My new report is live for Forrester clients - Predictions For 2014: Technology Monitoring. Normally I am a bit of a skeptic when it comes to predictions, especially in regards to technology, because while they are interesting to read they can cause confusion and unnecessary deliberation for a buyer/strategist if they are not in context. So my aim for this report was to provide some concrete advice for I&O professionals in 2014 in regards to their technology monitoring (user experience, appli...

Contact center and communications solutions offer companies a significant opportunity to control costs and improve customer satisfaction if implemented and maintained appropriately. If the solutions are not implemented and maintained properly, the opportunities become risks and eventually customers are negatively impacted. With StressTest™ performance and load testing, you can validate the performance of your end-to-end contact center and communications solutions to assure the best possible expe...

The Internet of Things is upon us. How can enterprise network administrators brace for impact? Discussion of the Internet of Things – a world of connected objects, where your refrigerator sends you a text message when you’re low on milk and your basketball generates a quasi-scouting report when you’re done shooting hoops – has so far resonated most in the service provider space. What services can I sell to enable this? What infrastructure will I need to keep everything connected? But a similar c...

Today, network traffic between Virtual Machines (VMs) is skyrocketing past predictions, while network administrators continue to lag in terms of visibility and control of that inter-VM communication. As this traffic soars to more than 50 percent of all traffic on the network, the security and compliance challenges raised by lack of visibility into the virtualized environment have become acute. The financial and legal consequences of this visibility deficit are severe and of long duration, with a...

Network Analyzers are designed to watch the network, identify issues and alert administrators of problem scenarios. These features make the analyzer an excellent tool to locate network security breaches, and to help identify and isolate virus-infected systems. This article shows how using a network analyzer can enhance network security, which analyzer features are essential for this task and how an analyzer should be a part of any IT professional’s security incident response plan. Because firewa...

Spectracom's NetClock 9483 offers a versatile modular design that's fully NENA compliant and tailored especially for Emergency Communication Center applications. And now it has a new Web User Interface that's easier to use and provides intuitive status monitoring with simple set-up. A key feature of the 9483 is its capability of time-synchronizing multiple separate networks. The modular design provides expansion card slots, one of which is the 3-network port GigE option card providing synchroniz...

Change is coming to networks faster than ever before. While growth is a new constant in most networks, it is being compounded by new regulations, virtualization of workloads and services, changing security needs, and migration of applications between data centers and the cloud. Network and IT organizations are caught in a constant cycle of deploying new services, supporting new use cases, and managing growth – which results in networks that are always trying to get back to a reliable state befor...

According to EMA Research vice president Jim Frey, “Packet-based monitoring is a critical aspect of responsible management and governance, and establishing a visibility architecture is the best path to success.” Read the white paper, "Best Practices for Building Scalable Visibility Architectures." Learn more Watch this two minute video   Thanks to Ixia for the article.

Not so long ago, Sci-Fi movies liked to depict calls completed through a computer connection. Whether upon a spaceship light years away or from a government-protected entity to help save the world, this futuristic way of staying connected had us all intrigued. While we haven’t yet reached the Jetsons’ level of flying cars and automatic meals (I’m still hoping for the development on this one) we are making calls over the Internet, with a computer, mobile or standard phone. Business phone systems ...

Learn the concepts and technologies behind effectively managing application performance, so you can identify and correct issues before they affect your business. Application Performance Monitoring Technologies There are a number of different types of tools on the market that report on application performance. They can be roughly categorized by the mechanisms the tool uses to measure performance: Synthetic transaction systems generate test transactions from one or more clients (or pseudo-clients)...

Network security visibility is a hot topic here at RSA. Doug Hurd, technology alliances, Sourcefire (a Cisco company), spoke to our audience about how the company is improving customer security through extensibility and collaboration. Its Open Security Framework drives integration, resulting in faster time to resolution, smarter and faster policy management, and overall better security. Ixia’s Net Optics Bypass Switch and xBalancer are part of this Sourcefire open framework. With the Sourcefire ...

A guide to PoE and why it's a smart choice for clocks and other small devices You may already know all about Power over Ethernet (PoE) technology. You may be well-versed in the low power consumption, cost-effectiveness, and ease of installation for the hundreds of modern devices that utilize the technology, such as VoIP phones, webcams and other devices including Inova's OnTime digital clocks, analog clocks, and OnTrack X Series digital displays. But for those not familiar with PoE (read "P-O-E,...

Many people believe they are best served by real people, not by voice robots. That’s the rationale behind GetHuman.com. But the economics and utility of self-service as an alternative to live agent interactions are so compelling that self-service solutions are here to stay. Providing multiple touchpoints is a huge technology investment. Technology is great, but you can’t just diligently manage the implementation process and then assume all is well with the customer service experience. Because no...

What does your network have in common with a cloud service provider? At first glance, you would probably say not much. But remove the word cloud, and you have an over-taxed network team spending several hours troubleshooting complex database, Citrix, VoIP, and Internet performance problems over a highly-distributed network. Too many problems and applications and too little time to manage them are challenges that will sound familiar to any network professional. Additionally, because it’s a cloud ...

A few years ago the only cloud game in town was the public cloud, but today private and hybrid clouds are also true contenders. In fact, private cloud implementations address a prevalent set of challenges and issues that public clouds cannot and can help speed up and smooth the way of cloud adoption. Here are five core tenets you should assess when weighing private cloud against public cloud options: 1. Ease of Use. IT’s responsibilities lie not just in the implementation of technology, but in i...

It has been clear for quite some time that the network has become the lifeblood of nearly all enterprises. This is not just true for obvious network-centric enterprises such as retail sites or content distributors, but also for enterprises that utilize distributed applications such as SAP, Oracle, or any number of other network-centric applications. Over the past few years, a number of new enterprise technologies have emerged that are critically reliant on network performance, but where this rel...

Observer® Reporting Server (ORS) serves as the center of the Network Instruments® performance management platform, and combines flow technologies, captured packets, and expert analysis to provide an overall view of network health. Obtain integrated views of application, network, and infrastructure performance critical to ensure that business processes function smoothly and IT supports organizational goals. Highlights: Manage performance across the enterprise Obtain aggregated views of network, a...

Unified Communications (UC) is the integration of real-time and non-real time communication to provide instant and on-demand services to customers. During the last few years, UC has seen enormous growth due to the increasing use of UC by businesses around the world. A report by Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) shows that UC is likely to grow at an annual rate of 32.7 percent per year through 2017 in North America alone. It is being used for many applications such as hosted services, voice cal...

Modern enterprise applications are engineered for agility and are heavily virtualized for frequent deployment over scalable IT infrastructure environments. The benefits of virtualized public\private cloud environments include flexibility, efficiency, and agile business enablement. Multiple factors such as varying workload requirements, or ‘just-in‐time’ provisioning require an accurate and scalable muti-functional management suite to mitigate the risk of compromising the environment. Infosim’s S...

While you may not be that familiar with Software Defined Networking (SDN), it may be the next “big thing.” As with other popular technologies like cloud and big data, there is no clear consensus on the exact definition of SDN. Also like these technologies, SDN initiatives are likely to be pushed by IT folks outside the network team, and can greatly affect network visibility. While an SDN future may seem a few light years away, given the clout of vendors and users pushing these technologies, incl...