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Remote Network Monitoring & Management

One of the key determinants of an organisation's success is the performance, availability and security of their IT infrastructure. Customers and partners are demanding that your IT infrastructure is "always on" and it is essential for a productive environment for your key staff to have access to information "anywhere and anytime".

Remote monitoring and management greatly helps IT providers with this challenge because it enables the IT Provider to cost-effectively manage their customers' IT environments 24/7. Remote monitoring and management delivers proactive management and performance at predetermined costs.

There are many benefits of Remote Monitoring and Management Services to customers. The primary benefits are a reduction in downtime, improved overall network performance through real-time problem monitoring and reporting and automated asset inventory management.

Reduced Downtime

Most downtime occurs because IT staff are busy or out of office and are unable to keep a close eye on their network. The automatic alerting capability inherent in most monitoring tools allows technical staff to be alerted to problems before they become critical. For example, if your primary server is about to run out of disk space, your IT team will be alerted and can respond before the problem becomes critical. In addition, Remote Monitoring by your IT Provider allows a second pair of eyes to watch your network to identify and resolve issues. Again, this significantly reduces downtime.

Improved Network Performance

It is an IT persons dream to have a network that performs with minimal effort. Real-time proactive monitoring and management significantly enhances overall network performance, which naturally improves security and reliability. With remote monitoring, IT people now have the ability to manage networks without being confined to the office. Your IT team will also know what issues are affecting your network before you are even aware that there is problem

If we look at a basic email scenario where no one in the office can receive e-mail, it could be several things. It could be your Internet Service Provider (ISP), it could be the mail server, the switch or router. Remote monitoring and management allows all possible points of failure to be immediately identified or narrowed down. Once the problem is identified, time to resolution is much quicker thus increasing network uptime and employee productivity.

Asset Inventory Management

Another benefit of remote monitoring and management worth noting is the sea of information that monitoring tools provide. A detailed asset inventory of all up-to-date hardware, software and patch information of all servers and workstations are available. No more searching for make and model of your network devices. No more searching for the amount of servers and workstations across your network. Information on your network is now visible from a central console and can be properly managed and dissected for reporting purposes.

Providence Technology Group has over the past year incorporated a new way of managing our client's networks. We have adopted international IT standards by deploying remote monitoring and management tools in our environment to enable us to provide proactive management of our clients' networks. Remote monitoring and management has greatly raised the value of our service level agreements and has allowed Providence to offer a lower cost to our clients.

About the Author:

Ms Georgette Robinson is Manager, networking solutions at Providence Technology Group. Ms Robinson has 10 years experience working in IT across networking, Project Management, Business Analysis, service Delivery and Implementation. Providence Technology Group is one of the Bahamas' leading IT firms, specializing in networking solutions, Consulting & Advisory services and software solutions.