All IT requirements should stem from a business need. You are a senior manager, not an IT specialist. Do you feel that IT ‘decisions’ are being made without your invovlement? Successful IT projects require management or owner involvement and the assistance of A-Tech's Business Architect Specialist to ensure that your ideas are translated accurately.

In order to fill a network business need successfully:

• Extracting Information - Analyzing, performing detailed assessments, characterizing your current equipment and infrastructure.
• Informative Strategy - Define how to use ‘IT Features & Benefits’ to improve your company's performance and bottom line.
• The Internet - Using Internet technology to reduce communication roadblocks, reach immediate markets, and reduce costs by improving efficiency.
• Decisive Support - Implementing the systems & tools to help you make informed decisions that affect your company's products and services and bottom line.
• Assignment Of Duties - Putting the right people in the right places with the right products, services, and support.
• IT Group - Rely on A-Tech as your single IT source for current and future system needs.

Network Management as a term has many definitions depending on whose ‘systems’ operational function is in question. It is our goal to illustrate and discuss today's most common interpretations of ‘Network Management & Administration’ of systems as they apply to actual IT form and function. We will illustrate a "What's wrong with this picture" scenario. Discussing what the ideal system will look like:Network management systems have been in operation many years especially in their own proprietary worlds (HP, SUN, DEC, UNISYS, IBM). With the implementation of SNMP, local area and wide area network components could be monitored and "managed". With the vast amount of raw data available, most MIS Managers have no idea what they really want because, in part, they don't know what's available. Additionally, how does the data get into a format that actually means something? Other communications systems are considered non-manageable because they are only accessible by an RS-232 port and not by SNMP. Others tend to believe that Network Management means nothing but the monitoring and management of network architectural hardware such as Routers, Bridges, Hubs, Switches and Concentrators --- nothing above the network layer of the OSI model is considered manageable. What's alarming is that most Senior Level Network Engineers tend to be resigned to spend thousands of dollars on hardware and software BEFORE the real requirements are gathered and defined. Consequently, MIS departments either spend very little on network management or they "go for broke" with the huge hardware platforms and expensive artificial intelligence engines driving network management for the company.

In today's environment of cost cutting and productivity enhancements, most common network management implementations increase the number of people required to support the MIS functions and these new people are senior level engineering and support types; very expensive in most cases. Typical costs extend into the hundreds of thousands of dollars purchasing hardware and software not to mention the additional personnel.

Network Management systems have to be geared toward the workflow of the organization in which they will be utilized. As each MIS implementation is geared toward the business requirements, so should the network management system. If the management functionality does not directly or indirectly solves a business problem, it is totally useless to the overall MIS department and to the company.

Network Management doesn't mean one application with a database with some exceeding ‘large hardware’ running the show. It is really an integrated conglomeration of functions that may be on one machine but may span thousands of miles, different support organizations and many machines and databases. It is these functions that must be directly driven by the business case for each.