rightsizing your network performance management solution...

IT & DATA MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTING

Rightsizing Your Network Performance Management Solution: Four Case StudiesAn ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES® (EMA™) White Paper Prepared for SolarWinds®

June 2013

Table of Contents

©2013 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com

Rightsizing Your Network Performance Management Solution: Four Case Studies

Executive Summary .......................................................................................................................... 1

Essentials for Cost-Effective Network Performance Monitoring ....................................................... 1

The SolarWinds Solution .................................................................................................................. 2

Case Studies ...................................................................................................................................... 2

Cloud Services Provider ............................................................................................................... 3

Financial Institution .................................................................................................................... 4

Healthcare Organization ............................................................................................................. 5

International Airline ................................................................................................................... 6

EMA Perspective ............................................................................................................................... 7

About SolarWinds ............................................................................................................................ 7

http://www.enterprisemanagement.com

©2013 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com1


Executive SummaryAs networking has matured, the focus of engineering and operations has shifted from connectivity to optimization, and from availability to performance. Rising interest in understanding the broader operations picture, spanning network, servers, and applications, has also transformed the demands of management tools and technologies. In parallel, there has been no break in the long-standing mantra for doing more with less – both in terms of monetary and human resources. These shifts are prompting reevaluations of monitoring strategies and products in organizations of all sizes, but particularly in larger enterprises, where effective management can have a dramatic impact on IT’s ability to fulfill its critical business-enabling role. This ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES® (EMA™) white paper examines the importance of finding extensible, cost-effective network performance management solutions that fit deployment needs beyond the NOC to extend value into the datacenter, and thus deliver greater Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) benefits. Included is a detailed analysis of four use case examples from organizations that have deployed SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) to monitor and manage their production environments based on such goals and objectives.

Essentials for Cost-Effective Network Performance MonitoringAll too often, network performance management products are purchased based on needs and perceptions at a fixed point in time, only to find that the solutions do not keep pace with the changes in the managed environment and in the organizations they serve. In interviews with networking and operations pros, EMA regularly hears stories about how monitoring needs change over time. Many teams have at some point bought and deployed a traditional enterprise-class network or systems monitoring platform solution which had all the bells and whistles that they thought they might ever need or want. But while many such solutions are highly extensible, scalable, and feature-rich, they can also be highly complex, requiring services to deploy/maintain/extend, special training to operate, and expensive annual maintenance contracts that must be kept current to receive all the latest patches and software updates. Ultimately, product choice must achieve balanced objectives of feature/function capabilities matched with cost effectiveness.

There are a number of ways to assess effectiveness of a network performance management solution. Quantifying benefits for a proper Return on Investment (ROI) analysis is often difficult, but cost-side analyses such as TCO can be a practical and useful technique. Understanding TCO means recognizing the initial cost of procuring and deploying a management tools solution and the ongoing costs of maintenance/support and of extending, adapting, and customizing the solution to the specific needs of an organization or managed environment.

As network and operations pros consider network performance management alternatives, it is essential to assess requirements and priorities and to determine whether or not the current solution is the right fit for now and in the future. Features and functions once thought to be essential may no longer be so, and other requirements may have taken on greater precedence. For example, if a team wants to reduce the number of monitoring tools and provide greater cross-group visibility, integrated server and application monitoring will become a priority. A related example would be one that EMA experiences often in conversation with practitioners: customized cross-domain operations dashboards were once merely a dream, but are increasingly becoming a “must have.”

Customized cross-domain operations dashboards

were once merely a dream, but are increasingly

becoming a “must have.”




The SolarWinds SolutionSolarWinds is an IT management software company offering products that address the needs of IT pros for monitoring and managing networks, servers, applications, SIEM, virtualization, storage, and more. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is the foundational core of the company’s overall network management product portfolio. Other SolarWinds network management solutions include IP Address Manager (IPAM), User Device Tracker (UDT), NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA), Network Configuration Manager (NCM), and VoIP & Network Quality Manager.

