Network Management Roles In Growth Information Technology Essay

The arrival of computer technology these days are contributed to the growth of many business corporations, especially computer networking (Vivki, 2010). There are three main goal of network management is to make operations more efficient, and operators more productive (Alexander, 2007). There is cost, quality and revenue (Alexander, 2007). I will explain these goals further by using examples and information I have found. I will discuss the essay question by using some real life examples of company experiences that was affected by network management, for example how the company gained benefits from network management and how the company loss revenue for having a bad network management and so on. I also will describe some network management tools that help company to gain different benefits and reduce cost. According to research, if network management is managed properly, it can be a positive business asset (Jason, 2010).

Computer network creates an easy and convenient way for employees and clients to communicate and make transaction between each other (Vicki, 2010). Based on research, with the growth of the internet with/and good network management skills by the network administrator, the corporation will have higher chance to success or grow (Vivki, 2010). Based on the research I have done, I agree that network management do play an important key role in corporate business growth, and I realized that no business can do or success without technologies in this modern time, particularly computer network and systems. Small and large companies are depending a lot on computer network communication to get things done faster and more reliable compared to the traditional method of doing things. As the rate of technology keeps changing in the business field, we will definitely see more changes after the next three years than we have seen in the past ten.

It is also impossible for organisations to grow if they have poor-performance of network management or poor-maintenance skills as well. In the real situation, every business is aimed towards growth, and network support is standing at the middle of those many factors leading to the progress of a business (Bryan, 2009). Today, network management has become a compulsory Information Technology(IT) system or department for every business corporation, because computer field, including network management as well, has expanded a great deal for organisations. This means that businesses will surely gain advantage or benefit from installing and understanding the latest network technology (Bryan, 2009). As IT teams has played an important role in an organisation, it is essential for the company’s manager to choose the IT firm that could gives them reliable performance and ensure of quick response time in maintaining, installing and repairing networks and servers. Based on research, if a company has an efficient computer network, most probably it will raise business outcome, reduce unnecessary costs and increase business efficiency, this makes network installation and computer maintenance as the two most important aspect of business growth (Bryan, 2009). I will explain more about the benefits of network management in the next paragraph.

In today’s networked economy, understanding the business impact of network management is important, because most of the business revenue is relying on network-based system whose availability and performance are critical to survival and business growth (Stephen, 2003). The company network is like the backbone of the company, customers use the network service to access into goods and services that is provided by the company, or whether for Internet or databases access, billing enquiry, or other business practices (Stephen, 2003). The entire company business will suffer if the network fails or network does not manage properly by the network manager, because customers and employees cannot communicate, they cannot access needed information, or employees are not able to perform printing, and email services; this will causes productivity suffer and a stop to revenue flowing, for example, if a network failure affects the email services/server. Today, most people are using email services to deliver messages instead of using hand written paper. If the company’s network device fails, employees are not able to deliver email and part of the business will be terminated. Customers are affected, employee productivity slows down, the reputation of the corporation will decrease, and revenue will be dried up (Stephen, 2003). In my opinion, this is the reason why network must be properly managed and always need a redundancy for any obstacles that may bring in the future. The information about the network failure that was mentioned just now, the network manager should be responsible for this case because it is network managers’ job to maintain good network performance. Network Managers must ensure he could minimize the downtime and remain the network performance speed, so most of the network managers will use network management systems or tools together to manage the network. These systems also allow businesses to operate more efficiently, low costs, and prevent revenue loss. I will provide some examples of companies to prove the usage of these systems.

After explaining of how network management affects business growth, I will now provide some white/research paper, books, and internet resources discussion that I have found to explain the real-world situation of organisations that is affected by the network management. This is to prove that network management does play an important role in business growth.

As networks grow larger, they will become less manageable (Douglas, 2007). In fact, we are already reaching the limits of network sizes that we can handle with the current tools (Douglas, 2007). In addition, network management helps to keep networking cost and operational cost under control. Businesses increasingly rely on data networks as the primary link to customers and other businesses. One particular aspect of network management has become inextricably linked to the bottom line: network downtime. For many businesses, the losses that occur while a network is down, brings the business to staggering results. Ironically, as businesses grow and its network size increases, the time required to diagnose and repair increases rapidly, businesses that are most successful bears the most risk (Douglas, 2007). These days many network companies, like Dell Corporation, provides network management tool. Dell creates a network management software/tool to provide easier methods to manage their own network to reduce cost, because it is expensive to hire a network management professional to manage a companies’ network, and by reducing the cost, the company could use the money to invest into other field (Stephen, 2003). The system will provide a so called early warning system for network outages or failure to warn users that problems are coming soon. The software name is called Dell OpenManage. The software is designed to meet the cost and feature requirements of Small, Medium Enterprises, and it also save time and money (Stephen, 2003). As I mentioned earlier, these tools are created for companies to manage their network with some easy features and to support their business objectives and brings revenues while reducing costs by helping IT administrators to manage the companies’ network in less time and in a more efficient manner. Furthermore, I will provide another example.

