Hasta hace poco parecía un concepto del futuro, pero la realidad es que la Inteligencia Artificial y el Machine Learning son dos de las principales tendencias del sector de las telecomunicaciones y en su aplicación para las empresas. Desde los aspectos más básicos como los chatbots, hasta los procesos más avanzados de Machine Laerning para las empresas, la Inteligencia Artificial ya está presente en el día a día de las empresas, con independencia de su tamaño.

¿Cómo va a influir todo este cambio en el sector de las telecomunicaciones? Desde los procesos de toma de decisiones y relación con el cliente hasta la posibilidad de poder calcular y anticipar el gasto de las empresas en los servicios contratados.

¿Cómo podrían las operaciones de MSP mejorar el MTTR en un 90%?

• Utilizar mejor los datos, vincular los datos con la información y el conocimiento.
• Automatizar la identificación de problemas operativos clave.
• Automatizar la solución de problemas conocidos.
• Vincular a problemas conocidos y acciones correctivas conocidas.
• Permitir la transferencia de conocimiento del personal experimentado al personal menos experimentado.
• Asegurar un diagnóstico y resolución de problemas consistentes
• Participar en una comunidad que comparta escenarios y soluciones.

La Automatización de Procesos Operativos se trata de implementar los sistemas correctos para automatizar tareas operativas repetitivas para mejorar la eficiencia y garantizar la consistencia en los equipos de operaciones.

En última instancia, OPA se trata de mejorar el tiempo medio para resolver y reducir el costo de la entrega de resultados.

Any enterprise company will know that operating a complex network can be like playing Jenga in the dark. It’s hard to see what you’re doing, and if you touch the wrong block, the whole structure will be brought down.

The good news is, change management within your complex networks doesn’t need to be like this anymore.

Opmantek have found a way to illuminate the challenges of complex networks to take the stress out of making changes.

Emerging risk factors

The fact of that matter is that large organisations (such as yours) are struggling to keep up with the pace of change, and are not able to respond quickly enough to the fundamental shifts that occur daily on the business landscape.

According to Gartner’s Risk Management Leadership Council, the top emerging risk factors that are currently affecting large organisations include:

– An inability to build ambitious and highly automated infrastructures due to complexity and a lack of visibility.
– A falling response perception from customers.
– Staff that are seemingly trapped by manual processes and rigid policies that are too complex to follow, and have too many exceptions to function effectively.

If you want to avoid these looming risks and hazards, you should take a close look of how your network is run. Issues such as these can materialise rapidly and can be crippling to productivity, so proactive measures are needed. However, understanding networks doesn’t require the purchase of tonnes of equipment or extensive retraining of your staff.

Actually, it’s pretty simple.

Scale your organisation

Scaling your organisation is one easy way to manage complex networks and their associated risks. Migrating the management of networks from within the cloud to a company like Opmantek with the Open-AudIT Cloud will greatly increase reliability and performance.

You should consider using a network management open-source tool that scales reliably with speed. This audit process allows for participation of other risk and control functions, as well as an aligned and consistent risk reporting regiment. Moreover, it minimises the duplication of effort for maximal efficiency.

We all know that knowledge is power, and the Open-AudIT Cloud gives you information in seconds that would previously have taken much longer to glean. You will know exactly what is on your network, how it is configured and when it changes. This is like the golden key to the exact data you need, when you need it.

In addition, Open-AudIT Cloud scans the network and stores the configuration of all discovered devices. That means you have instant access to software licensing, unauthorised devices, and things like warranty or hardware status reports. The true power of this suite comes with the ability to access the cloud anytime, anywhere.

The Open-AudIT Cloud provides scaling with controlled efficiency, hybrid environment audits, threat management through software version control, configuration baselines, configuration change detection, rack management, cloud discovery and audits, scheduled reporting and more. Everything has been tailored to mitigate costs and fight against duplication of labour.

As you can see, Opmantek is geared towards driving your enterprise towards success. You can start climbing towards a cloud-integrated network management system that will ensure your scaling is executed with controlled efficiency.

When it comes to risk management, it is vital to ensure the most advanced level of monitoring and assessment. With the world’s leading network discovery open-audit cloud software, you will automate those time-consuming and manual tasks that are eating into your productivity.

Take control of the audit process with Open-AudIT Cloud and allow your staff to focus on other areas of your enterprise that will help you flourish. Opmantek puts you back in control of your assets and provides speed, security and simplicity.

Forget the old adage. What you don’t know CAN hurt you.

In these fast-moving technologically driven times, businesses and institutions in the financial services sector are experiencing technological growth at an exponential rate. However, their risk management tools aren’t necessarily keeping up. That means many are being left behind when it comes to collecting and storing a growing amount of data. Not to mention, having the right measures in place to protect and analyse such data.

