There are broad-scale NMS platforms out there. Most are fairly expensive and very overwrought. Do you really need Unicenter's 3-d visualization to manage?

I've found that aside from the basic network-level monitoring, circuit set-up and traffic shaping stuff that I learn a great deal from understanding how the network is being used. Most issues that crop up are a result of user dynamics. Whether it's an error, abuse or convergence of events, user behavior has the biggest impact on my infrastructure, controls and policies.

I like software from Congruity called Inspector. It's easy and doesn't introduce a single point of failure. I get network/bw stats, communications reports, application use data/stats and device logs and don't have to work hard to get them. It shows me where the issues are. The interface provides management with a window into operations so I'm not having to go off-task to get them reports. It's extremely cheap compared to SIM/SEM/DLP solutions out there.