SolarWinds NPM is a software-based solution. Licensing starts at $2,675 at the low end for 100 elements and extends to $25,775 for an unlimited license with options in between for 250, 500, and 2,000 elements. SolarWinds NPM has the ability to automatically discover all SNMP and WMI enabled devices on a network, allowing operations teams to monitor widely ranging types of equipment such routers, switches, firewalls, VPN concentrators, wireless access points, and physical and virtual servers for multiple equipment vendors. SolarWinds NPM’s hardware health monitoring extends visibility to the state of device; sensors for factors such as temperature, fan speed, and power supply can be applied. A feature called ConnectNow™ can be used to build graphical illustrations on geographic maps that enable operators to drill down by geographic location to view specific device health at remote offices. SolarWinds NPM offers interactive drag-and-discover performance charts and graphs that provide dynamic real-time views for rapid insight into key device performance statistics including interface throughput, CPU load, latency and packet loss, disk space used, and more. SolarWinds NPM also provides a consolidated view of syslog data, traps, events, and alerts from a single interface. The system ships with extensive MIB support and administrators can create, import, or export a custom MIB poller to monitor any SNMP-enabled device. Although the product comes with extensive pre-built templates, customized performance and availability reports can easily be defined and either printed or viewed via the web.

SolarWinds NPM has been deployed by organizations large and small around the globe. Many shops start with SolarWinds NPM or SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset and then branch out, extending the solution by adding on modules for visibility beyond the network.

Case StudiesFeatures and capabilities aside, the best way to understand both product fit and TCO advantages of replacing an existing network performance management solution with SolarWinds NPM is to learn from the experiences of those who have made the switch. Following are four case studies in which SolarWinds NPM has been evaluated, selected, and deployed into a production environment, replacing an existing network management solution as the subject organizations sought to rebalance capabilities and cost effectiveness for network performance management and beyond.

SolarWinds NPM has been deployed by

organizations large and small around the globe.




Cloud Services ProviderSituational Snapshot: This managed services provider has 50 employees, three datacenters, and offers a range of hosted solutions from co-location and hybrid to fully managed options. The NOC had been using HP Network Node Manager, but when the original administrator left and the current admin inherited the responsibility, it was discovered that the licensing was incorrect and it would be cost prohibitive to get the products back under proper license compliance. The team tried OpenNMS, an open source solution, but quickly outgrew it when they realized they were spending more time managing the tool than using it. During an ensuing evaluation process, the team looked at a dozen different vendors and chose SolarWinds.

Challenge: The provider had a fractured view of their infrastructure and operations. One of the requirements for the new solution was that it would be the one platform upon which all the IT infrastructure teams could standardize, covering both network and server infrastructure. So the tool needed to be intuitive and easy to use across multiple IT organizations – some that were familiar with network management systems and others that were not. Another priority was that the group needed to be able to share dashboards and reports that were easy to understand and polished, so that they could be distributed to customers outside the company.

SolarWinds solution: The company has had the following SolarWinds products deployed for four years: SolarWinds NPM, SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM), and SolarWinds NCM. The provider recently added SolarWinds IPAM and SolarWinds Log & Event Manager (LEM) modules. The team is using the tools to monitor 1,400 nodes, 7,000 application components, 10,000 interfaces and over 3,900 IP addresses.

Benefits Realized: The previous solutions could only support a limited number of users/operators because of the expertise required to use those products. The intuitive nature of the SolarWinds products made it easy to deploy across all internal IT organizations. Now the entire company (beyond IT) uses the product, which would have been virtually impossible previously. The team has found that the SQL database underpinning the solution makes it easy to write custom queries. The integration and consistency between the various components has allowed effective deployment of a “single pane of glass” dashboard, as well as the ability to create and share reports with many internal departments as well as directly with external subscriber customers.

