Like Shark Week for network management SLAs

For many, Shark Week is a highlight of the summer's months-long TV binge session. For others, it's too much hype on the sensational, not enough on educating the public on some truly specialized and varied animals that are really good at what they do. It's a lot like marketing an advanced out-of-band management platform. Stick [...]

Waypoints on the road to recovery

Mean-time-to-recovery is a key metric for many IT service groups. Lowering that number means frequent monitoring and a fast response to solve problems. It means having trained staff on hand at all hours, ready to jump into action. This is expensive and really just kind of throwing good money after bad -- it's not attacking [...]

Is your network under-inflated?

In the run-up to Superbowl XLIX, one of the key story lines has been "Deflategate" - the accusation that the New England Patriots intentionally under-inflated footballs. This situation has more in common with network SLAs than it does with the science of atmospheric pressure and temperature. Network SLAs? Let me explain. In case you don't [...]

Despite security fears, IT execs forecast more cloud

Despite more than three-quarters of businesses in the US adopting cloud storage and web applications, and 70 percent globally, confidence around cloud security is at an all-time low according to a recent survey by BT. The survey revealed that security is the main concern about using cloud-based services. About half of respondents stated that they [...]

Soccer bigger network drain than Olympics or March Madness

A survey conducted during the Group Stage of this year's soccer World Cup of over 200 IT admins and network managers in the United States showed the impact of "the beautiful game" on US business networks. Seventy-percent of those surveyed said that employees streaming games in the office in the office was having an adverse [...]

How-To: Maintain visibility and accountability in outsourced IT

The combination of a competitive managed services market and increasingly complicated enterprise network expectations have lead many companies to outsource their network management. Benefits that include lower cost of ownership, outside expertise and fewer inside demands must be balanced with less direct control and visibility. Or does it? A common complaint is that when problems [...]

Deploying and managing services with Uplogix

Local Management has some clear benefits for managed service providers who use Uplogix to deploy gear faster, manage it better, and control costs while hitting their SLAs. Uplogix is working with one of the top carriers in the world to deploy and manage services for a large federal customer. They are using Local Management throughout [...]

MTBF and MTTR are important, but so is MTTI

MTBF (mean time between faults) and MTTR (mean time to recovery) are important measurements that usually factor into the creation of SLAs (service level agreements). Another important measurement within IT groups when it comes to their management tools should be MTTI, or the mean time to innocence. When there is a problem, this is the [...]

Out-of-this-World Managed Services

What's a greater risk? Asteroids or network downtime from Level 1 support issues? [UPDATED: 2/15/13 We survived!] While the threat of an asteroid's path bringing it inside the orbit of geosynchronous weather and communications satellites and taking one out is real, it's much less of a concern for most satellite-based managed service providers than meeting [...]

Getting to the truth on Service Level Agreements

Which side of SLAs do you sit on? Are you gunning to meet required service levels for your customers, or are you watching your provider like a hawk to make sure you get what you pay for? Either way, service level agreements are only as good as: What they measure - are these really the [...]