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Reduce Frustration, Improve Performance and Lower Costs with Network Monitoring Tools
http://www.businessmanagementdaily.com/articles/2178/1/Reduce-Frustration-Improve-Performance-and-Lower-Costs-with-Network-Monitoring-Tools/Page1.html
Tim Brennan & James Eglin, SysArc
Tim Brennan, Managing Partner, SysArc
Tim has 25 years of diverse experience in the IT industry that includes executive management, sales management, technical project management and software development. Tim founded SysArc in 2004 in an effort to provide small businesses with the technical support they need from a firm they can count on to be responsive, competent, affordable and trustworthy.

James Eglin, Partner, SysArc
James has over 20 years experience as a technology entrepreneur. Having led sales, marketing and business development for both start-up and established companies, he understands the technical needs of the non-technical folks. He then excels at communicating that need in order to deliver effective technology solutions on time and on budget.

For a free consultation on outsourced IT solutions, contact Tim or James at (800) 699-0925. www.SysArc.com
 
By Tim Brennan & James Eglin, SysArc
Published on 9/25/2008 - 5:30pm
 
A small business today faces many of the same technology challenges as larger companies.  However, for a variety of reasons, many small businesses have not implemented any type of comprehensive network monitoring tools. Be proactive, implement a 24/7 monitoring solution in your environment today and sleep easier at night!


Small businesses face the same technology challenges as larger companies.  However, for a variety of reasons, many small businesses have not implemented a comprehensive network monitoring tools.

As such, these organizations are not able to be proactive in the management of their networks and typically spend considerable time in reaction mode responding to user support and downtime issues.  In addition, by attempting to deal with issues once they have occurred, it often results in longer downtime, reduced employee morale, frustrated end-users and higher overall infrastructure maintenance costs.   

This is a shame as there are numerous monitoring tools currently available on the market.  For the most part, these tools are very robust, flexible and easy-to- use with variations to fit any budget.   A basic return-on-investment (ROI) calculation would quickly demonstrate the savings realized from reducing lost productivity and downtime.

A properly configured network monitoring tool can be used to proactively monitor and maintain systems around the clock so that potential problems can be identified before they turn into critical issues. For example, disk utilization can be monitored with alerts configured to be sent to the system administrator when user definable thresholds are exceeded and a server crash can be avoided.

Disk utilization is just one of hundreds of components that can be actively monitored by some of the more robust network monitoring applications.  Additional items that should be monitored in a typical environment include:

- Device Availability
- Critical Application/Service Status
- Disk Utilization
- Memory Utilization
- Response Time Monitoring
- Back-up log checks
- Anti-virus log checks
- Event Log Monitoring
- Monitoring custom performance parameters
- Server health check and analysis of key trends
- Critical Alert Notification
- Asset Tracking
- Remote Access

With all the data that is captured every day, detailed and comprehensive reports can be created to support corporate planning, budgeting, compliance and regulatory requirements as well.

Be proactive, implement a 24/7 monitoring solution in your environment today and sleep easier at night