When it comes to addressing network problems, are you reactive or proactive? Do you wait until the alarm sounds before taking action or do you monitor your systems closely, doing whatever it takes to prevent system downtime and lost productivity?
Today, most business’s networks are expanding. There’s more data to manage, more pieces of software to maintain, more locations and devices to monitor, and more users with higher expectations for how, when, and where they can access their tools. These factors, among others, make it challenging to stay on top of day-to-day network and application monitoring—especially if your IT team is lean, and even if you’re running a mostly cloud-based environment.
At a glance, this is why more businesses are shifting from a break/fix model to remote network monitoring. Let’s take a closer look:
1. Your Business is Growing
If your business is adopting new software, expanding to new locations, embracing mobility and remote working, partnering with more vendors, and/or serving more customers who need to tap into your network, you can see the stakes rising. With your IT team spread across different offices and potentially working in different time zones, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to keep their fingers on the proverbial pulse. There’s more potential to find cracks in the traditional or manual system monitoring process.
And let’s face it: as you grow, you have more to lose. Remote monitoring software supercharges your efforts by automatically and continually “watching” your network and alerting your team to potential problems so they can take immediate action—no matter where they’re located—before any damage is done. Not only does this limit or completely eliminate troubleshooting downtime, but it’s much safer for your data, which has a greater chance of being compromised when systems are down.
2. Your Team Demands Flexibility
Most employees today demand anytime/anywhere access to their business software and tools in order to stay productive on-the-go, and your IT staff is no exception. (Discover the 5 Mobile Office Productivity Statistics You Need to Know). Remote monitoring software enables them to work offsite—from home, the airport, or coffee shop—and obtain real-time status of your network servers, workstations, and devices and insight into any problems that might arise.
What’s more, they can connect remotely to machines that are experiencing an issue and even schedule automated tasks (like clean-up of users’ temp files) to keep things running while they’re away from the physical work location.
3. You Can’t Afford Unexpected Network Downtime
There are almost limitless reasons for networks to go down: too many people trying to access information from the network at the same time, power fluctuations, a drive running out of space, hardware failures, a failed software patch…and troubleshooting an issue can take valuable time away from everyone. Not only do performance issues slow you down, but they irritate employees (and customers!) and can lead to revenue loss and a PR nightmare.
It’s that simple. With remote network monitoring software and management services, downtime is virtually eliminated. You’re able to stay in front of potential issues and get them solved before systems (and users) lose the ability to perform. Read The Importance of Employing a Remote Monitoring Solution on Your Network for a cautionary tale—a real-life customer example—of why it’s critical to invest in tools that enable you to be proactive.
Contact us to learn more about remote monitoring software and how we can help manage your infrastructure and network needs.
Additional Resources: Remote Network Monitoring
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