Network Management Tools Market Trends



Network Management Tools Market Trends










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Network Management Tools
Market Trends

by Kirk Woodward

Copyright 2017, Faulkner Information Services. All
Rights Reserved.

Docid: 00011510

Publication Date: 1701

Report Type: MARKET

Preview

Data networks are crucial to business; therefore, optimizing and managing
network performance is vital. With the emergence of cloud computing, mobile
devices, and social media, traditional network management tools often no
longer meet current IT demands, particularly in the management of big
data. Vendors have responded with a mix of tools designed to keep pace
with the rapid rate of change in network structure.

Report Contents:

Executive Summary

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In the simplest terms, network management is a combination of software
and hardware that allows enterprises to monitor both data, voice, video,
and other networks, including virtual network-attached devices. The
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Network Management
Model describes network management in terms of five related functions:

  • Performance Management – “Monitoring, assessing, and
    adjusting the available bandwidth and network resource usage in order
    make a network run more efficiently.”
  • Accounting Management – “Monitoring and assessing the
    usage of data and/or resources for the purpose of billing.”
  • Configuration Management – “Tracking the hardware and
    software versions on the network to identify their effects on the
    network’s operation.”
  • Fault Management – “Detecting, logging, and alerting
    the system administrators of problems that might effect the systems
    operations.”
  • Security Management – “Controlling access to
    resources and even alerting the proper authorities when certain
    resources are accessed.”

Network Management Tools Tutorial

Enterprises are recognizing the need for leveraging network data for
business purposes. Organizations understand that a lack of visibility into
the business aspect of network performance is one of the key challenges
for network performance management. Additionally, the concept of
virtualization is receiving more traction with end-user organizations, as
they are increasingly looking to maximize the value of network data they
collect and use it more for business and operational purposes. Network
management tools – or, more commonly, network management software or
network management solutions – are designed to facilitate network
management functions, providing fault, performance, security, and
accounting management.

According to Markets and Markets, the total network management market to
grow from $7 Billion (US) in 2014 to $11 Billion (US) in 2019. This
represents a CAGR of 9.5 percent during the forecast period. However, in
the cloud management market, there are even higher expectations of growth,
with a predicted CAGR of 32.51 percent over the same period of time.

Market Dynamics

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Over the past few years, enterprise networks have become increasingly
complex, with new technology such as virtualization, cloud computing, and
streaming media-enabled advertising. Enterprises relying on a patchwork
quilt of network management tools, often from a variety of vendors, are
finding network management and maintenance unwieldy and even unreliable.
Increasingly, these enterprise clients are shifting to integrated tools
sets from network management powerhouses like CA Technologies, HP, and
IBM, or to similar tools from independent vendors.

With the advent of the Internet, because of the introduction of mobile
and wireless computing devices like laptops and PDAs, and the evolution of
the mobile, and increasing global, workforce, enterprise networks – LANs,
WANs, intranets, and extranets – have emerged as the center of the IT
universe.
Where networks were once connected to systems such as mainframes and
servers, systems are now frequently connected to virtual clouds of
networks. Adding further complexity is the growing use of personally owned
devices for business purposes. These all pose complex challenges for
network management.

The resulting network-centric view of IT operations has confirmed the
importance of network management and network management tools. Ideally
network management software should:

  • Automate network management, reducing the need for network
    administrators;
  • Provide end-to-end network management;
  • Manage the convergence of voice and data networks, to support single
    pipe architectures;
  • Support network virtualization, a technology for optimizing network
    utilization by splitting up the available bandwidth into channels,
    which can be assigned (or reassigned) to a particular server or device
    in real time
  • Support cloud computing services such as Software as a Service (SaaS),
    Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS),
    Desktop as a Service (DaaS), and Back-end as a Service (BaaS).

Network Virtualization & Cloud Computing

According to TRAC Research, the leading challenge in using network
monitoring tools is their difficulty troubleshooting problems in
virtualized environments; current monitoring tools may not be effective in
such environments. Management challenges for cloud computing and networks
in a virtual sphere include such areas as:

  • Access management
  • Resource configuration
  • Storage management
  • IP addresses
  • Content delivery networks
  • Firewalls
  • Virtual private networks
  • Block storage volumes
  • Object stores to enable web serving, content delivery, persistent data
    storage, and backups

On the positive side, with the growth and acceptance of the cloud as a
viable production infrastructure, management resources previously out of
reach to all but the largest enterprises have become available regardless
of the organization’s size. This availability has enabled smaller
organizations to develop scalable cloud management applications, some of
which handle tens of millions of daily active users.

