Last month I wrote about how the network management marketplace is deconstructing and reconstructing itself along new lines by extending discovery to support more than the network, or, for example, supporting both inventory and root-cause analysis, or extending correlation capabilities to support systems and application analysis.
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I’m going to revisit some of this technological re-alignment later in this column, but I’d like to begin with an even larger thought: integrating the network operations center (NOC) into a broader operations and ultimately business service vision.
Now, to be clear, I realize this suggests one of two things: either viewing network operations as an organization used to evangelize and bring IT processes into the mainstream; and/or leveraging the existing capabilities in some NOCs to manage across network/system/application interdependencies to integrate other more siloed IT organizations from the data center.
For instance, while ITIL best practices typically don’t begin with the NOC, but more often with the service desk and then the data center. In fact, the trend can sometimes be the reverse. I would say that while in most organizations the NOC is the last group on board with configuration management database (CMDB) system implementations, in probably 25% of the cases I’ve worked with it’s the first group to implement an early phase CMDB; typically oriented at service impact management. And I’ve often heard NOC directors complain about the lack of network support for many CMDB system offerings today—proving that the NOC is ahead not behind market.
The reasons for this somewhat schizophrenic role vis-à-vis more holistic management shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. On the one hand, the NOC, and network engineers in particular, are famous for being stubborn, independent and “misunderstood”. By image, at least, they are on the high end of fitting in with being classically non-communicative “Dilberts.”
On the other hand, many network operations organizations are already established in managing across interdependencies so that problems can be diagnosed across the network, or isolated to the application, or the server, or the database. In accordance with this, many good network management solutions are capable of identifying application design issues, such as chatty applications, or informing on server performance.
As a result, in many IT organizations, it’s the network team, particularly the network engineers, who are best prepared to coordinate troubleshooting across silos, or plan for overarching requirements in infrastructure optimization, or manage remote locations including systems and application access/ responsiveness.
The Vendors & The Marketplace
Recent data shows that an astonishing 51% of purchases involving network change and configuration management solutions were made in conjunction with a CMDB initiative. Standalone management purchases came in a distant second at about 16%. Purchases made in conjunction with systems management configuration and other software came in next at 13%, beating out purchases of network device hardware needing configuration tools at 12%.
This data is radically different from what we would have seen five or even three years ago. It’s one indicator that planning network management strategies is becoming a much more holistic endeavor. Another striking data point is that 64% of our respondents from Q4 2006 indicated that their organization had done, or was about to make, some organizational change to facilitate better collaboration between the NOC and the data center.
So, investing in management solutions is no longer just about buying siloed tools to manage just the network. And much of the push and shove in the network management market is consciously or not driven by this very fact. Vendors selling network management solutions know they have to change their business model to support a broader set of roles; from engineering to operations to service assurance across all domains.