In the white paper from Solarwinds, network management and monitoring software is on demand for every company across all industries (Mike, 2010). As a result, some companies are experiencing strong Return on Investment(ROI) from a good network management because of the amazing data analysis and reporting that relates to business processes, and it also benefits like consolidated hardware usage, reduced man-hours and reliable network uptime (Mike, 2010). In my opinion, there is no excuse for companies to not be careful about their investment on network and Information Technology in these days or else, they might lose revenue at the end of the day. One way to reduce cost for network management is to use a network management tool. The example below shows how a team has gained benefits from a network management tool.

I would like to give another example of a network management tool that brings benefits to a team in an organisation -“The Orion”. “The Orion” brings benefits to a senior network engineer in California by providing good network management service with a low cost while he is doing a project with his team members. He mentioned that Orion network management monitor tool helps him and his team increase data capture and report, and offer an easy business root analysis company-wide (Mike, 2010). Orion provides them with system performance insight and it analysis mission-critical business applications, as the result that was calculated, they are able to save $29k on equipment replacement costs over two years (Mike, 2010). Orion’s automated nature and ability to approach network issues proactively saved the company about $50k in its overall IT budget in 2008 and $80k in 2009, rather than employing help desk workers, a system admin and a network engineer to manually monitor the network, the product can do the job of several individuals (Mike, 2010). From saving all the money from 2008 to 2009, the company is able to use that money to support into other fields. From my point of view, the company might need to spend $50K to $80K or more to support network management to achieve their needs if they work the plan without a network management tool. Based on the conclusion of the white paper, they conclude that network management can provide tangible results for the company; not only helping to make their job easier but also easing issues across the entire company (Mike, 2010). In my opinion, I totally agree with the explanation shows just now that network management plays an important role in corporate business growth.

Based on a white paper, reducing or preventing network downtime is the biggest factor in preserving revenue, maintaining customer satisfaction, maintain the company’s reputation and maximizing productivity (Jason, 2009). A company stated that SME companies experience an average of nearly 140 hours of downtime every year. The study concluded that the total impact of an outage was 55% lost revenue and 45% lost productivity (Jason, 2009). The total amount of downtime reduction can deliver significant business savings, one group of SME’s in the study experienced an average loss of $70,000per downtime hour (Jason, 2009). Further analysis found other studies into the causes of downtime concluded that 45% of all network outages are caused by configuration error or network management, sometimes referred to as soft issues. In my opinion, the network is at the core of the activities and must operate efficiently and reliably. They also concluded and confirmed that without network management, companies are vulnerable to network performance and availability problem. According to research, when changes to the network are not carefully planned and implemented, it compounds the difficulty of maintaining the network in a cost-effective way (Jason, 2009).

Based on research, top managements support is critical for projects to be successful (Teresa, 2005). However, in large organisations spread across the globe, it is easy to lose sight of this factor. CIO reports the case of a company that lost 50% of its market capitalization due to top management failure to implement a global information technology strategy (Teresa, 2005). The failure cost the company approximately $500 million dollars (Teresa, 2005). There were several IT issues that were the cause for a lot of agony. First, customer queries on order status took several days to respond. Second, orders from a single customer with locations in different countries were processed by separate systems (Teresa, 2005). This created unnecessary statements to the customer. In my opinion, I conclude that most of the problems are affected by bad network management, for example the second issue about customer locations in different countries been processed by separate system, should blame on network manager for not having good network management plan.

In conclusion, I have explained three network management goals that effect the business growth by using examples of companies and information I have found. I have used some real life company experiences that were affected by network management. And I have explained how network management tool will provide different benefits to a company in certain situations. Based on every research and information I have found, I concluded that network management play such a key role in generating revenue and keeping employees productive and customers happy, we need to understand the importance of network management and the role it plays in maintaining network performance, availability, and customer satisfaction. In return, having an effective network management working in an organisation should provide a excellent performance, and governance, to ensure the ongoing success of the communications infrastructure in support of, and aligned to, organisational goal (Jason, 2010).

Bibliography

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Dawson, R. Living Networks: Leading Your Company, Customers, and Partners in the Hyper-Connected Economy. Prentice-Hall Inc, 2003.