Replacing a network management tool is not a trivial exercise, especially in large and complex networks. It can take months to install and tune a tool so that it is delivering value. Despite this difficulty, many IT organizations expect to replace the tools they use to monitor, troubleshoot and optimize their networks. Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) research recently found that 59% of IT organizations are at least somewhat likely to replace an incumbent network observability tool within a year or two. EMA’s survey of 351 IT professionals found that nearly 26% said tool replacement is very likely.
There was a time when network observability tools (also known as network monitoring or network performance management tools) were sticky. IT organizations were hesitant to replace them because the disruption to network operations was too painful. Things have changed. The risk of sticking with the status quo is scarier than the pain associated with ripping and replacing legacy tools. What’s driving this shift?
Hybrid networks demand new tools
First of all, networks are changing, and many IT organizations are finding that their existing tools can’t keep up with that change. Legacy network monitoring tools are designed for an era when IT organizations had more direct control over their networks. Their applications lived in on-premises data centers, and they connected remote sites via managed WAN services with service-level agreements (SLA). Their monitoring priorities were data center network performance, edge router performance, and local-area network (LAN) performance. Very few enterprises still have networks like this.
Today’s networks are more hybridized, and network teams need to monitor networks over which they have little to no administrative control. For example, enterprises are increasingly hybridizing their WANs with internet connectivity (which often lacks SLAs) and then optimizing and securing that connectivity with secure access service edge (SASE) solutions. According to EMA research, organizations that struggle to collect network monitoring data from internet connections and SASE solutions reported stronger interest in replacing their tools.
Cloud technology is another factor. Many enterprises now deploy a major share of their applications in the public cloud and often those applications are developed and deployed as containerized services via Kubernetes. Traditional network monitoring tools are not designed to extract telemetry from these environments. In fact, our research revealed that network teams with strong interest in tool replacement tended to struggle to collect network monitoring data from the public cloud and from container platforms.
Seeking AI-driven tools
Tool turnover is also driven by AI. Network teams think that AI can help them close these monitoring gaps. Overall, 59% of research participants indicated that it’s very important for their network observability or network monitoring tools to offer features based on AI and machine learning that can optimize and automate network managing. They also reported that it would be extremely valuable if these AI-driven tools had domain expertise on public cloud networks, WAN overlays like SASE and WAN underlays like the internet.
Many network observability vendors have begun offering AI capabilities in their tools, but not all of them. Also, many of the vendors that do offer AI features are still catching, with AI features that are still maturing. Regardless, AI is impacting tool turnover. For example, interest in AI-driven public cloud and WAN overlay domain expertise correlated with a desire to replace incumbent tools.
Shifting from infrastructure performance to network experience
Another factor driving tool replacement is a shift in mindset from managing network performance to managing network experience. Nearly 60% of research participants told EMA that it is very important for their tools to support monitoring and troubleshooting of the network experience of individual users.
Given the hybrid nature of today’s networks, it’s difficult to deliver network performance end to end. Cloud environments are dynamic, and internet connectivity is volatile. On top of that, many workers connect to corporate networks remotely from home or on the road. This complexity means that managing end-to-end network performance won’t guarantee that every user is having a good experience. Network operations teams need tools that provide visibility into individual user experiences.
The data bears this out. Strong interest in tools that can reveal the network experience of individual users correlated with a higher likelihood of replacing incumbent tools. Interest in tool replacement was especially high if their current toolset was ineffective at delivering this experience visibility.
EMA perspective
There are many other factors that drive network observability turnover. For example, many IT organizations are motivated by generic issues like cost and data retention challenges. But it’s hard to ignore what EMA sees in its research data. Networks are changing, and those changes are driving a need for new tools.
This change will be difficult to navigate. IT leaders must find the right tools to acquire. Then they must execute the changeover. Third, they need to evangelize the new tools. Otherwise, network teams will resist adoption and hold on to legacy tools and processes. EMA’s ongoing research practice has studied these issues for decades, and we are here to help.
Source:: Network World