JDSU’s Network Instruments business released its seventh annual “State of the Network Global Study.” Of the findings – after polling 241 network professionals – a provoking theme emerged: 80 percent of respondents viewed software defined networks (SDN) as unimportant or were just going to “ride out the hype” – saying it is “Like a Road Trip Without a Map.” A leading authority in the enterprise network management space with a lot of experience covering this sector is Jim Frey, vice president at E...

Security is a top concern for anyone running a network today. The recent Heartbleed bug and other high-profile hacks have shined a new light on the fact that security strategies in the enterprise must constantly evolve to meet the challenges of new and ever-changing attacks. In the spring of 2014 news of the Heartbleed bug hit the wire sending the tech world scrambling to patch the now notorious OpenSSL vulnerability that allowed individuals to steal private information like certificate keys, pa...

According to the IDC, nearly 5 million 10 Gb ports were shipped in the third quarter of 2013, surpassing the number of Gigabit switches for the first time since the technology was introduced in 2001. That's a lot of upgrades, but with Big Data analysis, VoIP, video, and other bandwidth-intensive applications gobbling up more and more network resources, it's no surprise. The real challenge for many network teams today is managing performance monitoring expectations in the new 10 Gb environment, a...

Multi-tiered applications are no longer the exception but the rule. In the past, assessing application performance meant monitoring response time and health on a single server hosting one application. Now, with the applications increasingly becoming virtualized, utilizing multiple protocols, and operating over multiple servers, the approach to tracking overall application performance needs a reboot. So how do you effectively track the health and conversations involved in a service comprised of m...

Infosim®, the technology leader in automated Service Fulfillment and Service Assurance solutions, today announced the release of its award winning software suite StableNet® Version 6.7 for Telco and Enterprise customers.   This version provides a significant number of powerful new and enhanced features, including: Enhanced Application and Business Process Monitoring Raspberry PI full featured StableNet® Agent New Java GUI Look & Feel New User Tracking New LogNG Module / Log File Analysi...

When it comes to points of network visibility, common knowledge dictates that more is always better. And, when we’re talking about troubleshooting and identifying the point of delay, increased visibility is important. But multiple points of visibility can also lead to duplicate packets. There are times when duplicate packets help in troubleshooting, but they can also lead to incorrect analysis and forecasting. It’s critical for successful network management to understand when duplicate packets c...

My new report is live for Forrester clients - Predictions For 2014: Technology Monitoring. Normally I am a bit of a skeptic when it comes to predictions, especially in regards to technology, because while they are interesting to read they can cause confusion and unnecessary deliberation for a buyer/strategist if they are not in context. So my aim for this report was to provide some concrete advice for I&O professionals in 2014 in regards to their technology monitoring (user experience, appli...

The Internet of Things is upon us. How can enterprise network administrators brace for impact? Discussion of the Internet of Things – a world of connected objects, where your refrigerator sends you a text message when you’re low on milk and your basketball generates a quasi-scouting report when you’re done shooting hoops – has so far resonated most in the service provider space. What services can I sell to enable this? What infrastructure will I need to keep everything connected? But a similar c...

Network Analyzers are designed to watch the network, identify issues and alert administrators of problem scenarios. These features make the analyzer an excellent tool to locate network security breaches, and to help identify and isolate virus-infected systems. This article shows how using a network analyzer can enhance network security, which analyzer features are essential for this task and how an analyzer should be a part of any IT professional’s security incident response plan. Because firewa...

Learn the concepts and technologies behind effectively managing application performance, so you can identify and correct issues before they affect your business. Application Performance Monitoring Technologies There are a number of different types of tools on the market that report on application performance. They can be roughly categorized by the mechanisms the tool uses to measure performance: Synthetic transaction systems generate test transactions from one or more clients (or pseudo-clients)...

What does your network have in common with a cloud service provider? At first glance, you would probably say not much. But remove the word cloud, and you have an over-taxed network team spending several hours troubleshooting complex database, Citrix, VoIP, and Internet performance problems over a highly-distributed network. Too many problems and applications and too little time to manage them are challenges that will sound familiar to any network professional. Additionally, because it’s a cloud ...

A few years ago the only cloud game in town was the public cloud, but today private and hybrid clouds are also true contenders. In fact, private cloud implementations address a prevalent set of challenges and issues that public clouds cannot and can help speed up and smooth the way of cloud adoption. Here are five core tenets you should assess when weighing private cloud against public cloud options: 1. Ease of Use. IT’s responsibilities lie not just in the implementation of technology, but in i...

It has been clear for quite some time that the network has become the lifeblood of nearly all enterprises. This is not just true for obvious network-centric enterprises such as retail sites or content distributors, but also for enterprises that utilize distributed applications such as SAP, Oracle, or any number of other network-centric applications. Over the past few years, a number of new enterprise technologies have emerged that are critically reliant on network performance, but where this rel...

Observer® Reporting Server (ORS) serves as the center of the Network Instruments® performance management platform, and combines flow technologies, captured packets, and expert analysis to provide an overall view of network health. Obtain integrated views of application, network, and infrastructure performance critical to ensure that business processes function smoothly and IT supports organizational goals. Highlights: Manage performance across the enterprise Obtain aggregated views of network, a...

Modern enterprise applications are engineered for agility and are heavily virtualized for frequent deployment over scalable IT infrastructure environments. The benefits of virtualized public\private cloud environments include flexibility, efficiency, and agile business enablement. Multiple factors such as varying workload requirements, or ‘just-in‐time’ provisioning require an accurate and scalable muti-functional management suite to mitigate the risk of compromising the environment. Infosim’s S...

While you may not be that familiar with Software Defined Networking (SDN), it may be the next “big thing.” As with other popular technologies like cloud and big data, there is no clear consensus on the exact definition of SDN. Also like these technologies, SDN initiatives are likely to be pushed by IT folks outside the network team, and can greatly affect network visibility. While an SDN future may seem a few light years away, given the clout of vendors and users pushing these technologies, incl...

Regardless of the industry, companies rely on continued performance of their network with near 100 percent uptime to ensure continuity of services and revenue protection. Whether the organization is operating in retail, manufacturing, financial services or healthcare, operational analytics is essential in reducing downtime and meeting IT performance goals. This was the emerging consensus in the results of the IT Operations Analytics Benchmark published by Continuity Software. In the realm of net...

Network infrastructure is evolving at an unprecedented rate and, with mixed vendor environments the norm rather than the exception, management of those systems has become a labour intensive exercise. Unlike fault and performance management, Network Change and Configuration Management (NCCM) has no common harmonised management method or protocols; Even the first level engineering teams have to be proficient in numerous different configuration languages and interfaces for the simplest of tasks. In...

As IT environments become more complex, so does application performance management. IT professionals need tools that are up for the new challenge. "Applications are becoming increasingly difficult to troubleshoot, and [it's becoming more difficult to] understand how users are interacting with them," said Jonah Kowall, research vice president of IT operations management at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc. "Because applications are so diverse, there are a lot of different approaches and solution...

In managing network performance, user experience takes priority. Being proactive in managing performance means not only tracking the network and application, but obtaining an in-depth view of the underlying infrastructure health. There are two primary ways to obtain this information: agent or agentless. Selecting the best method for your team requires understanding the options and selecting the solution that integrates well with your existing resources. This IT Brief will: Define agent and agent...