network performance efficiency-related data from all sources.
• Cloud native visualization, enabling you to determine which context-relevant items must be addressed, reducing your choices as possible using AI, making it easier for you to make decisions more efficiently and effectively.
• Processes for optimizing infrastructure resources, using machine intelligence to drive automated resourcing decisions.

Just as there are many ways to get your scullers rowing as one, there are multiple options for companies looking to improve the efficiency of their applications in a dynamic network environment. Please contact us at [email protected] or (416) 429-0796 or 1.877.238.9944 (toll Free), if you would like a coxswain to help guide you along the way.