Making the Business Case

As you have seen in previous chapters in this book, many technologies can be involved in today's networks. After the network has been designed and implemented, all of these technologies must then be managed.

Recall from Chapter 1, "Network Design," how important it is to clearly define the requirements of the network. When deciding on the network management strategy, protocols, and tools, it is also critical to go back to those requirements; only then can you determine what is valuable to measure and track.

Being proactive, rather than reactive, is crucial to managing your network. This means that you need to understand both the business's and the end users' perspectives and priorities, and manage the network so that their expectations are met. To do this, you need to understand the network and have baseline measurements so that you can see that something might be going wrong, before it causes a problem. As networks are being used for more applications (for example, Voice over IP [VoIP], e-commerce, and so forth), they are getting more complicated, which in turn complicates the management of the network.

Effective network management is crucial to ensuring the success of today's businesses that rely so heavily on their networks. The key to effective network management is to recognize that a network exists to meet the needs of the businessthe requirements. Therefore, network management should not be managing the technology for technology's sake, but as a means to meet these requirementsdelivering an appropriate level of service, at an appropriate cost. For example, network management must go beyond traditional measurements (such as effective bandwidth) and instead focus on the availability of critical applications, because those are what the business relies on.