As most IT managers and network professionals will be well aware, business leaders and employees have come to expect 24/7 network availability at work. Unfortunately, achieving this can be very difficult and many businesses lose countless hours to troubleshooting every year. This is where network monitoring comes in.

What is network monitoring?

Network monitoring ensures the smooth running of regular operations via the help of trained technicians, network management software and network support. The idea behind network monitoring is that it helps avoid productivity losses and, by extension, the cost of downtime. Indeed, businesses that calculate how much money network monitoring services could save them every year will discover that they offer a fantastic return on investment (ROI). Here are a few reasons why:

Overtime is reduced

If your staff regularly rack up overtime due to network outages, a monitoring service will save you a great deal of money in the long run. It may also lessen the need for extra staff on night shifts for certain sectors, again saving the company money.

Damage control

Network monitoring services are able to address IT issues before they turn into public relations disasters. Indeed, they can detect issues early on by analysing factors such as round trip times, network utilisation rates and error percentages. If there are any problems with the smooth running of the network, businesses can take action early on before operations slow down or servers cut out altogether.

Support calls are reduced

Investing in network monitoring can help keep end users productive and online, thereby lowering the pressure on network technicians to answer calls and deal with troubleshooting questions. Monitoring services do this by alerting companies to potential problems such as excessive bandwidth consumption early on and eliminating the need for end-user support. This lowers the number of calls to IT teams and, by extension, the number of team members needed to occupy the support desk. Businesses, therefore, save money on support team salaries.

Repair times are lowered

Finding the source of a network problem can be difficult even for the most skilled technicians. This is particularly true for networks that are spread across sites that are very far apart and can end up costing huge amounts of time and money thanks to the need for technicians to travel. Network monitoring can prevent such losses by offering live diagnostic data and maps that can tell technicians where problems lie.

Businesses can meet service level agreements

Service level agreements (SLAs) are drawn up to keep clients and end users happy and to let them know what to expect of their network providers. If SLAs are unmet, then, companies can end up in very hot water. Network monitoring is one of the best ways to ensure SLAs are met.

Downtime is reduced

Downtime is a major factor when it comes to company losses. This is because it can hugely impact employee productivity. As well as the time spent unable to undertake their everyday tasks, employees may become frustrated or angered by slow IT systems, which can impact their ability to get on with tasks. Network monitoring is a great way to reduce downtime.

Choosing the right software for you

Once you have made the decision to opt for network monitoring software, you will need to find a package that suits your needs. You may, for example, want to think about:

– Installation costs
– The cost of initial licenses and product options
– Whether the product offers affordable upgrades and support
– How many of your staff will need training, and how much this will cost
– Costs associated with setting up the system
– Whether you will need to hire anyone new to help manage the new system

Here at Opmantek, we’ve helped our customers use our products to design the solution they need. Our staff are knowledgeable and friendly and there’s no hard sell.

Beta testing is a vital phase of the software development life cycle here at Opmantek. Our software forms the critical business platforms for Network Management Software and IT Auditing and Compliance for our customers – hence reliability and performance are what our customer demand and have come to expect from us. We want to launch software that is successful, continuing to build upon our hard work and success. We want the user to have the best experience they can, so we need to get rid of the bugs and issues the software may have before it is launched.

This is where the Opmantek Early Adopter Program comes in – we work with beta testers to ensure new products and updated versions are up to scratch.

There are a number of different factors that are checked during beta testing – let us look at usability, performance and quality.

Is the product easily usable?

If you want customers to talk about the software for all the right reasons, then the product needs to have great usability.

To do this, you need to consider your target audience and come up with the solutions that would best suit this audience’s problems.

Through beta testing, you will get feedback about the user experience of your software, and through this, the developer will be able to improve the product to ensure it’s meeting the users’ requests.

How strong is the performance of the product?

During beta testing, the speed and performance of the product will be analysed. While we can virtualise a lab network and run all our various automated testing scenarios, we may not always use it in the way a customer does. It needs to be tested by real users trialing the software in their environment.

Why? Put simply, the product will get to operate on all different hardware with a blend of other software installed all begging for resources. There are many variables, which is why the software needs to be tested by real users – such as you – through the beta phase.

Is the product of high quality?

The overall goal of the beta testing phase is to create a product that is fully functional and of high quality. This involves testing all the features within the product to check that they are all working as they should.

