Many businesses have gotten over their initial fears about control and security within the cloud and are buying into infrastructure as a service in droves. Hybrid cloud adoption is increasing as both cloud users and cloud providers mature. In fact, according to the RightScale 2016 State of the Cloud Report, private cloud adoption is now at 77%, up from 63% last year, which drove hybrid cloud adoption up from 58% to 71% year-over-year.
In total, the report shows that 95 percent of respondents (1,060 IT professionals) are now using the cloud, up from 93% in 2015.
With this transformation from more to less on-premises equipment and provisioning of on-site services comes an increased need for bandwidth. That is, employees must now access the Internet more than ever to perform their jobs, finally ratcheting up their percentage of legitimate—vs. non-work-related—visits to the Web.
For organizations unprepared for this increased network usage, downtime—as systems slow or halt due to heavy loads—can become a problem, even for companies that thought they had downtime licked. To avoid this, network administrators must stay on top of network capacity and address limitations as they arise, according to Transbeam, a company that gives network administrators visibility into and control of networks, even when links are provided by a variety of carriers. .
1. Right Size Your Network to Avoid Downtime
Understanding traffic flows on each of the company’s network links allows administrators to assess the performance of the related equipment, enabling them to predict where capacity needs will rise or decline—and, subsequently, “right size” the network.
Network administrators are finding that network monitoring, mapping and alerting software helps them ensure uptime and efficiency. For instance, an up-to-date picture of your network allows you to plan for timely upgrades or new devices, diagnose problems quickly and ensure customer satisfaction.
In today’s network-centric world, network monitoring solutions provide a proactive way for IT staff to guard against issues. These solutions put assessment and correction capabilities into the hands of in-house network troubleshooters, eliminating the need to call the carrier whenever the network slows normal functions, and enabling quick on-site issue resolution.
Network monitoring tools offer businesses of all kinds—from large enterprises with well-stocked IT departments to smaller organizations with no IT staff—the same compelling use case: Keep the network running to ensure maximum productivity and profits.
2. Right Size Your Network to Save Money
Monitoring your network’s performance and adjusting capacity as needed not only guarantees uptime but is also a money-saving tactic. Administrators with visibility into their networks can see not only where they have too little bandwidth, but an overabundance as well. Network monitoring software will help IT staff pinpoint locations experiencing low circuit utilization, for example. They can then work with the carrier to right size the network, reducing costs. The savings can then be redistributed to support other IT tasks. Plus, consider the benefit of preventing network outages in the first place.
According to results of a January 2016 study published by the Ponemon Institute, the average cost per minute of an unplanned data center outage is about $9,000, and a typical outage lasts 95 minutes. The study also revealed that the cost of downtime has increased 38% since the study was first conducted in 2010, with cybercrime representing the fastest growing cause of outages.
3. Network Bandwidth Monitors Improve Performance
Status alerts provide administrators with immediate feedback on network performance, so they can take the necessary steps to avoid an outage. This will save businesses from the repercussions of downtime such as loss of revenue, customers and reputation; exposure to damages; decreased employee productivity; repair and overtime costs; and loss in value of any lost data.
