Time for network management convergence in India

BANGALORE, INDIA: To say that there is a plethora of solutions in the network management space and that network management is no longer a business luxury, would be an understatement. Multiple factors influence the way in which today's heterogeneous networks are managed and that includes economic viability of space and solutions, the choice of technology, the breadth and depth of management capabilities, vendors it supports, and so on.

Introduction

The market evolves continuously; the natural outcome of this is an addition of newer devices from existing and new equipment vendors, and as a result, newer solutions to support their management. To economize and optimize on the IT investments, we also see many businesses moving to private and/or public clouds. Add to that, the exponential growth in the consumer mobile device market.

The market problem

The key trends in the IT industry, aka, rise in the adoption of virtualization, BYOD, more equipment vendors with proprietary technologies, etc., have resulted in a ‘solutions spurt'. This, when 80 per cent of BYOD is still left ‘unmanaged' according to a recent survey! With every second person in the industry relying on a personal device, it is only a matter of time before full manageability is available across solutions.

To the IT workforce that is entrusted with the responsibility of aligning its IT management to the core business of the company, this translates to, too many choices, costly evaluation time, insufficiently met business requirements, technology learning challenges, interoperability issues and sometimes, even people issues. The resources are scattered across a private cloud, a public cloud, a LAN or a WAN. It is an up-hill task to coordinate with different teams, relying on varied solutions for the data, only to disagree with the reports in the end!

The root of all these problems can be traced to dependency on multiple point products, often across solution vendors. The need for a convergence in the network management space stems from this very fact.

The solution

Globally, the network management solution vendors have now come to understand that, given the dynamic nature of today's heterogeneous networks, it is impossible to work within a small framework. The vendors have been quick to recognize the need for convergence and are now positioning unified solutions that cater to different aspects of network management like network health and availability monitoring, virtualization management, BYOD management, configuration management, security management, IT automation, energy management, etc., for devices spanning multiple vendors, leveraging industry standard technology.

As opposed to the earlier approach of building point products that address niche network management verticals, they employ a broader approach which can be one or more of the following types:

To factor in future changes in a particular vertical/domain right from the design phase and also add extensibility to the solutions already available in such a way that it can keep pace with the market changes.

To build point products for different domains in the network management space and provide integration options

To join hands with other solution vendors and enable interoperability, leveraging the benefits that come with third party integration

What's Next

With a convergence in network management, businesses in the West, especially the SMBs, are able to plan for a long haul. Besides, the IT Admins are a happy lot if they don't have to disagree on too many data points. The boundaries within the teams of an IT department are fast disappearing. They find unified solutions to be more productive and easier to learn and manage. This trend is catching on in India and the next couple of years will see the consolidation and maturing of solutions in this space.

The author is head of marketing, NPM Divison at ManageEngine, a division of Zoho Corporation.