In July of this year, Enterprise Management Associates published a landscape review entitled EMA Enterprise Network Availability Monitoring Systems (ENAMS) Radar Report 2014. A blog post written by my colleague Jim Frey on the EMA site reviews the scope and objectives of the report. The study covered Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold version 16, along with sixteen other ENAMS from fifteen other vendors.
There are all kinds of potential IT emergencies out there that we should always be prepared for, network outages, system failures and data breaches come to mind as examples. However, there is another phenomenon that is starting to creep its way into enterprise networks: the zombie apocalypse. While it may sound like the plot of a B-level, made-for-cable Halloween movie, Network Zombies have quickly asserted themselves as the most troublesome nemesis to the modern-day IT administrator. They are dangerous and unpredictable, and without the right approach these zombies can cause downtime and lost productivity. However by adopting an approach that generates greater levels of network visibility, IT departments can effectively neutralize zombie problems once and for all.
Halloween may last one day, but network managers have to face IT nightmares that haunt them all year long. Nightmares like those caused by users exercising poor judgment. In some ways, they're not much different from the folks you see in horror films who always make the worst decision possible. Case in point is Geico's Halloween-themed commercial running on American TV this month. The piece depicts four friends running through fields, at night. They come upon a creepy farm house, and decide to hide behind... chainsaws.
Over the past few years, organizations have been forced to deal with the rapid rise of BYOD, which created a number of IT problems as more and more employees began bringing in their own devices to the workplace. Today, there is a new trend IT departments are preparing to deal with that could be more troublesome than its predecessor: Wear Your Own Device (WYOD). With the number of wearable devices steadily increasing, from Google Glass to Apple watches, it’s only a matter of time before we see a proliferation of wearables in the enterprise.
Most college students in the U.S. spent a good part of this month prepping and taking their fall midterm exams, and straining their campus networks as a result. IT teams who manage the campus network, however, are tested each and every day in subjects like BYOD and network performance. With the average student carrying around at least two wireless devices, campus networks are under pressure to deliver a sustainable and consistent online experience.
Today I'd like to share an excerpt and link to today's blog about network management posted by Jim Frey from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) . It's a great lead-in to his firm's recent report on Enterprise Network Availability Monitoring Systems (ENAMS). From Jim's post:
As you've likely already heard on Sept 24th a new computer security threat called Shellshock was identified and entered into the National Vulnerability Database as CVE-2014-7169.
Our Hero, the SysAdmin
Just after the first matches got underway for the 2014 World Cup we put a survey into the field. We wanted to measure the impact the world’s most popular sporting event was having on corporate networks. And whether IT managers and network administrators had heeded the lessons learned from past events to better prepare this time around. With the increased popularity of the World Cup and soccer in general, we were confident there would be a noticeable impact. The majority of World Cup matches would coincide with the heart of the work day here in the United States. And there was wide-spread concern that workers would be streaming matches in record numbers. This would, in effect, adversely affect business operations.
Many cash-strapped UK government bodies are spending on network management tools offering features that they either don’t need, or will never use. And they appear unable to easily gather fundamental data about the growing number of devices on their network.
