Conclusions

Two of the most pressing issues for enterprise WAN administrators are

1. Maintaining performance service levels for network users - high availability and low latency are live-or-die metrics for WAN administrators.
2. Managing the recurring costs associated with WAN services - despite an increasingly competitive communications market, the communications continues to be among the largest monthly outlays for large enterprises.

A network is not useful if it’s not available. Reducing the time to restore service following a failure is not measured by money spent, but money lost. Poor performance also translates into money lost: Consider the disastrous consequences to a brokerage firm if its market information is delayed or unavailable. Our case study customer claims, and we confirm, that the Visual UpTime™ WAN Service Level Management System provides tools that significantly improve an enterprise’s ability to isolate service problems and resolve them quickly.

Recurring costs can’t be managed in a vacuum: traffic utilization and an accurate understanding of performance levels users expect are critical for proper network engineering and capacity planning. An enterprise needs accurate and detailed histories of WAN service utilization before it can safely conclude that access lines are oversubscribed, under-utilized, mis-configured, or simply in need of a tune-up. In our opinion, the Visual UpTime™ WAN Service Level Management System does an exceptional job of turning raw performance data into the kinds of reports network planners need to make informed decisions regarding the current state and future needs of their enterprise.

Based on our experience with the product, and our analysis of the network performance database provided to us by a large scale enterprise Frame Relay network, we find that Visual UpTime™ offers the following benefits to Frame Relay service users:

Information = Power = Control. Without sufficient information, trouble reporting and sectionalization often consists of hand waving and finger pointing: the telco claims its circuit is up, the end user claims the customer premise equipment is operational, and the Enterprise providing end-to-end service is caught in the middle, forced to accept sole responsibility for finding and fixing the problem. Considerable time and effort can be saved through the ability to present hard evidence of circuit status and configuration. Visual UpTime's event processing and troubleshooting can isolate problems down to the specific signal or configuration parameter on a specific access line or channel. This increased visibility into the WAN "cloud" is a powerful tool that facilitates speedy and cost-effective trouble resolution, providing greater Enterprise control over both telco service providers and end users. The subject company in this case study emphasized this as a significant benefit of using Visual UpTime™.

Low Operational Cost. Due to its "play and play" installation and turn-key operation, Visual UpTime™ can be deployed without adding expert staff, without costly programming, without extensive customization, and with relatively little ops training. This exceptional ease of use translates into low operational cost, and was cited as an attractive feature by the subject of this case study. After evaluating Visual UpTime here in our lab, we have to agree. No customization or programming was required to get the product up and running.

Non-Intrusive, Low Traffic Overhead. Due to the rather unique positioning of Visual UpTime ASE’s and the methods used for data reduction and collection, Visual UpTime is highly non-intrusive to the network and service being managed. This allows Visual UpTime to be introduced without extensive network (re)planning to accommodate additional administrative traffic, enables efficient performance data collection without incurring continuous line usage charges, and allows the Enterprise to obtain an accurate and true view of network performance without the perturbation caused by traditional NMS polling.

Service Correlation. Visual UpTime understands not only the physical topology of the network being managed, but how that topology relates to customers and service data such as CIR, circuit ID, and customer location. An essential ingredient that differentiates service management from traditional network management is this ability to correlate network events with their impact on the end-to-end service, allowing the Enterprise to prioritize and assess the impact on business. The subject company had developed a custom IP router management application to provide ops staff with this type of data. They loved the fact that service correlation is an integrated benefit offered by Visual UpTime, eliminating their need for custom programming.

Client/Server Distribution with Platform Flexibility. By distributing processing through intelligent ASE’s and offering both MIC and PAC/PAM configurations, Visual UpTime has the flexibility to meet both medium and large enterprise needs, and a well-defined migration path. The client/server model supported by the PAC/PAM configuration allows distribution of data to any desktop, not just the console at the central NOC. Nor is Visual UpTime wedded to a single operating system ó variety of flexible configurations allow Visual UpTime™ to fit within, rather than drive, an enterprise's OS deployment strategy.

At Core Competence, we use and constantly evaluate network management applications and systems designed for a variety of data and telecommunications networking needs. The Visual UpTime™ WAN Service Level Management System earns high marks for its innovative approach and ability to deliver true Service Level management.

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