As for implementation and administration, none of the products will instantly tell you what's going on with your network. We had to spend a lot of time determining what to collect and how to group data.
To get pricing, we gave each vendor a Visio diagram of a network, complete with details about consoles, servers, routers, switches and interfaces, and asked for an estimate.
Finally, though no software is bug-free, we couldn't ignore even occasional screw-ups. Simply put, we dinged the products that dinged us.
ProactiveNet is a solid performer, is easy to set up and administer and has the best root-cause analysis features. Concord's eHealth Suite is a close second, with superior report delivery. NetScout also has a fantastic report interface but did not provide any of its agent technology for our tests. Instead, NetScout relied on its very strong probe data collection. However, this product has the steepest price--35 percent higher than the next highest competitor. Compuware's Vantage 8.0 has the widest data collection and analysis, but its many modules are loosely integrated, increasing administrative effort and error. The Argent Guardian focuses on systems management, but includes SNMP monitoring of network devices at no additional cost. Unfortunately, the SNMP reports require hefty setup work to be useful. NetQoS's SuperAgent appliance is easy to implement. It did well in our tests but did not give us as deep a look at the client side of transactions, and it supports only TCP.
Hot dogs are tasty, as long as you don't know what's in them. But when a product like ProactiveNet starts hot dogging--saying it can determine the root cause of a problem, yammering about secret ingredients like "intelligent thresholds" and "smart filters," and promising you don't have to set up a bunch of performance thresholds--you have to see it with your own eyes. We looked, and we'll still bite.
To gather data, ProactiveNet uses Web transactions and a polling engine the vendor calls an agent, though it's actually a server-side process. The polling engine collects, analyzes and reports on a wide array of performance metrics over time.
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
