Network Management Services: In-house Vs Outsourcing

Businesses today work mostly in a 24x7 mode and network
management is a crucial aspect to maintain the workflow in an organization.
Traditional, network management consisted of monitoring network links and
networking equipments. However, over a period of time, it has matured and more
business driven services such as business and IT alignment, network impact
analysis, service availability and configuration management come under its
ambit. Today, NMS includes development and usage of re-usable components to have
a uniform platform, to build applications on a single point configuration and
management operation.

Evolution

Networks, which were set up 3-4 years ago, had limited options — bandwidth
availability options were only 64K or 2Meg and nothing in between. Now with the
advent of new technologies like MPLS and the influx of multiple service
providers, organizations are attempting to derive the best out of these changes.
Converged networks are also on the rise. Organizations are looking to leverage
their existing infrastructure and investment by incorporating new technologies
such as video and video transfers on existing networks.

Today, network management builds upon basic network management
such as fault and performance to include, configuration management, change
management, compliance management, application availability management and
application response time management. Secondly, uptimes have ceased to become a
significant concern for customers. With the network infrastructure being
expected to support multiple applications, business users are demanding
consistent and predictable response times for critical applications.

Apart from that organizations have started realizing that their
bandwidth requirement during peak periods of the month and year is significantly
different from the non-peak periods. The critical question now for them is that
can they subscribe to differentiate levels of service aligned to their business
requirements. As networks become bigger and more sophisticated, there is a
growing need for more powerful and simple-to-use NM solutions to manage
networks. The current focus areas are integration (workflow, portal, etc),
usability and supporting wider variety of networks and devices.

Networks today have come a long way and have acquired varied
technologies. Outsourcing network management and control systems requirements
has enabled enterprises to grow and focus on core businesses. Most organizations
today go for the managed services partner that can provide customized services
with state-of-the-art tools for managing network.

Services

The industry describes the basic functionalities of network management by
FCAPS.  FCAPS is the ISO telecommunications management network model and
the acronym for fault, configuration, accounting (or administration),
performance, and security, which defines the basic network management
tasks.  Normally, you won't find all the five functionalities in a single
product. For optimazation, vendors will focus on just one or two of those
requirements in a product. Thus, it is not uncommon to have various different NM
products running in an organization.

Network management companies today do network planning and
optimization, ensure application availability and acceleration, monitor and
manage network application performance, collect traffic and other data, manage
incidents and problems and ensure strong reporting. With several new
applications like Internet telephony, unified messaging and IP VPNs over wired
and wireless networks, there is a lot of concern over the performance and
sturdiness of networks. Managing these varied network deployments and
applications to ensure application acceleration and availability is becoming
very complex. There has been a double-digit growth in triple play applications
stemming from office-sanctioned traffic such as VOIP/Tele presence and
unsanctioned traffic from P2P, voice enabled messenger/Skype, etc.

Network management services consist of simple scalability,
integration at various levels, supporting higher network abstractions,
supporting network in a box, multi-vendor devices, etc. One of the key growth
area is security information management. Management system correlation,
Web-based network management, increased focus on QoS and performance management
are the other areas which need to be enhanced further. A1 based event
correlation, cross domain correlation, root cause analysis, root analytics,
network configuration management, VOIP service assurance, VPN management are
some of the trends associated with NMS.

Converged networks are driving organizations to look for 24x7
availability of experts to manage network and application issues. Organizations
are beginning to demand service guarantees in terms of application performance,
and the industry is gearing up to meet these requirements. The demand for
network management is higher in converged networks due to the need to manage
real time traffic. In the past SLA was based on transactional traffic, which
required application response times of 1 to 2 sec.

Organizations are realizing that a large part of their network,
security and applications infrastructure can be managed remotely leading to
significant cash savings, without sacrificing controllability and integrity of
critical and strategic services resources. As organizations diminish the
difference between systems and network expertise, they are looking to access
relevant expertise and knowledge when they need it, round the clock.

Another important aspect of NMS is service impact analysis, an
advanced form of fault and performance management. It can predict the impact of
the probable unavailability of components on the services that are being offered
to customers. This helps in understanding the criticality of the components and
doing better planning in terms of capacity, availability and executing change
request at appropriate time. It generates a comprehensive report about potential
and actual services resources that are impacted by a fault. It is also possible
to create 'what if' scenarios to simulate impact of a fault on services
resources. This is an extremely critical phase of network management as it
enables an ample response to the impact on services due to any fault, and
ensures that all impacted resources are remedied.