Software as a Service (SaaS) stands for
software designed platforms of cloud computing that have the potential to
solve specific business problems for enterprise networks. SaaS-based
network management tools are now mainstream, but this segment of the
market lags behind other areas of network management in rate of growth.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a category of cloud
computing services that provides a computing platform and a solution stack
as a service. PaaS is deployable across private and public clouds
with capacity on demand, along with intelligent brokering.
Monitoring tools for PaaS assist network engineers and developers in reducing
service delivery time with application release automation, while
maintaining control and security.

Market Leaders

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According to IDC in the network management tools arena, CA Technologies,
NetScout, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and IBM are the large enterprise
market leaders comprising 46 percent of the market with total market
revenues approaching $4.0 billion (US). It is important to note, however,
that in this area market share statistics can be misleading, because large
vendors like CA, HPE, and IBM include network management in their
already-installed platforms. Numerous independent vendors of network monitoring
systems also provide products that may fit an enterprise’s requirements.

Of the solutions offered by the major market leaders there is an
emergence of cloud monitoring solutions, intended in part to stem the
onslaught of new market entrants. The Cloud System Management Software
Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 32.51 percent between this year
and 2019. 

CA Technologies

CA Technologies’ network management portfolio features CA NetQoS
Performance Center 6.2. Through a single Web-based reporting
dashboard, the NetQoS Performance Center provides a holistic performance
view and operational workflows that speed understanding of how the
infrastructure is supporting applications, and where problems exist.

The CA NetQoS Performance Center provides:

  • Application Response Time Monitoring – Tracking,
    measuring, and analyzing application performance for all user
    transactions.
  • UC (Unified Communications) Quality of Experience –
    Monitoring call and video quality and network-based call setup, and
    measuring the impact of convergence on application performance.
  • Traffic Analysis – Visualizing and analyzing the
    composition of network traffic on specific links. This yields the
    information needed to redirect or reprioritize application traffic,
    detect anomalous behavior, or add capacity.
  • Device Performance Management – Employing
    “application aware” routing capabilities such as Cisco CBQoS, IP SLA,
    and NBAR, and polling network infrastructure components to help isolate
    the source of problems, such as a busy router or a server memory leak,
    so that corrective action can be taken.
  • Long-term Packet Capture and Analysis – Storing
    detailed packets for analysis before, during, and after incidents,
    without needing to recreate the problem.

Cloud Solution

  • CA Unified Infrastructure Management (CA UIM) is a scalable IT
    monitoring solution that provides 360-degree visibility into systems and
    infrastructure performance. It creates a single, unified architecture
    for both traditional and cloud environments, enabling proactive monitor
    performance and availability.

HPE

HPE offers HP Intelligent Management Center (IMC) Enterprise
Edition, a stand-alone, comprehensive management platform for
delivering integrated, modular network management capabilities that match
the needs of advanced, heterogeneous enterprise networks. IMC Enterprise
Edition is designed on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) using a
business application flow model as the core, and featuring an on-demand,
modularized structure. IMC Enterprise Edition provides:

  • Identification and access management – The system
    implements unified and centralized management for access, supporting
    access through authentications including LAN, WAN, WLAN, and VPN.
  • Intelligent configuration center – The system enables
    network administrators to perform centralized management on
    configuration and software files, perform backup, restoration, and batch
    update of configuration files, and software/firmware backups and
    upgrades.
  • Rich resource management – IMC software provides
    powerful network discovery and topology, including a detailed inventory
    of the network and highly accurate depictions of how it is configured;
    supported views include Layer 2 and Layer 3, as well as VLAN topology,
    and the ability to create custom views.
  • Access control list management – IMC software
    simplifies the definition, deployment, and control of access control
    lists (ACLs) with effective policy-based control of network security and
    quality of service (QoS) across an organization’s network
    infrastructure.
  • Endpoint Admission Defense (EAD) – IMC software can
    be used to analyze a network endpoint’s security status to locate
    security threats, detect security events, and carry out protective
    measures to reduce network vulnerabilities; EAD can determine endpoint
    patch level and detect the installation and operation of illegal
    software to help ensure network integrity.
  • MPLS VPN Manager – In addition to managing basic
    network devices, the system can also handle MPLS VPN services, including
    deployment, monitoring, and auditing; this provides users with
    end-to-end business flow management.

