The Importance of Vendor-Neutral Network Performance MonitoringThe Importance of Vendor-Neutral Network Performance Monitoring

As the network ecosystem continues to evolve, unbiased monitoring is even more crucial.

Monitoring is old, right?
Monitoring has been done, right?
My vendors watch this stuff for me, right?

Often I hear these questions as I talk about the idea of watching an ecosystem that is drastically and constantly changing. As the control of the network has moved from an internal process to external, companies can go from a position of strength and control to one of weakness. The only way to regain control is through vendor-neutral network performance monitoring.

The IT manager has become a vendor manager in a way that no one anticipated. As organizations have moved to cloud-based applications, they have had to sign contracts that push the performance of the network or Internet back on the organization itself. Cloud-based providers seem to have decided that the answer to stopping the blame game is to push the responsibility away.

Early in my career, I became certified in deep dive packet analysis, for which we take an IP packet apart and look at how the various components interact with each other and how these interactions could impact performance. This skill (which is as boring as it sounds) is critical when an application is having an issue and needs to be programmatically fixed.

Packet capture and deep dive packet analysis are critical to monitoring efforts, but IT needs to add a higher-level form of monitoring. This new style of monitoring must be able to be deployed anywhere, see all components in the ecosystem, and understand the interactions between the parts.

As the ecosystem continues to become more diverse, monitoring and understanding of the environment becomes even more crucial. But the way we need to need to monitor also needs to change. Users need to move away from stand-alone systems that are heavy on infrastructure and servers, toward a dynamic, cloud-based network performance monitoring system that can truly see everything that can affect the environment.

I was recently with a customer who had what they described as "big data fatigue." They had nine systems involved in monitoring the ecosystem, and they were desperate for a comprehensive single view that could simplify things.

Big data is great conceptually, but what customers really need is the right data, at the right time, to make the right decision. For this, big data needs to become the correct data. Vendors will always be biased; that's not going to change. So to provide the appropriate level of understanding of the ecosystem, vendor-neutral network performance monitoring is necessary.

When a network performance monitoring tool is introduced to the ecosystem, it levels the playing field. The ability to precisely detect problems can quiet the room. The simple truth is that data drives decisions. The tool can do everything from pinpoint a router with issues, discover bandwidth issues on the carrier side, or identify an internal user who is using a resource-heavy application like streaming music or video.

As IT managers evolve into vendor managers and work through the cloud, hosted, and app-based world, their ability to monitor and effectively referee these vendors becomes more challenging. The sheer number of vendors alone makes the number of touch points seemingly unmanageable.

Transparency and visibility are crucial. As companies begin to understand that they need to have a view of this new world, they will start to demand the tools that enable them to see the ecosystem.

Roger Blohm is the President and CEO of LVM, Inc., and owner of VXSuite, a network performance and call analytics company.