What's going on inside your network right now?

Most organizations would have a very difficult time answering that question. Few small firms have the tools or expertise to proactively monitor the health of their networks. Larger organizations often buy monitoring tools but don’t have the time, know-how or focus to fully deploy them.

“Customers find after purchasing a particular product that it takes more resources to implement and manage it than they realized. They end up with what we call shelf-ware,” said FusionStorm CTO Vince Conroy. “Customers spend a lot of money on network monitoring tools but it doesn’t do them any good because they aren’t able to use the tools effectively.”

Without the proper tools in place, IT staff must react to network faults and performance degradations by poring over event logs. Trouble is, networks are increasingly complex, and isolated events don’t always point to the root cause of network problems. Network managers often find themselves solving the same problems over and over — problems that become more serious as the number of users and importance of network availability increase.

“Network performance is becoming more critical because customers are using their networks for more than just e-mail and moving files,” Conroy said. “Voice over IP and video place greater demands on the network, making real-time quality-of-service monitoring vital.”

Improved Vision

As companies continue to focus on increasing revenues while reducing costs, throwing money and personnel at network performance problems simply is not feasible. Fortunately there is a solution — outsourcing network management to FusionStorm. FusionStorm’s MS Xpress remote managed services offering includes comprehensive, end-to-end monitoring and management of individual network devices and circuits. Installation and setup are streamlined, so customers can be up and running quickly with no disruption to production systems.

“Myriad factors impact network health and performance, and keeping tabs on them all requires a significant investment in network management and monitoring tools,” said Conroy. “Our Network Operations Center features an extensive monitoring and reporting system located in secure, redundant, enterprise-class data centers. Yet MS Xpress is affordable for businesses of all sizes — organizations can take advantages of our investments at a small fraction of the cost.”

Of course, network management and monitoring software is only part of the investment. Generally, the salary expense of around-the-clock monitoring and incident response is more than most organizations can justify — even though their mission-critical requirements may demand such service levels. MS Xpress is ideal for these organizations.

“Keeping systems up and running and operating at peak performance, day and night, can be a challenging task, especially with limited IT staff and shrinking budgets,” Conroy said. “MS Xpress allows customers to leverage FusionStorm’s experts — who are certified by Sun, Cisco, Microsoft, Red Hat, Oracle and other key vendors — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

MS Xpress also provides data on error rates, packet loss, jitter and latency to help maximize Quality of Service for voice and video. Highly trained and experienced engineers help customers make sure that the network is voice ready, continues to stay voice ready, and can handle tomorrow’s applications.

New Insight

When it comes to managed services, one size does not fit all. FusionStorm has designed MS Xpress to be highly flexible, with service options and escalation rules tailored to each customer’s budget and operations.

“Each object we monitor and manage can have a unique escalation rule associated with it,” Conroy said. “Depending upon the level of service desired, our NOC staff can fix the problem directly, escalate to your IT staff to resolve or dispatch a third-party service organization on your behalf. Simple monitoring or extensive, proactive management — it’s your choice.”

FusionStorm’s secure, Web-based Customer Portal provides complete visibility into the health of monitored systems, trouble ticket status and history, custom reporting, and more. FusionStorm can also deliver a business dashboard so customers can view network performance data at a glance.

Best of all, MS Xpress is proven to reduce operational costs and boost productivity through a highly available, high-performance network. IT capital expenditures can also be optimized through sound recommendations from professionals familiar with the organization’s network and business needs.

“MS Xpress has the potential to impact many cost metrics. Obviously, the return on investment is subject to a number of variables, but customers utilizing MS Xpress can save 35 percent or more compared to using in-house resources,” said Conroy.

MS Xpress solves the network monitoring and support puzzle, allowing customers to stay focused on their core business. By outsourcing monitoring, management and support of their networks to FusionStorm, customers get reduced operational costs, improved network efficiency and peace of mind.