Network Management Services originated from the need for communication carriers to provide the ability to support organizations and allow them to concentrate on their core business competency. Hence, companies would not have to spend staff and capital resources on how their back office technology supports their organization.

Network Management is often viewed as a "fluff" service because many feel as though the money spent provides nothing of substance in return. Unfortunately, network reliability and security are not tangible items but they are of critical importance to most businesses. In reality, Network Management Services can be one of the most important tools an organization can use to protect the edge required in today's marketplace. Without it, many businesses are left without any protection against troubles with their network.

Network managed connectivity, in simple terms, means support of an organization under several conditions depending on the targeted hot spot within a company. That hot spot is what drives a particular organization's communications. For example, wide area connections between multiple offices may be the critical component for one company and a simple connection to the Internet may be the hot spot for another.

Identifying that hot spot and targeting network management services to protect the reliability and integrity of that area, is what a provider and customer need to work together to accomplish.

An easy example to consider is what happens when connectivity is lost to an office when everyone shows up in the morning to begin the day. Several calls are placed to determine the problem, set-up the solution and actually correct the issue. The time involved can be anywhere from one hour to eight hours depending upon the circumstances, reducing the organization's productivity. Businesses today survive on immediate response and turn-around, which is driven by the info-structure in place. Today, the majority of business organizations are driven through e-mail, data delivered between remote locations to host locations, and orders processed from acceptance through delivery, electronically tracked. When these systems go down you have to consider "what is the loss?" If the above-mentioned problem resolution began prior to the beginning of the business day, the loss would be considerably less to the organization.

By taking a look at the return-on-investment (ROI) of network management services, we can see that it can become the best tool any organization implements to combat or halt down time. For example, say if carrier services (ISP or WAN) go down at 2:00AM, the appropriate individuals discover this at 8:00AM, the solution to the problem doesn't begin in the non-working hours and the actual correction of issue occurs five hours later. Cost of non-productive time (salary, business, and production) is roughly $5,000 an hour, creating a $25,000 loss to the organization in only 5 hours. However, if network management had been in place the problem would have been worked on starting at 2:00AM and corrected prior to anyone starting the workday, hence, the loss to the business would be $0.

Like with any insurance policy, the question at hand is "What if I never have a need for this?" The simple answer is "what if you do and what will it cost?"

In today's market, no business can afford to lose anything due to unnecessary downtime. Careful planning combined with network management services, can greatly reduce that risk.

About the Author
P. Ann Eazor is VP Business Development with ImagiNet. ImagiNet is the leading provider of WAN, LAN, Web Solutions and Telephony services. The author may be reached via email at aeazor@co.imagi.net.