How to Get 24x7 Network Monitoring on a Limited Budget

Our digitally enhanced ‘always on - always accessible’ world means that whether you are an employee, stakeholder or customer, we expect to access IT services, wherever we want, whenever we want. IT downtime or failure, if only for a few minutes and for seemingly small events, can critically impact business continuity and often have devastating implications. So, the need to effectively and proactively monitor your IT services around the clock is ever more important in today’s technology-driven environment.

Can You Build a 24x7 IT and Network Monitoring Operation, Without Significant Investment?

IT teams are stretched and under-resourced, and there are a multitude of conflicting IT priorities (cloud transformation, cyber security, etc.); it’s no wonder businesses (large and small) are unable (or unwilling) to dedicate the necessary resources and financial outlay to build their own comprehensive network monitoring operations centre (NOC).

Achieving an ‘Always On’ Culture Without Significant Investment

Just because a full-scale Network Operations Centre (NOC) is a difficult goal for many organisations, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t benefit from effective infrastructure monitoring by developing and driving a 24x7 culture within your business.

First, Evaluate Your Monitoring Requirements

Monitoring your network can seem an overwhelming and time-consuming task given the vast array of routers, switches, servers, software, end-points, etc., so it’s important to build intelligence into your approach:

• Keep things simple: Understand the key business requirements of your network monitoring and the critical services for your users, then prioritise monitoring these identified services. Overly complex monitoring will generate too many alerts and information overload, and could negatively impact system performance, leading to potential network bottlenecks.
• Eliminate the Noise of False Alerts: By defining the correct dependencies, rules, alerts, escalation processes, and automation, you can intelligently separate informational events from service-impacting incidents.
• By Intelligently Grouping Applications, Servers and Network Infrastructure, you can focus on end-to-end service uptime (rather than just the alerts).
• Deploy an Automated Break/Fix Regime: Issues and faults prone to recurrence can be successfully automated. This is particularly important for 24x7 deployments.
• Determine the Most Practical Way to Achieve 24x7 and/or ‘Out of Hours’ Cover: There are many better options if you only occasionally need ‘out of hours’ support. Similarly, if the impact of downtime is high (whether lost revenue or productivity), you should ensure you have an effective 24x7 escalation resource in place.

Next, Understand What It Takes

Real-time visibility across your entire IT infrastructure (with a commitment to building high-availability services) requires assessing what is ‘required’, plus what internal capabilities and limitations exist.

Here are some key questions to help you identify your specific requirements:

• What existing monitoring tools and processes do you have in place?
  You may have a few basic or very powerful tools in place, but you cannot dedicate the time/resources to get the most out of them. It’s important to determine whether these tools are configured optimally to give you the visibility you need, with intelligent dashboards (not just alerts) of your critical IT services, so that you can identify and resolve faults before they impact overall business performance.
• What level of internal monitoring expertise and knowledge do you have?
  Developing your team’s knowledge can be advantageous, but finding the right people and training them to the right level can be time-consuming and costly.
• Are your IT teams well set up to own the process?
  By reducing the ‘noise’ with conditional alerts and allocating clear responsibility to individuals, you can help avoid the bystander effect. Too many resources are often involved when other business-critical projects are ongoing.

Then, determine how best to deploy your available internal resources (people, time, knowledge and tools) where they matter most and in a way that’s most cost-effective for your business requirements.

Finally, Know If, When (And How) to Partner With a Specialist

There’s little need to build a fully staffed and resourced NOC dedicated to network monitoring for many businesses. Once you’ve determined and utilised your internal capabilities, it’s easy to decide on the gaps in developing a successful “OC culture” for your business.

The common and often unavoidable problem with internal monitoring teams is the delay in detecting (and resolving) issues, particularly during “out of hours" or weekends. Or there may be a lack of coverage during critical business periods, such as Black Friday.

24x7 Network Monitoring Costs

It may be surprising, but both ‘out-of-hours’ and 24x7 network monitoring support are hugely cost-effective, as a specialist partner would have already invested in the required resources and capabilities.

Partnering with the right NOC specialist will also provide access to expertise often unattainable with existing internal resources. It will give you flexibility regarding how you need the service to work.

You choose what works best for you, whether on-demand, out-of-hours, consultancy, co-managed, or overspill during critical periods.

24x7 Peace of Mind - For Less Than You Thought

Every business will have unique requirements, risk profile, and resource and budget constraints. However, developing and implementing a roadmap for a 24x7 NOC culture, plus calling on expert support services to complement your monitoring needs, will go a long way toward building resilience and driving uptime.

This is done at considerably less cost than setting up and maintaining a fully staffed, state-of-the-art physical NOC infrastructure that operates 24x7.