How to Relax about Your Computer Network by Using Network Monitoring
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Many business people say they can’t stand to be away from the computer, even when they’re on holiday or weekend getaway.
Business today is technology dependent, requires constant communications, and business owners need consistent availability and productivity. Network failures and irregularities, server downtime, service or application crashes can seriously threaten the livelihood of a business, costing thousands (if not millions) of dollars in revenue and productivity.
The idea of being on a remote beach location, far from any communication, sends chills down the spines of many business owners.
Part of the reason for this is that they don’t know if everything is actually running right when they’re gone.
This applies if you are a business owner, CEO, executive, IT Manager or Office Manager.
Without a way to check that things are OK, the gnawing uncertainty grows to the point that it can ruin an entire holiday, let alone your weekend. Fortunately, there is a way around this dilemma that doesn’t require being tethered to a computer or mobile phone. Once your network grows beyond a few systems, it’s time to think about Remote network monitoring.
Remote network monitoring is a service performed by a company on your behalf. They keep watch over a client’s network, so the client doesn’t have to. Several aspects of a network can be monitored remotely by these companies. They can make sure the email server is up and running, that all network services are on, etc.
Of course, they also check to make sure the company’s site is staying up. Monitoring companies can do even more, if the client needs them to. If a problem is detected, they will notify you or your designated contact. They can even fix the problem for you straight away!
By giving a remote network monitoring company a designated contact, a business owner is freed from the need to be constantly checking their internet accessibility and other network-related connectivity. Their IT person can handle any problems the company notifies them about, without the need for them to take time away from their other duties to keep rechecking everything themselves.
Even if a business owner is the designated contact, and therefore still needs to stay in mobile phone range, they are still freed from the maddening need to keep checking everything themselves. They can rest easy knowing that the network monitoring service will send them a message right away if anything important goes wrong. Therefore, the distracting and holiday-ruining obsession to keep checking and rechecking can be eliminated.
There are other uses for remote network monitoring, as well. Some companies not only monitor basic functionality, but things like email DNS blacklisting, as well. Blacklisting is usually the result of spamming, but sometimes DNS blacklists will erroneously list a company. It can also happen when a business changes servers, and ends up on an already-banned IP that was formerly used by an email spammer. A monitoring company can spot these problems and alert the business before legitimate emails begin to bounce.
Overall, remote network monitoring is a good idea for anyone who finds themselves constantly wondering if everything is working right. It allows business people to get on with actually doing business rather than spending their days checking things, thereby increasing both peace of mind and productivity.
Most organisations can’t afford to have an on-site support engineer managing their network 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
That’s why we offer a new, powerful Cloud computing service that monitors your critical network functions. By identifying network issues before they become larger problems, we can save you significant time and money.
Our new Cloud-based Remote Monitoring service, called Sensible Alerts is suitable for customers with or without onsite IT support staff.
With our Cloud-based remote Network Monitoring service (Sensible Alerts), we can configure and remotely monitor all of your important network systems (e-mail, servers, firewalls, routers, available disk space, backup applications, critical virus detection, and more). If our system detects a problem, it alerts our in-house technical support engineers 24 X7, so we can take corrective action. Depending on prearranged instructions from your own support or administration staff, we’ll correct the problem immediately, wait until the next business day or simply notify you of the issue.
Sensible Alerts can ensure your network is always reliable and available — even during off hours or when your engineer is not on site.
Benefits include:
But I’ve Got a New Network ! It Should Just work !
Once a new system is up and running, many people just don’t bother with monitoring it, thinking that there’s nothing else that needs to be done – its already at its best. Monitoring network performance is crucial to maintain a high-level of performance and health of the network, ensuring high efficiency and productivity.
It will also help establish a database of efficiency information for the future growth of your company, like the movement of information throughout the entire network, including the Internet and your servers and routers. These will monitor the system for symptoms of lost performance constantly.
Without network monitoring, your network can easily slow down and incredibly diminish both the security of the network as well as the performance of your business.
Also, vendors like Microsoft release software patches constantly. How do you know when they are available or if they apply to your network or not. Have you ever trustingly installed a Microsoft patch only to be worse off than before?
But I’ve Got An IT Guru ! I Don’t Need This!
Your IT Guru has weekends too. . Remote Monitoring allows them to still be in control 24 X 7 X 365 and helps your IT Guru work better and keep him more efficient.
There are many different parts of your system to monitor – all the time. You have to know which servers run which applications and how and where, how many different computers are connected, and the remote devices connected, such as Blackberries, iPhones or other smartphones. All of this information should be kept together in effectively a map of the company’s network. Knowing what you need helps make choosing the right tools much easier.
