The easy path to IT management

Brought to you by SolarWinds

When the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) wanted an easy way to monitor its network traffic, it turned to a category of IT management tools known as Network Performance Monitor (NPM).

NPM tools allow network administrators to easily identify network delays, packet loss and throughput – all of which can affect the performance of online services. Network errors, for instance, can result in the loss of data packets, while network delays may be caused by cabling problems.

To APNIC, which assigns millions of Internet addresses to organisations across the Asia-Pacific region, keeping its network humming along at all times is crucial to over 3,200 member organisations that rely on its services.

Amante Alvaran, APNIC’s senior network engineer, said: “Since so many people throughout the Asia-Pacific depend on us, it is crucial that our services like Reverse DNS and the Whois Database be online and accessible at all times”. Reverse DNS allows users to look up domain names based on IP addresses, while the Whois database lists the contact details of domain name owners.

APNIC is currently using SolarWinds’ flagship Network Performance Monitor and NetFlow Traffic Analyzer to improve monitoring and reporting on its network that spans Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and the United States. The tools have allowed APNIC to visualise different aspects of its network and monitor data traffic, Alvaran said.

While the traditional way to resolve IT management issues often entails hiring expensive consultants, going through long procurement processes and staff training, more organisations such as APNIC are turning to powerful software tools like NPM that offer IT management capabilities without all the complication and hassle.

Last year, the global revenue for network management software and appliances alone was worth US$2.5 billion. IDC expects this market to grow each year by 7.5 percent to reach US$4 billion by 2017.

According to Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), an industry analyst and consulting firm, SolarWinds is a fast-growing player in IT management software. The company recently made it into Fortune magazine’s top 100 list of fastest growing companies, with a three-year average revenue growth of 30 percent.

While other IT management vendors are looking to expand the scope and number of devices that can be supported by their software, SolarWinds is focused on usability and ease of deployment – two areas that have been largely unaddressed by the market.

SolarWinds’ Network Performance Monitor (NPM), for example, comes with a simple wizard interface that lets IT administrators easily install and configure the software.

In less than an hour,  NPM will automatically discover and monitor networks for fault and performance issues. And with SolarWinds’ Server and Application Monitor (SAM), companies can start monitoring the health of their applications and hardware servers minutes after the software is installed.

Doug Hibberd, SolarWinds’ Asia-Pacific general manager and executive vice president for engineering, said: “What SolarWinds has really delivered to the market is a portfolio of practical applications that solve problems for real users”.

“Our approach has been to deliver these tools in a single package that provides rich feature sets, ease of use, and affordability – this has been the winning combination that users are looking for,” he added.

Beyond the products, SolarWinds has created Thwack, a thriving online community where users can interact with their peers to solve problems. Users can also use Thwack to request and vote for features to be included in future products.

“The community includes content which we create, as well as user generated content so it really goes beyond the academic content that many vendors provide to the real practical advice that users want”, Hibberd said in an interview with Techgoondu.

For example, a Thwack participant recently created two SQL scripts to help a fellow network administrator who had problems replacing the e-mail address to which alerts can be sent.

Focus on the tools, not the framework
Enterprises often turn to frameworks such as ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) and models like FCAPS (Fault Configuration Accounting Performance Security) to manage the entire IT lifecycle, from deploying business applications and infrastructure, to IT asset management and operations.

“But at SolarWinds, we like to think of the more practical problems that you encounter in the IT lifecycle,” Hibberd said.

He noted that companies often try to integrate deployment with maintenance activities such as proactive monitoring and patching to ensure IT systems are available round the clock. This often involves overly sophisticated processes and technology.

“However, the reality is that simpler approaches may yield 80 percent of the benefit for 20 percent of the cost,” Hibberd said. “There are tools that can help automate the configuration and deployment of assets, and related (but not necessarily integrated) tools that do a great job of monitoring and updating the assets.

“Picking the best tools for the problem is typically a better answer than picking integrated frameworks that don’t solve any of the problems well,” he said.

To check out how you can get started, head on to Solarwinds’ website for a free bandwidth monitor. This page is brought to you by Solarwinds.