One of the biggest unexpected benefits was thwack®, the vendor-backed user community. The operations team has found thwack to be a tremendously valuable resource, regularly complementing (or even as an effective alternative to) direct SolarWinds product support.

TCO Experience: By deploying SolarWinds NPM and related products, this provider found their management tools’ TCO was greatly reduced from both a licensing and maintenance point of view. Also, the operations team has been able to extend the solution to address other needs beyond simple monitoring, doing more with this product than was possible with the previous solution, avoiding the need for additional tools and further improving overall TCO.

By deploying SolarWinds NPM and related products,

this provider found their management tools’ TCO

was greatly reduced from both a licensing and

maintenance point of view.




Financial InstitutionSituational Snapshot: This organization is a large retail financial institution with 30,000 employees, two datacenters and more than 1,700 remote locations along with nearly a dozen large corporate sites. An internal reorganization prompted a reevaluation of both the network and datacenter monitoring tools. The team was using CA Spectrum eHealth, but was three years out of maintenance on the products. Getting those systems back on maintenance and up to current revisions would have required a complete reinstall, which was going to be so costly and rigorous that the team decided to look at alternative solutions. The team tried WhatsUp Gold, but reached the scalability limits of that solution. They also tried using Compuware’s network and systems management solutions, since the team was (and continues to be) huge fans of DynaTrace APM, but found the lack of flexibility and need for recurring professional services to be untenable in the long term. The networking team had been using SolarWinds NPM with one polling engine in a limited capacity for inventory management for several years. Upon further evaluation, the team decided to expand the use of SolarWinds NPM and add SolarWinds SAM for datacenter monitoring.

Challenge: The enterprise monitoring team was looking for a monitoring solution that could bridge both the NOC and datacenter. Much of their current monitoring consisted of simple IP address pinging, with little or no active data collection. The team was battling limited, disconnected, and ultimately inefficient visibility, and the replacement solution had to span both groups, so it had to be user/operator friendly to both audiences.

SolarWinds solution: The team is now using both SolarWinds NPM and SolarWinds SAM to span network and datacenter monitoring. Six additional polling engines have been deployed and are operating at 50 percent capacity or greater. The SolarWinds products are being used to monitor roughly 5,500 routers and switches, 3,500 servers, 150 SAN devices, 3,400 PDUs, 500 firewalls, and over 100 load balancers.

Benefits Realized: One of the team’s first findings was that SolarWinds NPM and SolarWinds SAM are highly intuitive and did not require any special training for operators. Only the core team of six administrators and 15 NOC engineers had been able to use the previous tools due to their complexity, whereas between 200 and 300 users are now using the SolarWinds tools to view dashboards and reports. Reports and dashboards were also decidedly easy to read, so they can be sent out to a much broader audience, within and beyond IT. The ability to customize reports using SQL has made adaptations quick and easy to do, and required no special training or services.

Perhaps the most impactful benefit the team found was that they could easily extend the system to pull data from anything that has an SNMP interface. This opened the door to using SolarWinds NPM to monitor power usage, which was not practical with previous solutions. Administrative efforts were also much simpler. For instance, moving a device from one polling server to another is straightforward whereas prior products would have required a multistep process.

Finally, the thwack community was another unexpected benefit. The team hardly ever has to call support because they can usually find the solutions or answers they need in thwack.

Perhaps the most impactful benefit the team found was that

they could easily extend the system to pull data from anything that has

an SNMP interface.




TCO Experience: This team has seen substantial improvements in TCO while using SolarWinds because they have reduced training costs, extended usage to a broader audience, and have been able to achieve integration and customization in house, allowing the organization to eliminate the need for costly professional services.

