Savvy companies have learned to take a proactive stance toward network security. Now they need to take a preventive approach to network performance. If a network problem persists, eventually all your company’s systems slow to a snail’s pace — or worse, some applications could come to a grinding halt. Customers and users get frustrated. Mission-critical applications fail to work properly.
In a worst-case scenario, your business suffers disruptive and costly downtime. An Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC) survey found that one hour of downtime costs 86% of companies $300,000 or more.
Network monitoring is the ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure. With network monitoring, your company can prevent problems before they balloon into something worse.
Making a Network Performance Diagnosis
Network monitoring empowers your company to identify the signs of an emerging network problem before it can affect performance. Right now, your network could be displaying symptoms of a performance issue. Unless network monitoring is in place, these symptoms could be overlooked until it is too late.
Like a dry, scratchy throat that develops into a full-blown cold or flu, a minor bottleneck may turn into a network interruption or an unanticipated period of downtime. A change in workload traffic may be taxing your network, requiring a change in resource allocation.
Understanding Your Network’s Vital Signs
To ensure optimal network performance, your company needs to gain full visibility into how the network is performing. Your company also needs to establish a baseline for network performance.
Establishing a baseline enables you to determine when performance is lacking or when an anomaly is occurring. Falling below your baseline could result from increasing latency rates or lower-than-average throughput rates.
When monitoring determines that performance is falling below the baseline, you can quickly intervene and adjust resources to resolve the problem. Network monitoring provides a dashboard that can be used to understand data use and measure network performance. Alerts notify your company of a network performance problem so you can react quickly and resolve it.
Why Network Performance Is Vital
Maintaining a healthy network is critical. Today, companies are relying more on endpoints, such as connected devices that are part of the Internet of Things (IoT), and mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, to conduct business, manage assets, and communicate with both customers and employees.
Innovations in analytics, such as artificial intelligence, have upped the ante for network performance. Advanced analytics applications need real-time information to produce accurate insights. Technology thought leader Gartner defines real-time analytics as analytics that are calculated within minutes or even seconds of receiving data. This means data needs to be transmitted and processed quickly to reach the best insights.
A network that performs poorly may result in packet loss, meaning decisions get made based on incomplete information. Audio and video communications also suffer in quality.
Your company is also operating in an ‘always-on’ culture. Customers and employees expect your network to be available every minute of every day. Network monitoring will help ensure the seamless availability that brings both employee and customer satisfaction.
Finding the Right Cure for Performance Problems
Fortunately for companies in the Northeast, the network doctor is in. FirstLight offers network monitoring services. We have built the largest high-speed network in the region and offer a full suite of Unified Communications, cloud, data center, and network solutions, including network monitoring and other managed solutions.
FirstLight’s network monitoring solution brings our expertise to your business. Our network monitoring provides 3 key functions:
- See It: Use a single portal to gain a full view of performance.
- Know It: Take advantage of customized alerts to know when to act.
- Report It: Get reports on performance so you can anticipate and prevent problems.
With network monitoring from FirstLight, your company can stay ahead of network performance problems. Our network monitoring is like the apple a day that keeps the doctor away.
Learn more details on the benefits and features of Network Monitoring. Get your copy of our solution brief Network and Enterprise Monitoring.