However, there is a range of flexible and scalable tools available that allow organisations to obtain infrastructure growth with the appropriate financial risk management. For example, SaaS (software as a service) is a cloud-based software distribution model that allows a third-party provider to host applications and make them available to customers and clients online. Thus, greatly simplifying operations. Those that put off adopting technologies such as these not only put their data at risk but also their bottom line.

When considering the cost of network management software, it is important to remember the costs that will be incurred by not acting. Security breaches and loss of clients to competitors who are moving ahead of you are just a few of the negative impacts. Tools like Open-AudIT Cloud from Opmantek are great risk management tools for the financial sector that optimise enterprise growth.

Current Issues

If you are in banking, accounting, or finance there are a number of key issues threatening your ability to succeed in business. According to IBM, these include:

– Increasing regulation in various business areas.
– Increased expectations in regard to transparency and profitability.
– Exponentially increasing data volumes.
– Advanced technological sophistication.

In short, it can be hard to keep up with the rapidly expanding amount of data, the rules that govern data, and the technology used to manage it. One of the key benefits of adopting open-source cloud software for your network management, such as the offerings from Opmantek, is that you will transform and modernise out of date systems. Optimising infrastructure is vital to manage and foresee the issues that affect every financial business in 2019 and beyond.

Emerging Trends

The sector has already seen the rapid adoption of tools like Fintech and Regtech, which has created an opening for firms to adopt information-led strategies. Ultimately, this results in rapid growth and market share domination, while also mitigating risk and adhering to compliance. Over the last five years, there has also been a rapid expansion in the use of AI for voice recognition and the determination of user intent. Therefore, the financial sector is poised to revolutionise the way it approaches financial risk management in the wake of ever-evolving technologies.

Automation of workflow and robotic process automation (RPA) tools are making advanced cloud analytics a necessity for network management. Using advanced cognitive analytics allows for the integration of cross-organisation data on scales never before believed possible.

Solutions

Alongside all this growth we are seeing increased regulatory scrutiny, which is the most important reason to stay ahead of the game when it comes to data. The need for advanced analytics and stress testing has the potential to push traditional infrastructure beyond its capabilities.

That is where products from Opmantek come in.

Improving your audit results are integral to leading the way with technology. Opmantek’s suite gives you the power to develop processes without arduous strain on your staff. You can automate compliance and can track your assets easily from the cloud, anytime, anywhere. A standardised approach means your technology becomes part of your asset management life cycle. The best part is that these tools increase your capabilities by making your life easier. They take the stress out of financial risk management.

Companies and firms that choose not to act in the face of technological advancement will find themselves trying to catch up as they encounter countless hurdles and learning curves. Technological growth in the financial sector shows no sign of back peddling, so there is no use trying to ignore IT and system complexity.

It is recommended that traditional infrastructure and workflow tools are integrated with leading practice such as Opmantek’s opConfig and Open-AudIT especially. These are not only going to revolutionise the way you see data but are some of the easiest products to use on the market. Don’t just trust us, see for yourself.

Many healthcare providers have begun to transition to a highly connected, patient-driven, real-time healthcare system (RTHS). Such systems typically combine digital and cloud technologies allowing healthcare professionals and patients to communicate, collaborate and streamline their workflows more effectively.

But as providers roll-out new data-intensive applications capable of connecting multiple sites and devices, more strain is placed on already congested networks. If left unchecked this can lead to many challenges which can undermine the reliability and effectiveness of real-time healthcare systems.

What challenges do today’s healthcare providers face?

Network reliability – Healthcare professionals need to access Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and critical real-time data wherever they are on site. Many legacy systems are simply not capable of providing reliable access to the volume of data today’s real-time healthcare systems demand.

Quality of Service (QoS) – Healthcare providers have unique requirements when it comes to implementing QoS. Different applications, data and services must be prioritised according to their importance. To do this effectively organisations need the ability to differentiate and prioritise data in real-time.

Security – The confidentiality and security of patient data is paramount, but with the accelerated adoption of public and private cloud technologies come increased network and data security risks. Healthcare providers need the ability to monitor users if they are to manage the risks effectively.

Scalability – As more medical devices and applications are connected to the network, the more data needs to be transmitted between them. This creates issues for legacy network equipment which is already struggling to cope with the volume of data being transmitted.

If the efficiency and productivity benefits of RTHS are to be realised, healthcare organisations need to ensure the above challenges are met without compromising patient confidentiality and the ability to effectively monitor healthcare systems.

Solving today’s healthcare system challenges

There are several measures healthcare providers can take to help overcome these challenges. The most important thing is to make sure the network is designed properly from the ground up. Secure private WANs should be created to connect major healthcare sites and hospitals, with smaller sites.

Larger sites should also look at implementing private/hybrid services leveraging the existing network infrastructure with new cloud networking technologies. This can help create a more agile and cost-effective solutions without compromising the control or security of the network.

