This weekend, I was researching some of the newest technology trends including virtualization and cloud computing and ran across an article "Will the Cloud Confuse Network Management?" which rekindled an IT debate that has gone on for years or decades. The author contends that traditional network management systems and tools focus too much on measuring and monitoring technical metrics which don't provide a complete end-to-end view of service quality and suggests organizations should focus more on implementing a Business Service Management (BSM) to get a better view of overall service performance.
Over the past few years, the majority of press and publicity tends to focus on an end-to-end approach like BSM as the latest and greatest technological advancement and puts traditional network management systems in the "old school" bucket that has been around for decades and doesn't meet the requirements of new advanced technologies. When it comes to improving overall service quality, this isn't an "either-or" discussion. It is important that organizations receive a high-level view of end-to-end service quality, but it is equally as critical to be able to drill down and solve issues quickly and correctly, which is the primary focus of the network management tools.
The article reminded me of a situation I heard from an enterprise the other month. They bought this great system that measures overall application quality from an end-to-end point of view and thought it would replace all of the other old tools. A few weeks later, the system showed a performance issue and even eliminated the application and servers from the equation and isolated the problem to the network. However, the system just said the problem was isolated to the network, it didn't show what the actual issue was for the device/link/configuration, exactly which device was causing the problem, and most importantly, how to solve the issue. The end response was "It was great the system isolated where the problem was but it didn't help us fix the problem when you consider all of the moving parts within the network." The IT organization realized they overlooked the importance of managing the network infrastructure on a day-to-day basis.
That example just highlights the importance of having a complete view of performance across the network infrastructure and its impact on overall service quality. The best organizations I deal with have a combination of views and systems to monitor, measure and troubleshoot their unique environments. The may implement a BSM or CMDB architecture as on overlay or umbrella solution to receive an end-to-end view, but rely on network management tools and systems to manage the individual, unique and complex requirements associated with the network architecture.
So while it even to focus on the "cool and hot" technologies, it's important to understand the impact on the network infrastructure and the new requirements needed to implement these new technologies successfully.