ChannelWorld

The world’s highest ATM is situated in a little village called Thegu on the Himalayas at 13,200 feet on the Indo-Tibetan border. While the bank is increasing its reach, questions to keep in mind is how profitable this ATM will prove to be in the bank’s overall network? How does the bank monitor usage ensuring 24X7 uptime? How does the bank ensure profitability without compromising on uptime of the facility?

The possible solution the bank could look at implementing and which is offered by most Management Services Providers today is Remote Network Management (RNM). RNM means central control of your network from anywhere. A system so designed and implemented, allows your entire network to be monitored centrally from either within the office or off-site. Remote Network Management works as an advanced alert mechanism that can provide early warning signals enabling preventive action, thus increasing efficiency and decreasing downtime in a company’s network system.

For network management, connectivity is established with the customers’ central site. This may be a dedicated leased line, dial up or a VSAT connection. Today's business climate requires virtually continuous access to important corporate data, from anyplace using diverse platforms. For this very reason organizations choose a combination of more than one type of connection for remote monitoring. Remote Network Management over the internet however provides various benefits like flexibility of time and place, centralized control, scalability of operations and infrastructure and an easy to use graphical user interface.

Monitoring the health of the network generally highlights the flow of data on the network and hence the bandwidth requirements. However network performance does not solely depend on bandwidth. Keeping tabs on the support infrastructure is essential to bring about a significant improvement in performance and uptime of the network.

According to IDC estimates, more than 85 percent of infrastructure components can be managed from a central location. These components encompass servers, databases, networks, security, applications and electronic transactions. While the monitoring extends to the most essential aspects of a network, what is most often ignored is the power that keeps the network alive.

Today while reliable power backups are put in place to ensure uptime, what is overlooked or taken for granted is the need to exercise control over the power supply. And why is this element of monitoring and management essential? Take for example a situation where the mains power is currently down in a certain site and the UPS is onto battery backup, if there is no monitoring, this situation will not be known to the central facility and will not work as an early warning mechanism. In such situations, if the DG set is not up, after the battery backup is exhausted, the whole facility will go down grinding the application to a complete halt.

So how does remote power management work? The cutting edge UPSs manufactured today enable remote monitoring through modem connection and even allow web based monitoring through Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Such UPSs are network intelligent and self-diagnostic- notifying audio and visual alarm indications via email / SMS / paging to the service personnel / Network Operations Centre (NOC), thus exploiting the internet to the fullest. At the NOC the service personnel are able to view the status of power deployed to the infrastructure at various locations. The service personnel only need to log on to the internet through a secure company website and monitor the power usage on a web console in real-time. This real-time visibility helps the personnel make informed decisions.

As companies begin to roll out their networks in locations as remote as Leh and Ladakh, the cost of maintaining these sites assumes paramount significance. Enabling companies to trim operational expenses by 40-60 percent, cost cutting is one of the major cited benefits of remote infrastructure network management. Particularly in India with the growing network of banks, ATMs and contact centers panning many far flung areas, it makes economical sense to monitor the network from one point. Initially most corporates would not look at remote network management of far flung areas due to inherent poor power conditions. However it is precisely this bad power infrastructure that should compel them to look at remote management more seriously if they have to be competitive in the long run.

The cost benefits of remote network management are not limited to reduced manpower costs and efficiency led gains. Online reporting tools provide real-time control and visibility into power usage by the infrastructure. This real-time and historical trend-reporting aids in power capacity planning and understanding where future investments need to be made to keep operations functioning smoothly and improve current service levels. A well executed remote network management solution allows companies to create a 24x7 uptime solution and not end up tackling a downtime situation.

With inputs from Jitendra Sonar, Senior Product Manager-Monitoring, Emerson Network Power.