Although it is tempting to add a plethora of features to the software, sometimes it’s best to keep its design simple, as having too many functions can sometimes reduce the overall quality and user experience of the product. Even at the late stage of beta testing, feature feedback can help us decide upon which features are useful, and also ensure that we document any unusual ways the tester applied the feature, so everyone can benefit.

Are there any bugs?

One of the most important steps of beta testing is checking the products for bugs. Officially launching a product on to the market with bugs in it can quickly turn users off the software and vastly reduce the number of users interested in your product.

By determining bugs early on, you can weed them out. Sometimes, one of the benefits is that by uncovering one type of bug, other types of bugs are found too. The earlier these are detected, the better.

As an Opmantek Beta Tester in our Early Acceptance Program, you will play a key role in helping software developers to launch their products. There are many benefits for the tester: you can try out new products before they are officially launched, contribute to innovative products, and be rewarded with an Amazon gift card or access to the new product for a year.

Our current program is open for Open-AudIT Cloud. Beta Testing officially starts on 20th May 2019.

Gartner projected that “Global spending on robotic process automation (RPA) software is estimated to reach $680 million in 2018, an increase of 57 per cent year over year”.

Currently the biggest adopters of RPA include banks, insurance companies, utilities and telecommunications companies. With these industries being some of the most prevalent users of Opmantek Software to automate their network administration and orchestration, we decided to talk to our partners and customers about their experience in implementing robotic process automation and operational process automation in their businesses.

Here are the top 4 tips they gave for gaining team buy-in for an operations project.

Keep the team focused on their job outputs, not tasks

“We hired you for your communication and problem-solving skills, not for your typing speed”.  When implementing an automation project it is really important that staff who will have their routines impacted understand that the automation will serve them to do the job they were hired to do better.  The reports you used to spend an hour running are now ready to review when you arrive at your desk, giving you an extra hour to do what you do best.

Focus on small, regular, time-consuming tasks

When choosing the first tasks to be automated, keep it simple and measurable, so that staff and management can see tangible results from the exercise.  Daily or weekly reports or tasks that have dedicated maintenance windows such as system upgrades or audits are great places to start.

Get your team to workshop the best practice process steps

By giving the team exposure and input into the work that will be automated it allows them to feel some control over the project.  Running a best practice workshop both benefits the project, in ensuring that the most efficient and effective paths to resolution are implemented for the project and helps the staff to understand exactly what the ‘bots’ will be doing for them.

Let the team have some fun with it

One IT manager shared that within his team, each of the bots that completes a specific process was given a name and soon became part of the work team.  If a process failed the team would laugh and say ‘R2D2 is sleeping on the job again”.  This seemed to help with human-computer interaction quite significantly.

Here at Opmantek, we have seen many IT departments transformed through the implementation of our suite of tools to automate regular tasks like software and hardware audits, configuration changes, maintenance routines and IP address allocation and management.  To speak to one of our engineers about your Network automation project contact us here.

Escalating tensions between the United States and competing countries are reshaping the cyber-security landscape – with severe implications for Australian businesses and government organisations. The United States set down its case in a cyber strategy document released in late 2018 and has escalated its measures from there. According to the document, the United States had adopted a vision of ‘a shared and open cyberspace for the benefit of all,’ but its adversaries had conducted economic espionage and malicious cyber activities that had damaged individuals, commercial and non-commercial interests and governments across the world.

The document listed Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea as challenging the United States in cyberspace, ‘often with a recklessness they would never consider in other domains.’ Since then, the United States Government has issued executive orders to shore up a cybersecurity workforce short of 300,000 practitioners and more importantly, to declare a national emergency and bar United States companies from using foreign telecommunications equipment made by companies it considers a national security risk. The initiative is already causing consternation among local users of smartphones from one supplier – a leading United States-headquartered company is reportedly restricting the supplier’s access to its applications and operating system.

Businesses need to monitor and respond quickly to these measures and the evolving security landscape. Companies exposed to the United States will need to evaluate the risks of doing business with firms targeted by current and future executive orders. Given Australia’s close relationship with the United States, local organisations will also need to remain aware of the ongoing risk of cyberattack or espionage from individuals or groups acting on behalf of ‘cyberspace challenger’ countries.

Some of the steps businesses should take include ensuring cyber-security planning including incident response is up to date and people know their roles and responsibilities; checking that anti-malware products are installed and up-to-date; and that employees are aware of potential cyber-threats and the steps they need to take to minimise risk. If you would like to learn more, please contact sales@firstwavecloud.com.