Unfortunately, it is more hype then reality from the standpoint
of managing this. The tools today are simply not sophisticated enough to manage
this in a realistic fashion.

Challenges

Despite the growing hype and popularity of NMS, the industry faces a number
of challenges in managing networks, and one of the key challenges is change
execution.

Enterprises today are required by law to observe industry
regulations and adhere to corporate policies that control access to customer and
corporate financial data. These enterprise networks must adapt to market changes
quickly while simultaneously remaining in compliance, in control, and in the
position to be audited.

Another biggest challenge is security. Network admission control
(NAC) is one of the strongest requests our customers are demanding. Even
though a genuine user can be identified by an authentication system like our
access control server (ACS), the access device (eg PC) could be infected if it
hasn't been installed with the latest security patch or anti-virus software.

Cost reduction and risk management are the traditional
challenges that a service provider faces while managing the networks. Along with
this 'infrastructure' is always a very important aspect that needs to be
kept in mind. Complex network technology to keep up with business requirement
has made it mandatory to make sure that infrastructure is always on. Also one of
the key challenges is to monitor the network for performance when networks are
becoming more complex.

Some of the best practices that network managers have adopted is
using 'Automation' whenever applicable, have a one-point graphical view of
the network which is being managed, and use good network management tools to
predict potential issues which may arise-network imbalance and data influx.

 Outsourcing the network management has also resulted in
the service provider owning or sharing the control of network, which has
resulted in losing the technical know-how of network management in the long run.

Outsourcing NMS

Costs of maintaining and managing internal support departments is growing
and there is an increasing openness to the idea of outsourcing the support
function' NMS with respect to the outsourcing business in network management
is a growing industry and India is certainly taking the lead in the offer. 

Outsourcing network management and control systems requirements
has enabled enterprises to grow and focus on core businesses. Most organizations
today go for the managed services partner that can provide customized services
with state-of-the-art tools for managing network.

Outsourcing NM to another company has its pros and
cons. For smaller companies lacking the IT resources and expertise it is
certainly an attractive offer. New companies can enjoy the benefits of very
high-end technologies almost immediately without the need to build a large IT
department. The biggest benefit is that the organization can expand since it can
focus on its core business. Organizations are able to grow their revenues since
network management is a key element for growth. With reduced bandwidth prices
and easy availability of bandwidth, organizations are also enjoying the benefits
of reduced transaction costs.

But for companies where network continuity is critical then
there may be a trade-off.  An enterprise may find short-term cost saving in
outsourcing their IT and NM to other companies but there is certain risk in
doing so. It is always hard to ensure network continuity and quality in an
outsourced network.  When network continuity is critical outsourcing might
not be the right option. It is also expensive when you have to change network
requirements frequently. 

Points to Remember

Like all business decisions, outsourcing the network is a
trade-off. Enterprise should map the pros and cons with their companies'
nature of business, business development roadmap, customer's expectations and
their own culture.  Don't just look at the short-term savings.

The network is perhaps the most important productivity tool in
an organization and it handles almost 100% of any organization's business
communications. Loss of network connectivity means loss of business
opportunities.  Network availability is very critical to enterprise in any
discipline.  Speed of recovery is very important and business decision
makers should keep that in mind. Security is another issue. Unlike physical
security issues; network security issues are somewhat more difficult to track
and the consequences can be very tragic.

The decision of managing networks internally or outsourcing is
not really the issue; very few organizations can afford to maintain human,
material and knowledge resources to manage their networks with the same
expertise and quality levels of organizations that specialize in managing
networks. The issue is usually whether to let the management be done remotely,
or keep it onsite, or a mixture of both. Some organizations are still not
comfortable with letting third parties take control over their networks
remotely; we address their issues with an onsite formula, which may be not as
cost effective as remote management but equally sturdy at the service level.
Other organizations are happy to have non-critical parts of their networks
remotely managed, while opting for an onsite model for ensuring optimum
performance of critical applications.

Future view

Network management is critical to any organization, what needs to be kept in
mind is that network managers implement (or outsource) management technologies
that help them automate mission critical functions. A sound network management
system or service provider enables and organization to invest time in innovative
job function and growth.

Sonia Sharma


sonias@cybermedia.co.in