Healthcare OrganizationSituational Snapshot: Two years ago, this large healthcare organization with 30,000 employees only had servers under management via IBM’s Tivoli Suite (TIP, TEP, TEM, etc). The company had been using the Tivoli solution for five years, but was unable to support monitoring of all the company’s Unix servers, and the IT team had zero visibility into networking. They tried using an open source-based solution to bridge the gap, and this remedied the server monitoring gaps, but did not meet the needs for integrated network monitoring. The company decided that they needed to revamp their overall approach to monitoring, so they reorganized the group and brought in individuals with more monitoring experience. When the new team reevaluated the IBM contract, they discovered they were under-licensed and it would have cost over $2 million in the first year to bring it up to the right coverage with an additional cost of $1 million per year in maintenance every year thereafter. At this point, the team decided to look for alternatives.

Challenge: The lack of visibility into the network left critical insights unfulfilled, leading to a fractured understanding of operating health and greatly extended troubleshooting processes when things broke down. The company needed a monitoring solution that would work for both the network and datacenter teams, providing insights into server, application, and network performance.

SolarWinds solution: The team chose SolarWinds NPM and SolarWinds SAM for network and datacenter monitoring. Network monitoring expanded from covering zero to 3,000 network devices as a result of the rollout and 6,000 servers were put under management as well.

Benefits Realized: The operations team found that the SolarWinds solution was very easy to use and required no special training. Whereas only a limited number of operators used the previous solution, now multiple IT teams use the SolarWinds solution – even some senior-level VPs. The team does not need outside professional services, because all administration and customization work is done in house, and they are now monitoring many systems and devices that were not previously being watched.

The operations team estimates that it is receiving 10 percent fewer total alerts and those received are 80 percent more accurate. The team used to receive as many as 80 trouble tickets per week, most of which were false positives, but now averages approximately eight true issue tickets per week. Multiple infrastructure teams are now getting increased visibility, improving operational awareness and responsiveness to issues and incidents.

TCO Experience: The healthcare organization has realized a much-improved TCO with SolarWinds because they are able to avoid the use of professional services and do all administration and customization work themselves. Human resource loads for processing trouble tickets has dropped, improving operations, responsiveness and efficiency. Further, the licensing cost for the SolarWinds products, including the cost of an annual maintenance contract, is only 10 percent of what the organization was previously spending for its management tools – all while delivering much greater functionality and visibility.

The operations team estimates that it is

receiving 10 percent fewer total alerts and those received are 80

percent more accurate.




International Airline Situational Snapshot: An international air transportation services provider with nearly 400 global offices was growing and wanted to expand their monitoring capabilities to include datacenter and networking devices. The company had been using HP NNMi, but it was not providing the desired visibility across their many remote sites or into non-network devices. They did not know how many remote offices or devices were on their network at any point in time and they had no server monitoring. They also did not know how many wireless access points (WAPs) were connected and where they were located – an essential aspect of recognizing gaps or disruptions in support for a highly mobile workforce.

Challenge: The operations team wanted a solution that would not only bridge the network and the datacenter, but one that was also easy to use and customize. They also wanted to implement a formal IP address management solution to get away from the manual process being done using a SQL database. The company attempted to use free/shareware tools to fill in the gaps, but they were too piecemeal and difficult to maintain.

SolarWinds solution: The company began using SolarWinds NPM in 2009, and has since added SolarWinds SAM, SolarWinds IPAM, SolarWinds NTA, SolarWinds Web Performance Monitor (WPM), SolarWinds NCM, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager, and SolarWinds Storage Manager. Together, the solutions monitor roughly 3,000 network devices, 1,500 servers, and 500 applications.

Benefits Realized: Since installing the SolarWinds solutions, the company has been able to enjoy greater overall stability of the IT infrastructure via improved visibility, resulting in better operational awareness and faster responsiveness to issues and incidents. They have greatly expanded the number of components being monitored and have a much better overall picture of their entire IT infrastructure across the globe, which has been extremely helpful for isolating and troubleshooting problems at remote offices.