Intelligent network management software

But network infrastructure is only part of the solution. Organisations should also look at implementing robust and integrated network management software to manage and monitor the network in real-time. Such systems should be capable of monitoring infrastructure at scale and providing active data management to prevent outages, reduce bottlenecks and maintain QoS.

By implementing a solution such as FirstWave’s Network Management Information System (NMIS), network admins get real-time information about the current state of the network infrastructure and the data transmitted on it. Information about the health of specific devices can then be relayed to engineers allowing them to see precisely what impact a single device failure is having on the wider network.

But NMIS goes much further than basic monitoring. With automated health live baselining, the software can monitor the availability and response time of devices and compare that with a previous baseline period. This gives network admins early warning of impending failures allowing them to fix issues before they impact network performance.

Distributed poling for easy scalability

As with the underlying network infrastructure, any network monitoring solution deployed should also be capable of scaling to meet the demands of an ever-expanding number of devices. With more on-demand services and internet of medical things, (IoMT) devices and the number of nodes on the network is  increasing. So, any network monitoring solution deployed must be capable of seamless scalability.

To prevent such issues FirstWave’s opHA with NMIS uses distributed polling, this allows for infinite scaling while also adhering to stricter security policies that may be in place. Using distributed polling allows network admins to move from monitoring single devices to gaining a full picture of the entire network infrastructure on a single pane of glass.

FirstWave software is also designed to be a plug-and-play solution, in normal networks no configuration changes are required after the initial setup. The software currently supports more than 30,000 vendors with new devices automatically identified and added to the system without the need for coding.

Harnessing network efficiency across hospitals, clinics, data-centers and offsite facilities is crucial for the healthcare system to transition into a real-time model. By leveraging network management solutions like FirstWave, your organisation gain agility and flexibility without having to glue together monitoring systems. In providing the opportunity for clinicians and healthcare administrators to gain greater visibility into their operations and resources, they will be better equipped to improve patient care quality – do more with your data.

Your network support staff in your Network Operations Centre (NOC) are the unsung heroes of your business. They support your business by keeping your network running smoothly and help resolve issues quickly. But to operate efficiently, these people need to have the right tools to help diagnose the problem, solve it themselves or direct it to the right team for a quick resolution.

In the early days of tech, this wasn’t much of a problem. Server and network issues were easily identified, the edge of the network was clearly defined and desktops were fixed assets which could be easily identified and secured.

But today’s network is a different beast. These staff have to contend with BYOD, guest networks, software-defined networking, WiFi and Internet of Things devices. And then there are evolving threats which need to be addressed. See my blog on Shadow IT.

If network support staff are to keep doing its job effectively in this environment, they need access to the right information at the right time. With the network evolving so quickly, many legacy applications simply can’t provide the data and insight needed to keep on top of the situation. They need a consolidated view.

If you are still using legacy software to manage and monitor your network, the following three scenarios will be familiar to you.

1. Poor situational awareness

In a fluid and constantly changing environment, your people need realtime information about the devices currently active on the network. Legacy software simply can’t provide this information quickly enough. This causes people to guess where the problem might be.

The solution is to implement a network management tool which offers real-time insight into the state of the network, maps dynamic changes automatically and highlights issues as they occur. To do this effectively it must provide a consolidated view of the infrastructure under management.

2. Poor escalations

The traditional method for escalating tickets in the NOC is to troubleshoot the issue until all possible solutions have been exhausted and then pass it on to another IT department or supplier. This is known as a functional escalation in ITIL and it is often the primary source of complaints from IT users and helpdesk employees alike.

Using the functional escalation method, key information is often missing, troubleshooting is not carried out effectively and the importance of the device in the network hierarchy is not considered. A better solution is to implement the Quality Assurance method which not only identifies the device and its user, it creates a clear path for resolution and escalation for helpdesk analysts to follow.

3. Unreliable data

Early iterations of network management software were very good at generating reams of data from every monitored device. But that data wasn’t displayed in context, deduplicated or linked to any single device or event. As a result, hundreds of alerts would be generated from a single point of failure which made it almost impossible to identify and solve the issue.

Our network management software works to solve the issue of information-overload by automatically triaging events and classifying them based on their impact on the business, not their technical nature. This rules-based approach makes it easy to identify issues which need to be fixed quickly, regardless of the size of the network.

Here at Opmantek, our next-generation network management software is designed to take the stress out of managing your network. Our software provides a real-time 360º view of your network, helps you identify issues quickly and creates a clear path for escalation, thereby lowering response times.

If you would like more information about how Opmantek can help you solve network issues more efficiently, get in touch with us today. Opmantek specialists are technically led and not sales-based, so you can be sure of knowledgeable answers to any questions you have about our products with no hard-sell.