Third-party versus internal network troubleshooting
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An ancient Greek Mathemetician once claimed he could lift the Earth off its foundation if he were given a solid point to stand on, and a long enough lever. This ‘Archimedean point’ is still a beloved exercise of philosophers and thinkers today. From the relation of a mind to its body, to the Earth’s path in solar orbit, having an objective viewing point from outside a system is critical for getting unbiased results.
Similarly, if something is wrong with your network how would you know? If your network services are provided internally you may lack external flags and indicators to quickly locate a problem. This is particularly important for infrastructure optimization and tight coupling. Meaning, just because your network is functional does not guarantee it is speedy or well managed. SaaS (Software as a Service) models respond directly to this problem by providing businesses with third party network management.
In an SaaS model, an application is hosted by its provider and offered as a service to enterprises across the Internet. In other words, no on-premise hardware is required. This type of software delivery is attractive because it removes the requirements to download, install, and maintain software on-premise. Not having to buy the IT infrastructure is also an obvious financial benefit. Whereas on-premise management requires salaried employees, SaaS models are an out-sourced service. They are cloud dependent and thus platform agnostic and easily cross-certifiable with linking networks.
As a study published recently by Gartner Newsroom has shown, “Worldwide software as a service (SaaS) revenue within the enterprise application software market is forecast to surpass $8.5 billion in 2010, up 14.1 percent from 2009 revenue of $7.5 billion.” However, just because you’ve out-sourced the application doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve out-sourced the network. Cloud approaches to network management will necessarily have some issues with off-site hardware. For instance, the best location to measure latency is within your own network, right where your users are. This will give the most accurate latency measurements to ensure fluid end-user performance. But a harmonized approach, with a capability to drill down into suspicious issues and quickly achieve root-cause analysis, is the real future of network management.
It is undeniable that SaaS models are changing the scale of operations, and that third party monitoring is enabling an outside-looking-in network accountability.
For further meditations on the ‘Archimedean point’ analogy, visit the following link for real-time and interactive scaled rendering: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/.
Tags: archimedean point, call center software, hosted call center, network, telax