To be effective and successful in today’s market, businesses must ensure that their information technology networks are not only reliable and high performing, but also fully capable of meeting their current (and future) needs. This is why a comprehensive IT management software solution is essential for helping Ops managers, engineers, and their teams provide consistent levels of IT services by aiding them in controlling, monitoring, optimizing, securing, and expanding network and server environments efficiently.
To optimize operational processes and to improve business efficiency, enterprises must have a thorough understanding of their current network infrastructure and servers, and must know how these solutions respond to and coordinate with new forms of technology. As the IT management division of Zoho Corporation, ManageEngine is aiming to provide today’s large, multinational enterprises with a sophisticated approach to network and server performance management. From network management to server monitoring, ManageEngine and its solutions are focused on helping IT teams resolve system issues to ensure the optimal performance of their critical IT infrastructure.
SourceForge recently had the chance to speak with Raj Sabhlok, the President of ManageEngine and Zoho Corporation, to discuss the importance of network performance management and the benefits it can provide businesses. Sabhlok also shared his thoughts on how ManageEngine’s OpManager, the company’s easy, powerful, and scalable network management software solution can help service providers, small and mid-sized businesses (SMEs), and large multinational enterprises.
Defining Network Management
Each and every event, action, transaction, and/or interaction in today’s modern world will cross a network at some point during its journey. This is one of the many reasons why computer networks have become an integral part of an organization’s daily operations. Many businesses have come to rely on computer networks to help stack and track company information, communicate with their suppliers, partners, and customers, deliver products and services, and more. But what exactly is network management, and why is network management important for businesses?
Raj Sabhlok, the President of ManageEngine and Zoho Corporation
According to Sabhlok, network management is one of (if not the) most crucial parts of an organization’s IT management. “I would say that network management is the first product area for IT management,” said Sabhlok. “One of the first things that an enterprise needs is network management, and given today’s market, this is no different. In fact, the way we look at IT management nowadays is as a computing stack: the bottom layer is the network, and if the network is not up and running, then you have nothing to go on.”
“There was (and is) this continual growth of a stack over time, which has also helped grow IT management. So ultimately what came of this was that each component needed to be monitored for availability and performance, and this is why and how IT management evolved,” added Sabhlok.
“However, that’s not to say that network management software and network management itself don’t both remain critical components of everything going on within the enterprise,” Sabhlok continued. “What we see is that there’s an increase in network management overall, and what’s also happening simultaneously is that more and more things are being run over a network: think laptops and mobile devices (and any kind of smart device), all of which need to be monitored for congestion and traffic.”
The Importance of a Network Management Solution
For businesses to deliver consistent and top quality service to their customers, they should take advantage of a robust network performance management solution. With a powerful and scalable network management system in place, businesses can easily monitor and manage in real-time all of the aspects of their network assets like software installation and usage, bandwidth, storage space, and more so they can tap into the full potential of their infrastructure and thus improve their return on investment (ROI).
According to Sabhlok, using IT management tools can enable organizations to easily monitor and manage individual components of their network. ”There are more and more layers to go through with your network management tools,…but the overall process of network monitoring makes managing this much easier,” said Sabhlok.
Additionally, IT management tools can proactively detect and monitor network performance issues and prevent mishaps, thereby ensuring the smooth functioning of all critical network and server applications. “Broadly speaking, what these IT management tools do is ensure that the technologies being deployed into networks are available and performing well,” added Sabhlok.
“As an example: there are all the switches and routers and hardware devices that the network runs through, and all of this needs to be managed as well,” continued Sabhlok. “As an example, you may have port problems, requiring you to configure network ports and possibly bring on new ports in order to expand the network. The good news is that all of this can be addressed with a network management solution, and in our case, OpManager suite. ManageEngine’s solution has base network monitoring software functionality in and of itself, with bandwidth monitoring (NetFlow Analyzer) and the network configuration side. Beyond that, users can easily resolve problems within the stack. We see a close correlation between performance and the interaction between the network and the server.”
Establishing a Reliable Approach to Network Management
Sabhlok also shared how he believes businesses can gain a competitive advantage by establishing a reliable company-wide approach to network management. He believes this can be accomplished in three ways. “First, make sure the system is up and available,” said Sabhlok. “Ideally, we are talking about proactive management instead of reactive management because these applications keep your systems up and running. Second, you need to optimize your network performance and think to yourself ‘my apps are available, but how well are they running?’ So you should be able to shape traffic to make it conform to your business and business priorities. And third, you need a scalable, single console that is not only used to manage network availability, but can also see the network flow and bandwidth, thus allowing you to monitor traffic and do traffic analysis as well as configuration management all from one console.”