Cloud Solution

  • HPE Helion CloudSystem software has cross platform
    and infrastructure modularity to integrate private and hybrid cloud
    ready data centers. Helion is capable of single-pane-of-glass
    multivendor management to automate, cloud, mobile, virtual machine
    orchestration, and automatically synchronize network connectivity
    information.

IBM

IBM offers IBM Tivoli Network Manager Transmission Edition (5.6),
which can be used to collect and distribute layered network data, and
build and maintain knowledge about physical and logical network
connectivity. Tivoli Network Manager Transmission Edition:

  • Provides the network visibility required to visualize and manage
    complex networks, and the services delivered across them.
  • Facilitates real-time root-cause analysis and speeds problem
    resolution.
  • Identifies the root causes of network downtime, and significantly
    reduces the time it takes to resolve network faults.
  • Delivers highly accurate, real-time information on network
    connectivity, availability, performance, usage, and inventory –
    information that is vital to achieving flow-through provisioning, and
    maximum return on network assets. Network maps are automatically
    generated and maintained as the network changes.

Cloud Solution

  • IBM SmartCloud Monitoring – monitors the health and performance of a
    private cloud infrastructure, including environments containing both
    physical and virtualized components. This software provides the tools
    needed to assess current health and capacity and model expansion, as
    needed. IBM SmartCloud Monitoring provides:

    •   Visibility into the cloud infrastructure including
      environments containing both physical and virtualized components.
    •   Monitoring of heterogeneous environments for
      visibility and control into all areas of the
      infrastructure—physical, virtual and cloud.
    •   What-if capacity analysis designed to model changes,
      reduce risk, improve availability and lower energy and server costs.
    •   Policy-driven analytics for intelligent workload
      placement.

Small to Midsize Business Management Tools

Small, midsize, and emerging businesses, as well as IT departments not
wedded to major vendors, can find an assortment of network management
tools to fit their needs. Market leaders of this size include:

  • NetScout Systems
  • Viavi Solutions
  • Riverbed
  • SolarWinds
  • SevOne
  • InfoVista
  • Paessler

Many vendors offer a growing portfolio of standard and customizable
network management tools and solutions that can provide the necessary
monitoring capabilities for businesses with limited capital and IT staff.

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Network management is expected to witness consistent growth. This is
evident from the competitive landscape surrounding the market, with a
significant number of acquisitions. Among these, Alcatel-Lucent has been
acquired by Nokia, Enterasys Networks by Extreme Networks, Zyrion by
Kaseya, and Meraki by Cisco. These acquisitions are expected to result in
combination of both the companies’ portfolio of products and services
which will in turn augment the value proposition for customers.

According to Markets and Markets, the total network management market to
grow from $7 billion (US) in 2014 to $11 billion (US) in 2019. This
represents a CAGR of 9.5 percent during the forecast period. However, in
the cloud management market, there are even higher expectations of growth
with a CAGR of 32.51 percent. 

Among major trends affecting the network management tools market are the
following: 

Integrating security management – As noted by Gartner,
duplication by separate management systems for networks and security
wastes both human and financial resources. Using the network management
framework to optimize the information security program can mean aligning
infrastructure requirements with risk control.

Monitoring applications through the network – The
integration of collaborative applications and voice/data convergences
across multiple networks creates a need for metrics such as application
response times and application availability.

Proactive monitoring – Demands for network access and
availability are driving the need for detecting network problems before
they impact end-users. Network monitoring tools that can model bottlenecks
in the traditional networking space and can also capture historic data
about network performance, can use this information to make decisions on
capacity planning, protocol optimization and infrastructure upgrades.

The growing importance of the configuration management database
(CMDB) – A CMDB is a single location for operational details on
an information system or systems. Network management tools that can take
advantage of a CMDB provide an enterprise with an opportunity to develop a
service-model perspective, a particularly desirable result in ITIL shops. 

The transformation of network operation centers (NOCs) into
secure network operation centers (SNOCs) – Numerous security
breaches have demonstrated that security needs to be looked at as an
integral part of network operation. Security tools are complex and often
management-heavy, so they provide an additional challenge for network
monitoring. 

