As companies adopt SD-WAN technologies, they increasingly rely on network services outside their control. The new reality is that network operations need end-to-end visibility on the network performance whether or not they own the infrastructure. In a 2023 EMA survey, 63% of companies report using the Internet as their primary WAN connectivity.

As organizations increase their dependence on the cloud, they also add pressure on their wide area network (WAN) infrastructure. Software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) comes as an ideally suited solution for implementing distributed networking over commercially available Internet access.

For decades, the data center has been the core hub for applications, routing, firewalls, processing, and more. Now, the enterprise is highly reliant upon distributed workplaces, cloud-based resources, and third-party-operated networks. In this context, modern networks encompass more diverse infrastructures, requiring IT organizations to contend with the added demands of managing and maintaining these expanding environments.

For IT operations teams, syslog messages continue to be a vital source of intelligence for network events. By tapping into this data, teams can manage their environments more efficiently and effectively. In this post, we offer an introduction to syslog, and examine how DX NetOps enables teams to fully harness the intelligence from this data.

Regardless of which sandwich is their favorite, your customers and end users are highly reliant upon your organization’s network-powered business services. When issues arise that affect the delivery of these services, fast and effective response is a must. The costs of performance issues and downtime can mount by the minute, so sooner is definitely better than later.

With increasingly large, complex, and dynamic network environments, operational consistency is essential for network teams to effectively mitigate disruptions, improve performance, and ensure optimal resource utilization. However, many organizations still struggle to establish an effective mix of people, processes, and technology.

If you’re an IT or network operations leader, consider the following questions: Network operators know how frustrating it can be to constantly contend with pressing network issues and outages. These team members spend copious amounts of time putting out fires, rather than focusing on efforts like making plans to optimize the network. These teams have to deal with high volumes of false alarms as well real incidents that affect network performance and availability and the user experience.

Network operations teams face many challenges in ensuring optimal network performance and availability in today's complex and dynamic environments. These teams need to monitor and manage multiple devices, technologies, and vendors, while contending with huge amounts of data and significant complexity. How can your teams get a clear and accurate picture of your network performance and health?

I love cooking. I find it to be a very creative outlet. I enjoy being able to combine various ingredients, which each add a specific flavor, color, and even texture. When these ingredients come together in a complementary way, it can result in a tasty, satisfying dining experience. If you think about it, network operations troubleshooting is not much different. Isolated data sets from various siloed tool sets are like the separate ingredients in a recipe.

In today's cloud-centric IT landscape, cloud access security brokers (CASBs) have become pivotal in managing and securing cloud applications. CASBs act as gatekeepers, enabling enterprises to extend their security policies beyond their own infrastructure and into the cloud. CASBs work by performing various kinds of network monitoring—they track user activities, data movement, and application usage within cloud environments.