Also, your IT Guru may be struggling for time by putting out fires” and not being able to do the proactive work of preventing issues ever becoming problems? This situation creates a negative spiral, wasting time, money and competence on the wrong tasks, leading to even greater shortage of time to spend on preventive or project work. Using Sensible Alerts will allow you to free up resources and create time for the proactive work.
12 reasons why Sensible Alerts will be Right For you
1. Stay Competitive
Today, Business is measured on “time to market” and is an important competitive advantage. The use of IT can significantly shorten time to market, hence your IT systems must facilitate fast time to market and not be a bottleneck. IT should add control and provide important information to the business. A monitoring system such as Sensible Alerts can map and measure performance before and after investments and changes, providing the business with valuable facts. The choice of technology to base new products and services on should be a swift and easy process.
2. Keep informed
With real-time monitoring, if a failure or irregularity is detected, you can immediately be informed via methods such as phone calls, SMS, emails or a network message. Therefore, you will be notified of any problem on your network, wherever you may be thus allowing you to fix the issues swiftly. Without a network monitoring solution, you would have to look for issues yourself, or wait for the issue to be reported to you, to work toward a solution.
3. Better understanding of long-term trends.
Network monitoring tools also create graphs and reports about network performance over time. How fast is the demand for disk space growing in your server? If your network’s average daily Internet use has grown 1 Mbps (megabits per second) over the past six months, you can get a rough sense of how much you’ll need three years from now and budget accordingly. You can also plan better for the replacement of servers, switches and routers, because network monitors keep statistics related to performance of these devices.
4. Plan for change
Network monitoring solutions allow you to study a constant problem with a closer eye. For example, if a piece of hardware is constantly tripping, it may be the time to replace this hardware. The same would apply for a constant crashing service. Should you notice that a service or a particular application is frequently crashing, it might be a good idea to look into troubleshooting the application. If your available disk space is gradually getting smaller, you can plan an orderly migration to larger drives.
5. Diagnose issues
Imagine a scenario where your smartphone fails to receive emails. Without network monitoring, you may not be able to tell if the problem is with just the phone, your company internet connection, the email web server or the applications which the site runs on. Network monitoring will pinpoint the point of failure, saving you time and money when having to diagnose the problem. They can also provide warnings about network slowdowns, overloaded servers and other signs of trouble so you can address problems before they affect staff and clients
6. Reports issues
Network monitoring reports can help you spot trends in system performance, demonstrate the need for upgrades or replacements and prove your value, by documenting the otherwise ‘unseen’ work that keeps the IT systems you manage in top form.
7. Remediate disasters
If you are immediately notified that there is an issue with one of your systems on a network, and the issue is going to take quite some time to fix, the time saved by being alerted immediately can be used to bring in a backup system to replace the current failure, thereby providing a seamless and efficient service to your users and/or customers. Furthermore, some network monitoring solutions, such as Sensible Alerts can automatically move to correct the problem by restarting a service (or multiple services) upon failure; rebooting a server upon failure; or launching an executable, batch job or Script.
8. Ensure Operation of Security Systems
Although business spend a lot of money, time and resources on security software and hardware, without a network monitoring solution, they cannot be sure that the security devices are up and functioning as wanted to. With network monitoring solutions such as Sensible Alerts, you can effectively monitor and manage the health of these critical software and hardware security systems. With another feature this product offers, Patch Management, you can also streamline the automation and management of Microsoft software updates and patches.
9. Keep Track of Your Web Applications
Many services that your company offers to your users and customers are really just web applications running on a server. Network monitoring solutions allow you to stay on top of website problems, spot issues before your users or customers notice and remediate the issues in a timely fashion.
10. Fix problems, anytime, anywhere
Network Monitoring products nowadays are shipping with Remote Access features. These offer one-click remote network support for any server or workstation in your environment. Apart from providing a much faster service, remote access also saves you a lot of money without having to commute to branch offices or customer sites.
11. Ensure uptime
Network Monitoring maximizes network availability by monitoring all systems on your network, including servers, workstations and network devices and applications. Whenever a failure is detected, you will immediately be notified via the alerts you configure in the product allowing you to take corrective action in a highly efficient manner.
12. Save Your Business Money
Network Monitoring products such as Sensible Alerts, fix issues faster with instant alerts, spots small and big issues, eliminates the need for manual checks on event logs, backup systems, antivirus systems, hard disks and other devices. Having a network monitoring solution also avoids the need of complex and expensive systems. All this in turn facilitates cost saving and revenue building.