The expansion of network operations to encompass remote sites
– Network operations are in many cases moving beyond the traditional data
center to the monitoring and managing of remote sites.

The rapid adoption of network virtualization and cloud computing
– Network virtualization is a technology for optimizing network
utilization by splitting up the available bandwidth into channels,
which can be assigned (or reassigned) to a particular server or device in
real time. Network management tools for virtualization are currently
thought to lag in effectiveness behind other network management tools.

The integration of IT management tools – For maximum IT
efficiency, network management tools must be integrated with other IT
management tools; in particular, change and configuration management
tools, DBMS management tools, and application management tools, service
desk tools, and event management tools.

The need to select and deploy economical network management tools
– IT departments face continuing budget reductions, with the result that
network management tools must be both effective and cost-effective.
Importantly, IT and security departments must demonstrate that they can
provide network management services as reliably and as reasonably as the
alternative of a Managed Network Services Provider (MNSP), that is, an
extra-company vendor.

Network intelligence, not just network monitoring
– Gathering data from network monitoring is essentially useless if such
data is not analyzed and its importance identified. Network management
tools should be examined for their ability to present important
information quickly, in a form that can be recognized and acted on. 

The transition to IPv6 – Internet Protocol version 6
(IPv6) is the current version of the IP protocol. IPv6 provides easier
administration, an expanded addressing scheme, and, most importantly,
tighter security.

Cross-domain management operations – With integration,
consolidation, and transition comes the need for speed and flexibility. IT
management vendors are moving toward service assurance strategies in which
all IT management tools, including enterprise network management software,
feed into a single service delivery management console. This gives
applications teams, IT executives, and business unit managers a unified
view of how the entire IT infrastructure works together to deliver an
application. When something goes wrong, IT silos can work together to
resolve the issue rather than retreating to their individual tool sets.

Managing high-speed links – Many organizations are
finding that network monitoring tools they deployed in the past are not
effective when used to monitor and record traffic from high speed links.
As a result, organizations are reporting that the ability to analyze and
report issues at a higher line rate is an emerging capability they are
looking to deploy.

Cloud Computing – Shifting IT
resources to the cloud has become a major initiative for IT leaders.
As more applications and IT resources are pushed to the cloud, companies
will rely on their networks more for secure, consistent delivery of these
cloud services.

Mobility – The shift to a mobile
workforce has gained significant momentum during the recent years. Almost
half of workers spend more than 30 percent of their time away from their
desk. Mobility is fueled by robust wireless access, mobile applications
and device evolution. However, mobile computing, although network centric,
may be difficult to monitor, and problems with the network can have an
impact on mobile productivity.

Social Media Monitoring – An emerging trend in the
enterprise market is the role of social media within businesses.
Enterprises are quickly discovering the importance of social media in
listening to what their audience has to say by accessing social media
business intelligence and analyzing the acquired data. While this is still
an emerging market area for network management tools, companies such as
NetScout have begun to integrate social media monitoring capability into
their existing management tools platforms.

Strategic Planning Implications

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For the enterprise, procuring a fully integrated suite of quality network
management tools is an important investment. Ensuring that networks and
their various devices and applications are functioning properly is
critical to smooth business operation, and may result in better service,
lower costs, and increased security. An additional strategic goal for
network performance management is to enable networks to support new
technology rollouts and major strategic initiatives such as cloud
computing and virtualization. In general the role of the network is
becoming more strategic to the enterprise, because network performance has
an ever growing impact on key business processes.

IT management should advise the enterprise on selecting network
management tools that are compatible – and, if possible, interoperable –
with tools for:

  • Change and configuration management
  • DBMS management
  • Application management
  • Service desk management
  • Job scheduling
  • Event management
  • IT asset management
  • Service level management
  • Server management
  • Performance and capacity planning
  • Configuration of virtual applications, access, and storage

The selection and implementation of network management tools should be
consistent with – and support – the enterprise’s IT governance standard,
for example the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) or the Control Objectives
for Information and related Technology (COBIT), a
standard for evidencing Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

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About the Author

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Kirk Woodward is a technical writer and project
manager. Mr. Woodward’s fields of expertise also include enterprise
software, hardware systems, and the use of internet resources.

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