Perhaps the greatest benefit for this team has been in the solution’s support for customization. With minimal self-led training in SQL, the lead administrator has been able to build an impressive array of dashboard views. One of the most visually striking uses the Google API to integrate Google Maps into SolarWinds NPM, so the operations team can easily see a global view of all company locations, or any regional subset, with a dynamic alert count summary that is calculated based on just the sites/offices visible within the current focal area and zoom level. From that starting point, operators can quickly assess status of individual sites, see the health of all monitored devices at those locations, and drill down into further detailed views for deeper analysis.

TCO Experience: TCO advantages for this organization are many. SolarWinds has allowed the company to achieve significant license and maintenance cost savings over prior products. They have customized SolarWinds products to meet their specific needs, speaking to the less tangible, but no less important benefits of flexibility and extensibility. The ultimate results have been improved operational efficiency and reduced response times to service-impacting incidents and issues.

The ultimate results have been improved

operational efficiency and reduced response

times to service-impacting incidents and issues.




EMA PerspectiveWith network performance management growing in importance among IT teams large and small, increased focus is being placed on capturing and bringing performance data into the direct gaze of operators. Many are also trying to go beyond network visibility to also include server and application measures, assembling a more complete picture of how all technology elements are coming together in production to deliver IT’s services. But from a management tools and technology perspective, all solutions are not created equal, and while features and functions are an essential part of the analysis, cost effectiveness must also be considered.

EMA’s conversations with several large enterprise users of the SolarWinds NPM solution (as well as other related SolarWinds products) produced a number of TCO-related themes and findings. First, all four of our case studies evidenced significantly lower up-front licensing and ongoing maintenance costs – in some cases truly dramatic in nature. But equally important was the flexibility and extensibility of the SolarWinds solution, which allowed system owners to avoid the need for professional services for customization efforts. Further, the combination of SolarWinds NPM with SolarWinds SAM has met the integrated network and datacenter monitoring needs of all four shops reviewed, meaning that the extra costs of purchasing, deploying, learning, customizing, and administering two independent, domain-specific management tool stacks were also avoided. And finally, the intuitive nature of the solution, combined with excellent product support via SolarWinds and the thwack user community, has allowed all four teams to bring training in house, avoiding another direct external cost that was present with prior product choices.

Our analysis also yielded findings regarding satisfaction levels that are worthy of note. All four shops were more than simply satisfied with their choice of SolarWinds – they were truly delighted. “We have been able to bring information together in ways that we never thought possible,” said an engineer. “This platform is doing more than supporting IT, it’s being used across the whole company,” said another. “I’m not sure I’ll ever take another job unless I can bring SolarWinds with me,” said a third.

Network and IT operations teams have many choices when choosing among performance monitoring and management solutions. The challenge is finding the best balance of capabilities vs. cost, and of flexibility vs. effectiveness. Based on the results of this case study analysis, EMA concludes that the SolarWinds solution has not only demonstrated compelling TCO in enterprise settings, it is also enabling operations teams to reach levels of integrated visibility that translate into recognizable improvements in practical operational effectiveness.

About SolarWindsSolarWinds was founded in 1999 and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker simple SWI. The SolarWinds mission has been to provide purpose-built products that are designed to make the IT professionals’ jobs easier. The company offers value-driven products and tools that solve a broad range of IT management challenges across a number of IT disciplines including networks, servers, applications, SIEM, storage and virtualization.

The SolarWinds solution has demonstrated compelling TCO in

enterprise settings.


http://www.solarwinds.com

About Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.Founded in 1996, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) is a leading industry analyst firm that provides deep insight across the full spectrum of IT and data management technologies. EMA analysts leverage a unique combination of practical experience, insight into industry best practices, and in-depth knowledge of current and planned vendor solutions to help its clients achieve their goals. Learn more about EMA research, analysis, and consulting services for enterprise line of business users, IT professionals and IT vendors at www.enterprisemanagement.com or blogs.enterprisemanagement.com. You can also follow EMA on Twitter or Facebook.

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