Intelligence saves

The costs of network downtime are high - around R 10 000 per minute and rising by about 20% per annum, according to industry watchers. Yet network failures have become an accepted, almost expected, aspect of business life - much as power outages and load-shedding.

While the IT industry has taken steps to mitigate downtime by improving security, beefing up power supply systems, and introducing redundancy in server farms, companies still face lost productivity, reduced profit, reputational damage and legal repercussions as a result of unplanned - often catastrophic - operational interruptions.

Interestingly, the significance of downtime often varies between industries, mainly due to the different effects of downtime on business applications and the nature of the service provided. Mission-critical services and supply-chain operations are obviously hard hit.

What's required is a means to examine and analyse network performance with a view to giving management better insights into operational parameters - an important factor in minimising network downtime.

The process should involve optimising the network for every application, boosting security for these applications and providing data for business analytics.

The concept of business analytics is fundamental to companies committed to data-driven decision-making and is defined as the practice of iterative, methodical exploration of a company's data with emphasis on statistical analysis.

It is the key to transforming the corporate network into a strategic business tool capable of powering innovation using its own infrastructure as the basis.

Through business analytics, managers will be able to gain insights into day-to-day issues that influence decision-making. It can also be used to improve and even automate business processes.

For most companies today, data is recognised as an extremely valuable corporate asset. It has the potential to be manipulated and leveraged for competitive advantage, particularly when it comes to issues such as revenue growth, cost reduction and new business targeting.

While business analytics largely depends on the skills levels of the analyst to identify new patterns and relationships, explain why certain conclusions are reached, or forecast trends and future outcomes, it relies on data quality to an overwhelming extent for accuracy.

If expert analytics is central to the running of a successful business, then it comes as no surprise that it's a dynamic component linked to the continuous operation of the corporate network.

Network availability is a function of the network's health and wellbeing and is vital to the maintenance of uptime, with consequences linked to business productivity and continuity.

Network failures have become an accepted, almost expected, aspect of business life - much as power outages and load-shedding.

There are a number of challenges facing network managers today in their quest for the 'holy grail' of 99.999% network uptime - or 'five nines' as the goal is colloquially known.

These challenges include security associated with the growing numbers of private PCs, iPhones, iPads and other 'smart' devices throughout the corporate world. Their proliferation is encouraged by the BYOD (bring your own device) phenomenon sweeping through the business world. Often, doubts are raised about the effectiveness of the current management tools that oversee BYODs and ensure network security.

What's the answer? It lies in radically increasing the levels of intelligence surrounding the corporate network infrastructure to the point where it is able to quickly and easily determine which end-users and what devices are on the network - and whether they are in compliance with established policies and practices.

IT and network managers need to have the visibility and control of applications and Web sites (including related sub-Web sites) resident in all parts of the network, from the wired or wireless edge all the way through the core to the data centre, as well as application traffic from the enterprise to the private cloud, public cloud or any service on the Internet.

Providing the data needed to realise these deep levels of insight is not an easy task, as many network managers will agree. The tools needed to effectively capture network data, including context-based application traffic and content, at this refined level of granularity, and then analyse, correlate and report on it - all the while delivering meaningful intelligence about applications, users, locations and devices - have not been readily available.

However, there is evidence that developments in the field of network analytics are beginning to bridge the gaps between IT and network management, security and business intelligence with clear goals to improve network uptime through a deep understanding of traffic trends and patterns. There will be spin-off benefits, such as enhanced understanding of user engagement, optimised application performance, and protection against malicious or unapproved system use.