Fault · Resiliency · Observability
Network Management System Tools
The right network management tools should pay for themselves - in outages that never happen, alerts that never need triage, and licence bills that stop growing with every device you add. Use the calculators below to put your own numbers on it.
What a network management system has to deliver
Every network team is judged on three things. Can you find and fix faults before users feel them? Does the network stay up when hardware, links, or whole sites fail? And can you see enough - metrics, events, flows, and logs - to explain not just what changed, but why? Those three demands map to fault management, resiliency, and network observability.
NMIS has underpinned all three for IT teams, MSPs, and telcos since 1998: a single efficient poll collects fault and performance data from every managed device, automated baselining learns your network's normal behaviour, and a business rules engine classifies events by operational impact. Commercial opModules extend the open-source core to event correlation, traffic flows, configuration compliance, dashboards, and multi-server high availability.
- Network fault management
- Threshold alerting, anomaly detection, and policy-based escalation catch problems before they become outages - and route them to the right person first time.
- Network resiliency
- Distributed pollers, automated failover, and zero-event-loss replication with opHA keep monitoring alive through the failures it exists to catch.
- Network observability
- Metrics, events, flows, and logs from one platform - the complete signal set that lets you evidence compliance and answer "why", not just "what".
Put your own numbers on it
Four calculators, four angles on the same question: what is better network management worth to you? Every formula is shown, every assumption is adjustable, and results update as you type.
Your organisation
Improvement assumptions
Uptime Institute analysis found the majority of severe outages were preventable with earlier detection. 30% is a conservative default.
Driven by fault correlation, root-cause visibility, and escalation policies. Validate against your own incident data.
Where the savings come from
| Benefit | How it's calculated | Value / yr |
|---|---|---|
| Outages avoided entirely | Outages × prevention % × duration × cost per hour | $1,080,000 |
| Faster resolution of remaining outages | Remaining outages × duration × MTTR reduction % × cost per hour | $756,000 |
Current annual downtime cost
$3,600,000
- Estimated annual savings
- $1,836,000
- Net annual benefit
- $1,806,000
- Return on investment
- 61.2×
- Downtime hours avoided / yr
- 6.1 hrs
Downtime cost presets: ITIC Hourly Cost of Downtime survey. Outage preventability: Uptime Institute outage analysis. Estimates are based on industry benchmark data and the numbers you enter - actual results vary by organisation.
The tools behind the numbers
One platform, deployed from a single install: the open-source NMIS core plus the opModules that drive each saving in the calculators above.
NMIS
Fault & performance monitoring
Unified fault and performance metrics from a single SNMP poll, with automated health baselining and a business rules engine that classifies events by operational impact.
opEvents
Event management & correlation
Aggregates syslog, SNMP traps, and Windows events with intelligent correlation and automated deduplication - the engine behind the NOC efficiency numbers above.
opHA
High availability & distributed polling
Coordinates multiple primary and poller servers into one logical platform with automated failover and tenant isolation - the architecture behind the scalability numbers above.
opCharts
Visualisation & dashboards
Live topology maps, geographical views, custom dashboards, and a RESTful API over all NMIS data, with role-based access for customer-facing portals.
opConfig
Configuration management & compliance
Versioned configuration archive, unauthorised change detection, and compliance policy enforcement across multi-vendor networks.
opFlow
Traffic flow analysis
NetFlow, sFlow, and IPFIX analysis for bandwidth usage, top talkers, and traffic pattern trending - the flows signal in full network observability.
Trusted by 150,000+ organisations across 150+ countries
Frequently asked questions
More questions about the calculators or the platform? Speak to sales.
- What are network management system tools?
- Network management system (NMS) tools discover, monitor, and manage the devices that make up a network - routers, switches, firewalls, servers, and more. A complete NMS covers fault management (detecting and resolving problems), performance management (tracking capacity and response times), and configuration management (controlling change). NMIS combines fault and performance management in a single platform, with commercial opModules extending it to events, flows, configuration, and reporting.
- How do I calculate the ROI of a network management system?
- The largest driver is usually avoided downtime: multiply your outage frequency by average duration and your hourly downtime cost, then apply realistic improvement rates for prevention and faster resolution. Add operational savings from reduced alert noise and tool consolidation. The calculators on this page implement exactly that maths and show every formula, so you can defend the numbers internally.
- How is NMIS licensed, and what does it cost at scale?
- NMIS has an open-source core (GNU GPL) with commercial opModules licensed separately. Unlike per-device-priced tools, platform cost does not climb linearly with every device you add, which is why the scalability calculator shows cost per device falling as your network grows. For a quote matched to your environment, speak to sales.
- How many devices can NMIS monitor?
- NMIS supports more than 10,000 device types out of the box and scales from a single office to globally distributed networks. With opHA and the opHA Message Bus, multiple poller servers combine into one logical platform with unlimited nodes, automated failover, and a single consolidated view.
- Are the benchmark figures in these calculators reliable?
- Downtime cost presets come from the ITIC Hourly Cost of Downtime survey, and outage preventability is informed by Uptime Institute outage analysis. Improvement percentages (prevention rate, MTTR reduction, deduplication rate) are conservative, adjustable defaults - set them to match your own incident history for the most defensible result.
Related datasheets
Datasheets for the NMIS platform and opCharts visualisation.
Ready to see NMIS on your own network?
Download the free VM - NMIS, Open-AudIT, and the most popular opModules - or book a guided demo.