User experience is key

Management focus shifts from devices to service delivery.

Kim Jahnz doesn't like to brag, but she says that over the years she has mastered managing network and systems performance and availability at Aurora Health Care in Milwaukee. However, Jahnz knows she faces a bigger challenge in 2006.

"I can threshold network and server performance, and we can meet those thresholds. But we've learned that doesn't mean performance is acceptable to the end user," says Jahnz, lead systems management analyst. "What I need to do this year is integrate the systems we have, tighten our monitoring tools and take it to the next level, which for me is meeting the end-user expectation of performance."

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Kim Jahnz doesn't like to brag, but she says that over the years she has mastered managing network and systems performance and availability at Aurora Health Care in Milwaukee. However, Jahnz knows she faces a bigger challenge in 2006.

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"I can threshold network and server performance, and we can meet those thresholds. But we've learned that doesn't mean performance is acceptable to the end user," says Jahnz, lead systems management analyst. "What I need to do this year is integrate the systems we have, tighten our monitoring tools and take it to the next level, which for me is meeting the end-user expectation of performance."

Like many other network managers, Jahnz hopes to bridge the gap between silos in IT shops and integrate management data so she can deliver optimal IT services to users. The tricky part is that network managers don't necessarily oversee such IT groups as applications, security, storage and systems, but they must have links into all that management data.

Network management vendors are widening their horizons to help make this possible. For example, Cisco is showing that it understands the importance of application performance with its Application Oriented Networking strategy, which is designed to optimize Cisco networks to run Web services.

"One of the areas of network management that will expand this year is service-centric performance monitoring," says George Hamilton, director of enterprise computing and networking at The Yankee Group. "This requires network management vendors to understand the services that run on the networks and not simply the distributed devices. Vendors will have to start reporting on service levels and move away from traditional threshold alerts."

Kim Jahnz of Aurora Health Care targets user expectations

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To understand which services are running on a network, network managers might need to invest in new technology - such as network configuration-management products, network topology tools, network access-control technologies and user application performance-monitoring software - but they will also need to better integrate tools they have.

"Network management has changed from a device-centric approach to managing the network as a context for service delivery," says Dennis Drogseth, a vice president with Enterprise Management Associates. "IT buyers want a central, strategic source of intelligence and integration with good enabling technologies while still being able to choose from multiple vendors."