Network Monitoring Solution

Managed Network service is comprised of five basic elements.

1. Supply of hardware and software
2. Design and Installation Services
3. System Monitoring
4. Change Management
5. Fault Repair

What drives this solution in the market?

Networks are the glue that binds every information system together. In Fortune 500 entities it has really become something of a commodity item, or perhaps is considered to be just another utility.

However in mid market entities networks continue to be the cause of considerable difficulty essentially for four reasons:

1. The size of these entities and the networks they build is not large enough to attract and retain the best network talent.

2. The networks are often poorly designed – indeed its common for them to have no discernable design principal – rather they just evolve over time with no planning.

3. The network is the “source of all evil” in these environments – it gets blamed for poor response times, unreliable applications etc and that happens because there is no reliable network monitoring solution in place to help identify what is causing performance or reliability issues.

4. Maintenance costs are often high. For example, where Cisco equipment is used, that is because the underlying maintenance contracts are expensive but also because expertise has to be hired to deal with issues as they arise.

What gives us market advantage?

The key issue is “the network causes pain” and that pain is felt widely but focused on a few key leaders who have little real subject matter expertise.

The message we convey is essentially:

1. You have to opportunity to “start afresh” and build a network that meets your needs.

2. The new network will be built using “standard blocks” – that is building blocks of technology that are proven to work well together.

3. The whole process is highly organized – It follows a methodology so that each step is deliberate, planned and documented rather than being a “voyage of discovery”.

4. Once designed, deployed and tested, the network is monitored around the clock – someone is watching to make sure that the performance we see at day one does not degrade over time.

5. The solution comes with the change control process that is used in Enterprise class environments. There is a reason that the lights stay on and the telephone company provides highly reliable dial tone and that is because changes are very carefully examined and documented before they are made.

This really is key – senior leaders latch onto the concept that, while their own people will still be able to interface with the system on a day to day basis, there is no unplanned change

6. The solution is not prohibitively expensive – that’s because deploying the correct equipment which is configured using known optimized parameters results in relatively low ongoing human resource utilization.

Technology Selection.

The key concept to grasp is that the Enterprise class view that moving an IP packet from point a to point b is really a utility function is correct. There is no need for the traditional view that networking is something of a “black art” to persist.

The significant demand for network solutions in Asia, particularly China, has led to a significant strengthening of network equipment suppliers who can compete with Cisco.

NetGear, a company once seen as no more than a supplier to the home market is now second only to Cisco in terms of number of ports shipped and the quality of the solutions is at par with Cisco while the cost is significantly less.

For example, a network to support 400 users in a campus environment would cost some $ 86,475 if purchased from Cisco and $ 23,403 from NetGear. The annual maintenance cost of the Cisco solution nears $ $14,000 while NetGear equipment carries a lifetime warranty including software upgrades.

Service Cost

The service has a “managed unit” cost base where a managed unit is a unit of equipment. A one time installation fee of 10% of the capital cost is charged to fund the manpower used in design, deployment and testing.

The unit cost per month is set at $ 80.00 – that is the typical cost that you would find in the market for managed network services from Companies like Sprint and AT&T. The key difference is that their costs are for either managing equipment that the customer owns or that is provided as a telecommunications service such as a point to point data circuit.