Data networks have evolved to become a mission-critical resources, and an increasing emphasis has been placed on managing WAN connectivity. Everyone has WANs, but WAN network management remains a labor-intensive and time-consuming task, and one that often imposes substantial administrative traffic on the network being managed. Commercial NMS's provide some view into network resources, but black holes, opaque WAN "clouds", and lack of integration prevent these tools from correlating WAN network failures end-to-end or determining their impact on the enterprise as a whole.

Enterprises are highly motivated to provide network operations staff with tools that enable effective, timely, and cost-effective WAN management, and tools that will ultimately help control the recurring costs of WAN bandwidth. Such are the business drivers which motivate enterprises to seek sophisticated tools capable of providing Service Level Management. Service level management is distinguished from traditional network management by the ability to correlate network events with their impact on end-to-end service. This allows an enterprise to prioritize and assess the impact of faults and increased utilization on the enterprise's ability to conduct business, generate revenue, and yield profit. The benefits of employing service level management include: improved network operations efficiency, reduced down-time (and therefore cost) attributed to network failures, and more cost-effective network resource utilization and planning.

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