Your corporate computer network is the soul of your business and should be looked after as such.
For most of us the corporate network is still a magic box that holds our work for us. The core of it sits in the corner of some dark closet where it serves up our Word docs, Spreadsheets, Email and our much needed internet access among other things.
Being the mysterious oracle that it is we tend to believe it will always be there when we need it…until it isn’t. And when it’s “Down” we look around and ask the obvious questions. “What’s going on with the computer? or How come I can’t get to anything?”
Most network issues are easily and quickly solved by a simple reboot of the server, network switch or router. But what about the big crashes? The ones that cause the network to go down and stay down for hours and sometimes days? Such things happen that could have been avoided if only we could have seen what problems were brewing inside that magic box that holds our dear oracle.
If you had a way to monitor “24/7/365” the health of your network and in doing so could help to avoid downtime by alerting you to the potential problem before it crashed your network, what do you think it would cost you versus what it could save you in bottom line dollars?
Remote Network Monitoring to the Rescue.
The answer is pennies compared to the thousands of dollars it can save your company in revenue due to downtime or lost data. Outsourced remote network monitoring services can be brought in for as little as $200-$300 per month or $7.00-$11.00 per day. That’s 24/7/365 monitoring and reporting. A well managed remote network monitoring software will watch and report on everything from printer toner levels and desktop hard drive performance to Exchange Server health. It’s amazing what it can track!
Spiceworks is my favorite remote network monitoring software and we have it installed at all of our client sites. It is actually a prerequisite to us entering into an I.T. support services agreement. We rely heavily on its ability to watch for and discover hundreds of potential hardware and software problems long before they affect the network’s health and performance. But, it takes some configuration and is not for the faint of heart to manage. It, like all similar network monitoring apps, is designed for I.T. professionals to manage networks making it a hard read for non techies. Oh…and did mention?…Its free. Yep FREE. For a list of Spiceworks’ features click here.
If you have in-house I.T. or are outsourcing it, you should make sure they are including remote network monitoring as part of their list of services. If they don’t, then demand that they do or make a switch to who does. Network problems are inevitable but most are avoidable. You need to suffer through a catastrophic crash because a potentially large network problem begins to manifest within your network.
Take a proactive approach to protecting the backbone of your business because like it or not your business counts on that magical box in more ways than any of us like to admit.