Network monitoring given cold shoulder

NEWS Senior managers in the UK are failing to grasp the importance of network monitoring, according to a report out this week. The survey - conducted by Hi-Tech Marketing - discovered that over three quarters of the 50 IT and network managers questioned believe that their companies do not consider network monitoring mission-critical. The majority of managers described monitoring as a "hot topic", but complained they were not getting the financial support they needed from their bosses. Peter Williams, sales support manager at Datarange, explained that companies with a sizeable network will already have a management system in place. He said: "They need to get rid of it and reset the network with a platform that will allow them to be more pro-active and let the administrator pre-empt what needs to be done." Replacing the current system with a new one will be an obvious threat to jobs. But Williams believes that this sort of investment will allow managers to see where the most activity is happening on their network. "This kind of information will allow the network to cater for what is exactly needed," he said. "A report of this kind should help persuade the people with their fingers on the purse strings cough up the money required." With networks continuously expanding and becoming more complex, the survey shows one third of respondents consider their existing network monitoring services as "very poor". Systems integrator Datarange commissioned the survey.