Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

We recently took a look at some of the repercussions of the global pandemic and how it has caused a dramatic shift in the way we work. In the second instalment of our predictions for 2021, we explore some of the longer term trends that will be top of mind for enterprises this year…

IT software technology is advancing at a rapid pace, with the internet of things, cloud, automation, and machine learning making networks and network management activities more complex and interdependent. As networks grow and become more complicated, it’s increasingly important for administrators to have access to the tools necessary to conduct essential network monitoring and management operations. One such tool is a network mapper, also known as a network topology mapper.

To help users troubleshoot intermittent network issues anywhere along their network, Obkio created Triggered Traceroutes. Triggered Traceroutes are a unique type of traceroute that is only triggered when a network event occurs.

With HAProxy, you can implement a circuit breaker to protect services from widespread failure. Martin Fowler, who is famous for being one of the Gang of Four authors who wrote Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, hosts a website where he catalogues software design patterns. He defines the Circuit Breaker pattern like this: The basic idea behind the circuit breaker is very simple. You wrap a protected function call in a circuit breaker object, which monitors for failures.

If this past year has proven anything, it’s that making long-term predictions can be a challenge. After all, who would have predicted a large portion of the workforce would be fully remote and we’d be staying six feet away from each other in grocery stores for most of the year? Even though a curveball like COVID-19 could happen at any time, it doesn’t mean we should completely stop forecasting what things will look like in IT and beyond over the coming months.

As business-critical applications increasingly rely on network services, even a minor change in network usage can impact network performance and reliability, thereby also impacting business functions and network maintenance costs. sFlow (short for “sampled flow”) — by providing unprecedented visibility into network usage and active routes of high-speed and complex networks — delivers the data needed to effectively control and manage network usage.

Enterprise operations are becoming increasingly complex ecosystems, involving new technologies, larger supply chains and more partners than ever before. In a new report called ‘Building Tomorrow’s Interconnected Enterprise’, Console Connect and Applied Futurist Tom Cheesewright present a new interconnected enterprise model for the ecosystem-based future, where successful organisations will operate as a complex web of interactions rather than a monolithic whole.

At the shadow of the widespread IP addresses, MAC addresses say even more about our devices than its more popular sister. As a kind of “identity document for network devices”, a MAC address informs us about “who is who” when connecting to a network. Of course, remember that the one called “MAC” has nothing to do with Macintosh computers. In fact, you can find it on devices of any brand.