Improving Network Performance with ManageEngine
ManageEngine develops robust and comprehensive IT management tools from the ground up, with contextual integrations to simplify IT operations and help system admins become more efficient at their jobs. “We’ve built our solution to address multiple constituents,” said Sabhlok. “Our solutions [Network Performance Management Software] can support SMBs. But all the time, when we come up with a new product, we insist that it offers scalability.” From network and data infrastructure management to traffic, configuration, and bandwidth monitoring, ManageEngine’s powerful and scalable software solutions allow businesses of all types and sizes to scale and supervise their entire network through a single console.
ManageEngine also supports various network operations and assists customers by helping them manage all IT infrastructure in a simplified approach. And OpManager, a powerful network monitoring software solution from ManageEngine, can help businesses to monitor system performance, detect network issues in real-time, troubleshoot errors, and prevent downtime.
“With OpManager, IT managers can understand the number, kind, and associated bandwidth usage of any application,” said Sabhlok. “This product lets users see devices, who are using these devices, where they are coming from (remote or inside the WAN/LAN), and how much bandwidth they are consuming.” The key features and capabilities of OpManager include real-time network monitoring, intelligent reporting, threshold-based monitoring, reactive network management techniques, and physical and virtual server monitoring. Aside from these, OpManager also has powerful add-ons and plugins that help businesses improve their network’s performance through bandwidth analysis, configuration and change management, firewall log analysis and archiving, application monitoring, and more.
“With help from OpManager and our companion products, users can drill deeper into the flow of data in the network, so they can shape the traffic depending on priorities within the enterprise, allowing business apps more bandwidth while excluding specific domains,” added Sabhlok.
Just recently, ManageEngine added a new feature to their OpManager solution: deep packet inspection. “This is the ability to look at the actual packets of data flowing across the network and basically dissect the payload to understand how the network is handling the packet, what the packet is made up of, and more,” shared Sabhlok. “It’s useful in diagnosing what’s actually happening within the network.”
Beyond Network Performance Management
Aside from improving network performance through OpManager, ManageEngine also offers VoIP monitoring and network mapping services. “The network health monitoring portion is the price of entry for tools, and we do this quite well across the wide area network (WAN) and inside the local area network (LAN)…but we also offer Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) monitoring and network mapping for visualization of the entire network, which helps users easily figure out where the problems live in their network,” shared Sabhlok. “With a visual representation, users can see the performance degradation and pinpoint exactly where it is coming from…then remap and send traffic elsewhere,” he explained. “This type of network traffic analysis can help to show which users and apps that IT should set the quality around.”
As part of their solutions, ManageEngine has introduced application management as well as a complete line of security solutions. “As of late, the ‘analytics game’ is about collecting all the data from all applications so that organizations can analyze all of their IT data,” said Sabhlok. “Data in and of itself is helping individuals to make better business decisions. Our platform can be in the cloud, on-premises, or both because… some applications are on-premise and require a download and install, while others are based in the cloud. And so we have created a broad product line similar to our sister division, Zoho, which has 40 business applications that we call ‘the operating system for business.’”
Additionally, ManageEngine also offers a help desk solution called ServiceDesk Plus, which adds a hub to any IT organization with added desktop and mobile device management. This means that IT can manage both laptops and desktops from a central location, easily deploy operating systems, and further ensure that security and additional patches are put in place correctly. The hub also lets users manage company-owned mobile devices, as well as any of the bring your own devices (BYOD), too.
Specifically created to support IT help desks, ServiceDesk Plus can be easily integrated with management apps and deployed on the cloud or on-premises. Additionally, this solution comes with extensive reporting capabilities and ITIL-based features, including incident management, problem management, change management, and more.
About ManageEngine
ManageEngine is an independent subsidiary of Zoho Corporation, which is structured into three major divisions: ManageEngine (the largest from a revenue standpoint), Zoho (the business application space), and WebNMS (an enterprise-scale Internet of Things platform). Headquartered in Pleasanton, California, ManageEngine has over one hundred thousand customers and has expanded into various parts of the IT management space, with 65% of Fortune 500 companies using their reliable suite of IT management software products. Established in 2002, ManageEngine specializes in network performance, server, and applications management, IT help desk, log analysis and security, unified IT monitoring, desktop management, and more.