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 NEWSNetwork management on the cheap By Mike Avery , For InfoWorld Test Center April 7, 2000 AS NETWORKS GROW and the numbers of users and devices increase, maintaining them is ever more time-consuming and costly. One solution to this expansion is to install a network management system large enough to surround the enterprise. But whenever people talk about large-scale network management tools, they inevitably mention dollar amounts that have lots of zeros behind them. It appears to most people that for a network management tool to be very useful, it has to be wide-ranging and expensive.
There are several good arguments for taking the low-cost road. To start with, if you ask a dozen people what network management is, you'll get more than a dozen answers. The term "network management" covers a lot of territory. If you're the network manager, whatever happens on the network is your fault. In many shops, desktop control, software distribution, server maintenance, router configuration, network and server performance, change management, cable plant integrity, and security get lumped together. Appropriately, there are a lot of network management tools available, and they cover a lot of territory. Sometimes this causes members of upper management to think that every time they turn around, you want a new toy ... er, tool. After a while, convincing management to sign a check for yet another tool can be difficult. The personal touch So why are small network management packages useful to even large companies? These offerings are more focused on an issue, and they are usually a pure expression of one person's philosophy of how to handle the problem. The big packages all too often lack the character, and even the usefulness, of a more focused tool. The personal touch extends into support. With most of the major, big packages, support is an extra cost, and support is very impersonal. With most of the packages mentioned in this analysis, support is included in the purchase price. When you do have trouble, you'll often be speaking to the programmers of the software. They often own the companies, are determined to help you, and fixes are usually only hours away. Moreover, the inexpensive packages -- and the companies behind them -- deliver a level of flexibility that the larger packages and companies often can't or won't match. For example, Birch Grove's ScreenPass extends the Windows screen saver by adding a network password that acts as an override to the screensaver password. It can also enforce the presence of a password on the screensaver, which is a security enhancement. The benefit is obvious: the network administrator override allows staffers to get past the screen saver and do their jobs in one trip. Company changes, upgrades A recurring fear on the part of network managers and their upper management is that the company they bought the software from might go out of business. All the companies mentioned in this analysis have been in business for a number of years, and they seem to be going strong. If the product requires ongoing support, such as an anti-virus package, then this question is a serious one. If the product is working well, as all of the programs discussed here do, then there is no real problem. Perhaps when you upgrade your operating system, you'll have to purchase a new product, but we all know that's often part of the cost of upgrading OSes. The perception that small companies come and go, leaving their customers orphaned, is one concern. Of course, large companies can drop products from their offerings with as little notice as small ones; just ask users of 3Com switches, Lotus Symphony, or DaVinci mail. Those products suffered sudden market strategy changes, leaving users in the lurch. It's not just the small companies that suddenly stop supporting their products; larger companies are often guilty as well. Because of the complexity of network management, not even a large suite will meet all of a network manager's needs. A major reason for using an inexpensive tool is to fill in, at an affordable price, the holes left by another product. A suite might cover most of your requirements except protocol analysis, and a product like Aggroup's EtherPeek can nicely fill that need. Network monitoring help Even the best network monitoring tools are useless if they can't connect to the network they are supposed to monitor. Whether they can't connect because of a hardware problem, a software upgrade gone wrong, or unexpected cable problems causing signal fade, your centralized monitor sometimes can't see a remote site. An inexpensive tool such as IpSwitch's WhatsUp will let a junior technician on site diagnose a network for approximately $99. Large network monitoring packages are often priced according to the number of nodes they monitor, which could make helping your clients or partners with their network problems an expensive proposition. Once again, WhatsUp can help, as it is sold per computer using the product, not per computer it monitors. So, helping a client or partner doesn't incur a long-term or even significant expense. Some companies just don't want to spend the money required to buy a large network management package. They view the network as an expense, not a profit center, and so minimizing cost is essential. A package such as IpSwitch's WhatsUp Gold can handle many network monitoring chores. Although WhatsUp Gold isn't as glitzy as the heavyweight packages, it can address the needs of many companies, and at a cost of about $695, which is 10 to 20 times less than those heavier packages. Major time-savers Other specialized packages can save the network manager time that could be better spent making progress instead of fighting fires. Many NT managers find they spend time shuffling from one management utility to another. Adkins Resource's Hyena consolidates the clutter of NT management programs, allowing the network manager to administer many NT servers from a single console, including adding, modifying, and deleting users; changing account passwords on a number of servers; starting, stopping, or checking on services on different servers; allowing easy access to hidden shares, and much more. And all this for a measly $270 per administrator in an enterprise. Certainly, there are capabilities the heavyweight management suites will have that the less expensive products will not. The low-cost products do not integrate with help desk software, and there is precious little artificial intelligence in these packages to help you unravel your network problems. Nevertheless, low-cost network management products deliver an amazing bang for the buck, and may well deserve a place in your management toolkit. Mike Avery (mavery@mail.otherwhen.com) has designed and supported networks of all sizes.
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