A few years back, an enterprise network meant nothing more than a collection of a few computers and servers connected with wires, switches, and routers. In consequence, network management didn’t go beyond looking at LAN, WAN and the associated equipment. Managing a network was confined to making sure that the ‘network’ was up and running. But today as the networks evolve to become the backbone of enterprises, network management has gained a completely new dimension. The concept now accommodates managing and understanding the whole underlying infrastructure, which include servers, storage, security, databases, and umpteen applications.

“Network management has become more than just pinging routers and checking device availability. Today, it is more about getting a handle on ensuring secure and reliable service delivery across distributed networks,” says Evelyn Hubbert, Senior Analyst at Forrester.

In India, the network management market is gradually maturing to have room for more players, technologies, and concepts. In its recently published report titled India Domestic IT/ITES Market: Top 10 Predictions for 2009, IDC reveals the increasing need for better management of IT infrastructure for their most optimal deployment and use in achieving enterprise business goals. The research agency forecasts that the Indian network management market would grow at a rapid pace of 23 percent in 2009, which is higher than the average growth of the combined domestic IT/ITES market (predicted to grow at a slower 13.4 percent in 2009). IDC further predicts that the system and network management software would grow at a rate of 19 percent, yet again outpacing the average growth of the IT/ITES market.

Ram C Mohan, Senior VP and Head of Infrastructure Management and Tech Support, MindTree Consulting, opines, “Today, enterprises in India are looking at having proactive monitoring and management capabilities to avoid any problems that may lead to network downtime. The biggest challenge for the enterprises now is to choose the right network management tool or solution as the market now provides more options.” As a result, say industry experts, network management has evolved from being a device-centric product to an application suite or solution. “Network management applications need to deliver advanced tools for widespread configuring, monitoring, troubleshooting, and network diagnostics to help manage the complexities of a converged network,” explains Prem Nithin, Senior Technical Consultant, Cisco, India & SAARC.

Innovation Drivers
Over the years, a number of technology innovations and customer demands have driven the need for more efficient networks. The same innovations and demands have catalyzed the need for more productive network management tools as well. And with the increasing use of VoIP, streaming videos, teleconferencing, etc, on company networks, the need for special network management tools is also increasing. Besides, virtualization and SOA are also making companies to look at network management in a completely different way.

“For example, a virtualization product comes with its own management capabilities. The existing network management tool should work seamlessly with it,” explains Mohan of MindTree. Adds Shekar Nair, CEO, Elina Networks, “Virtualized environment means more applications, more network interfaces, and more data on the same physical device. This calls for intelligent management software and new ways of presenting what is managed.”

“As a major chunk of the enterprises today are using products and tools from various vendors, getting a unified view of this multi-vendor, multi-technology network with an ability to drill down into the details of every system, link, and endpoint is the first and foremost priority for customers,” says Rajendra Dhavale, Director, Technical Sales, CA. “Besides, there is a need to proactively address issues before they affect users and also to get into the root cause of problems and the impact on specific users, applications, and services,” he adds.

As security has become a major concern, companies need a secure network to maintain the server traffic from their internal as well as external sources. As a result, a network management solution comes integrated with adequate security features. To add to this, the various regulatory compliances for safe and secure data transmission are also driving the network management market forward.

The need for centralized monitoring is growing like never before and companies are also looking at ‘remote network management’ as an option. All these and many more factors are taking the network management market to new heights.

An Ever-growing Industry

An Ever-growing Industry

PacketTrap Networks, a US-based company with an office in Kolkata as well, revealed the findings of its recent survey among 800 network engineers and other IT professionals who perform network management duties inside companies with more than 100 employees. The discoveries were rather interesting. 49 percent of respondents said they did not have a comprehensive network management system in place. Out of this 49 percent, over 50 percent said they use a combination of point products to manage their networks. Further, of the 49 percent, 75 percent said they would like to implement a network management system over the next 12 months.

On one hand, it indicates that there is a huge untapped market whereas on the other hand, it draws our attention towards the fact that many users have actually deployed some ‘bits and pieces’ of network management but are unable to find an affordable full-grown solutions that meets all their needs. This exactly is the reason why the network management market is growing wider to accommodate more products and options.

Firstly, the traditional network management system vendors are seeing an increased need for their offerings. “We see greater than before demand from verticals like BFSI, telecom, ITES, manufacturing, government, and emerging markets like healthcare, retail, etc,” says Dhavale of CA. “The network management software market in India for 2009 is estimated at about $14 million. Major verticals driving demand are government, telecom, and MNCs. These cover a huge slice of the market,” adds Ajay Alur, National Manager - BTO Software, HP India.

At the same time, there is a mounting perception that these ‘heavy’ network management systems (NMS) are an overkill in terms of features. “Most of the time, choosing an NMS is like buying a camcorder. It comes with numerous features, but at the end of the day, you use only three buttons. So, a customer needs to analyze and understand whether he actually needs to spend on such a compound platform or not,” says Mohan of MindTree.

Conclusively, no enterprise would want to invest in a solution that does not provide the expected returns, especially since it’s not only the large enterprises that need network management capabilities today. Even small and medium sized companies have comprehensive network infrastructure and are thus looking for affordable network management solutions.

Nevertheless, the ‘old-fashioned’ point products that provide a stand-alone solution to a single problem do not have much attraction. The trend is towards developing tools that are easy to integrate with the existing network management tools or other applications running on the network. All these factors have led to the rise of a new set of solutions — open source-based integrated network management tools that can be customized according to specific requirements of a business.

Today, a lot of open source network management solutions are gaining ground as they offer high-quality functionalities at affordable prices. These solutions are also highly customizable and easy to deploy.

There’re heaps of choices on hand for customers and the future is going to be for those network management solutions that will provide a ‘hook’ to the ever-increasing applications running on the network. “It is important to look at a network management solution that is part of an overall enterprise IT management suite,” concludes Dhavale of CA.

Outsourcing: A New Source of Business
Sliding economy, at times, boosts up certain things. Outsourcing is one among them. When it comes to outsourcing network management, enterprises have all the reasons to do so. Apart from cutting down on cost, they want to discard the difficulties and risks involved with managing a network internally. SMBs, particularly, are looking at outsourcing their network management in the coming days.

However, bigger enterprises still prefer to have in-house network management teams because for them network continuity directly converts into business continuity. “We do see a growing interest for outsourced network management. There are enterprises that outsource the management activities mainly to cut cost and for faster ROI. The difficulty in hiring the right expertise in managing networks is also a reason for outsourcing. However, there are also enterprises for which the managed resources are critical for the core business and they do tend to build internal infrastructure and resources to have total control,” says Shekar Nair, CEO, Elina Networks.
This trend opens up new opportunities in the market. “We do agree that some of the SMBs are looking at outsourcing their network management activities and we do see opportunities with managed services providers, NOCs, and facility management vendors who need the right set of tools to monitor and manage the networks of such SMEs,” says Rajendra Dhavale, Director, Technical Sales,CA.

Forrester Research has predicted that by 2010, 60 percent of organizations worldwide will outsource major parts of their network management because of the difficulties and risks involved with managing services internally. The trend is not different in India as well. As there is a growing demand for remote monitoring, Indian enterprises do prefer to have network services hosted by third parties. This has in fact triggered the entry of new players into the market, apart from the traditionally dominant players. Now, there is a host of domestic systems integrators, hosting service providers, and facilities management companies who are actively looking at this fresh prospect.