There are several factors, or challenges, that drive a business to add or replace their Network Monitoring Solution (NMS) or Network Performance Monitor (NPM). When a decision is made to inquire into the marketplace and options, having a process in place to help ask the right questions, and even collate the answers into measurable results, can be invaluable in making a rational decision based on price, performance, and reliability without being swayed by glitzy marketing.
What is Driving the Need
Generally speaking every purchasing decision comes down to two business factors, either a new opportunity or a challenge presented by the existing situation. For example, you may have started a new business or grown into a larger organization through M&A requiring you to add a Network Monitoring Solution.
Tool/Vendor Consolidation
IT teams that have grown over the years either through organic growth or M&A often find themselves with many point solutions in place. If you have many tools doing the same type(s) of functionality, or it you're using several tools to troubleshoot one device, then you may benefit from Tool and Vendor Consolidation. With Tool Consolidation you reduce the number of tools your engineers are using to monitor devices, collect performance information, and generate alerts and escalations from events. By consolidating tools you reduce the need for training, make it easier for engineers to know where to go for answers and information, and potentially reduce your licensing cost. If through Tool Consolidation you are also able to reduce your total number of vendors then you also make negotiating renewals and contracts easier, reducing the overhead on procurement.
Collaboration
We often see teams where the network engineers use one set of tools and the server team another. As a result, when user experience or application performance problems are raise neither team has a cohesive view across the entire infrastructure to understand where the performance bottlenecks may be occurring. This increases the time it takes for root cause analysis and problem resolution. Having a tool that can monitor both traditional networking equipment (routers, switches, hubs, load balancers, etc), servers (of all operating systems) and generate synthetic transactions that exercise the entire application value chain cuts through those silos and provides immediate insight into where problems are occurring.