Earlier this week, yours truly and Mike Patterson (president of network performance vendor Plixer International) were discussing Jimmy Ray Purser's excellent blog story - network management sucks, when suddenly, totally out of left field, Mike starts complaining about why spaghetti sauce outsells network management systems (NMS).
What, spaghetti sauce and NMS?
Well, according to Mike, there are 4 reasons why spaghetti sauce outsells network management systems:
1. Thick (i.e. Inventory)
2. Rich (i.e. Aggregation)
3. Authentic Italian (i.e. Correlation)
4. Zesty (i.e. Ease of Adds, Moves and Changes)
As I began to wrap the telephone cord tightly around my neck with thoughts of committing Japanese harakiri spaghetti style, Mike saved my life by suggesting that I watch the following video:
Malcolm Gladwell - What we can learn from spaghetti sauce
Well, I have to agree with Mike, after watching Gladwell's video, vendors of network management systems can learn from spaghetti sauce.
Why?
For example, reading Jimmy Ray Purser's blog story - network management sucks, it appears to me that NMS vendors are just as clueless about customer wants as spaghetti sauce manufacturers were in the past.
Could it be possible that what NMS customers say they want is just like spaghetti sauce customers?
Different from what they actually want !
Do you agree with Mike, can NMS vendors learn from spaghetti sauce?
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Yes!!
Hey Brad,
Excellent post! Anytime we can mix food with networking is what I call almost perfect correlation! Tie in good cigars with this and we have the perfect NMS trifecta!
When will NMS vendors walk a mile in our daily networking shoes?
Jimmy Ray Purser
J. Paul Getty - Richest Man in the World
Jimmy Ray,
True story, during my younger years, my Mother would occasionally mention that she knew the brother of J. Paul Getty (who at the time was the richest man in the world).
Always game for my Mother's humor, I'd ask to her amusement and glee what was the name of J. Paul's brother, thereby swallowing her bait both fish hook and sinker!
Naturally, her response:
Spa Getty
As the late great Paul Harvey would say:
"Now you know the rest of the story!"
Sincerely,
Brad Reese
BradReese.Com Cisco Refurbished
or...
I haven't watched that TED talk in a while, but might I suggest some other advantages spaghetti sauce enjoys from a customer's POV:
1. Obvious value & use
2. Easy to use
3. Readily available & heavily marketed
4. Affordable
Jeffrey
Brad, First, thank you for
Brad,
First, thank you for the article.
With all the bad news about NMS where does that leave me? I need to find a proper NMS solution and would like to hear the good and maybe a top selection or top 5. I think that'd be a big hit on NWW.
Thanks!
thanks for the feedback
Thank you for the feedback everyone. TED puts out some great videos. The one with Barry Schwartz: "The paradox of choice" is good as well.
Michael Patterson
Quite true!
Brad,
I saw Malcolm Gladwell speak very recently and believe 99% of his messages are spot-on. The beauty of his advice is that it applies to any industry, any product. Hence, the success of Gladwell's books. The roadmap and development of NMS should be no different than that of spaghetti sauce and we think there are new vendors out there that actually do a good job of reaching out to the end users to identify exactly which "bowl of spachetti sauce" they prefer. The large platform guys may not do such a great job, but companies like PacketTrap go out of their way to stay in touch with what their customers want by using feedback buttons, blog postings, focus groups and customer outreach programs. SolarWinds does a good job, too, with Thwack.
User Communities
Packet Trap has a user community like Thwack:
http://community.packettrap.com/
As does plixer: http://www.systrax.com/ which I feel does a better job with Cisco NetFlow and sFlow
Ingredients of a good NMS sauce
Both Jimmy Ray and Malcolm are on target with their analysis of the NMS market. I'm now working on network management services at Chesapeake Netcraftsmen after having started Netcordia/NetMRI to do network management and analysis (the correlation that Jimmy Ray describes is critical). In Malcolm's talk, he describes the mixture of ingredients in formulating different spaghetti sauces. NMS can be approached the same, with the ingredients being events, flow data, performance, configurations, inventory, analysis, etc. Each organization will have slightly differing needs with respect to how these ingredients are mixed.
-Terry
Great hit..
Nice connection, thanks Brad! Yes, NMS (mainly SNMP based) is a mess today and the next generation (CIM, WBEM, etc) seems going the same way - spaghetti (wet, sloppy, tangled, propriety spaghetti), instead of a nice, clean, easy to use and program environment it was supposed to be (a pity!)
Now - I wouldn't really blame the vendors too much, of course they should make nice, easy, efficient, whatever tools and toys but it is mainly the customers / users who don't know what they want - as in case of spaghetti sauce! It's a little different to talk about $2 canned enjoyment than $2 billion IT environment which always is a fierce target of internal / external power and money fights of who get's most!
I think that the CEO's should taste the "spaghetti sauce", CIOs and CTOs are too often still going with producers (vendors) or whatever for their own (not company / corporate) benefit. Now - it might take time and is not easy but can be done, I have some experience of it.
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