Over the past five years, enterprise networking has undergone a significant transformation driven by advancements in technology, the rise of cloud and SaaS applications, the decentralization of the workforce, and the need for agility, scalability, and cost mitigation. These factors have led organizations to shift from on-premise network management systems (NMS) to cloud-managed networking platforms and to adopt technologies like Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN). These network transformation initiatives have garnered substantial investments from Chief Information Officers (CIOs) seeking to modernize their infrastructure and drive digital transformation. This blog post explores these key networking trends, and their implications for hybrid IT infrastructure monitoring, and highlights the investments made by CIOs in these initiatives.
The Impact of Cloud Adoption, SaaS Applications, and Workforce Decentralization:
The rapid adoption of cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications has revolutionized how businesses operate, access critical resources, and deliver services. Organizations are increasingly leveraging cloud services to enhance collaboration, improve productivity, and reduce infrastructure costs. Additionally, the decentralization of the workforce, with employees working remotely or across multiple locations, has created the need for secure, scalable, and reliable network connectivity. These trends have significantly impacted enterprise networking, necessitating agile and scalable solutions that can seamlessly connect distributed users and resources.
Transition to Cloud-Managed Networking Platforms:
To meet the challenges posed by cloud adoption and workforce decentralization, organizations are transitioning from traditional on-premise NMS to cloud-managed networking platforms. These platforms support the latest enterprise wired and wireless technologies, like 6 GHz WiFi 6e, offer centralized network management, real-time visibility, and simplified operations across geographically dispersed locations. By moving network management to the cloud, organizations can leverage the benefits of scalability, flexibility, and ease of deployment. CIOs have recognized the value of these platforms and have made substantial investments to modernize their network infrastructure and optimize their operations.
Embracing SD-WAN for Enhanced Network Connectivity:
In response to the need for scalable and cost-effective network connectivity, organizations have increasingly embraced SD-WAN. SD-WAN offers significant cost savings opportunities compared to Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), and leverages software-defined networking principles to optimize wide-area network connectivity by dynamically steering traffic and prioritizing applications across multiple links and providers. SD-WAN also allows organizations to establish secure, high-performance connections between various locations, including branch offices, remote sites, and cloud environments. CIOs have allocated significant investments to implement SD-WAN solutions, recognizing their potential to enhance network performance, reduce costs, and improve overall business efficiency.
Investments in Network Transformation Initiatives:
CIOs have made substantial investments in network transformation initiatives, driven by the strategic importance of modernizing their infrastructure and enabling digital transformation 1. These investments include:
1. Cloud-Managed Networking Platforms:
CIOs have allocated significant budgets to deploy and manage cloud-managed networking platforms. These investments cover licensing fees, hardware infrastructure, and ongoing operational expenses. The cost of these platforms varies based on the scale and complexity of the network, the number of locations, and the level of functionality and support required.
2. SD-WAN Implementations:
Recognizing the benefits of SD-WAN in improving network performance and reducing costs, CIOs have invested in deploying SD-WAN solutions. These investments encompass hardware and software costs, licensing fees, professional services for deployment and integration, and ongoing management and maintenance.
3. Network Monitoring Platforms:
To ensure comprehensive visibility and proactive support in hybrid IT environments, CIOs have invested in SaaS-based hybrid-infrastructure monitoring platforms. These platforms enable IT teams to monitor network availability, health, and performance, detect anomalies, and proactively address issues before they impact users. The investments are typical OpEx rather than CapEx, and don’t carry the monitoring infrastructure and upkeep costs of on-premise IT Infrastructure Monitoring tools.
Conclusion:
CIOs have recognized the significance of network transformation initiatives in enabling digital transformation and keeping up with the evolving demands of the modern business landscape. The investments made in cloud-managed networking platforms, SD-WAN implementations, and advanced network monitoring and management tools demonstrate their commitment to building agile, scalable, and cost-effective networking infrastructures.
By embracing cloud-managed networking platforms, organizations can centralize network management, achieve real-time visibility, and simplify operations across distributed locations. These investments empower IT teams to streamline network provisioning, configuration, and troubleshooting, ultimately reducing complexity and improving operational efficiency.
Furthermore, the adoption of SD-WAN allows organizations to enhance network connectivity, dynamically steer traffic, and prioritize critical applications. CIOs have recognized the potential of SD-WAN to optimize network performance, reduce costs, and improve overall business efficiency.
However, investments in SaaS-based hybrid-infrastructure monitoring platforms like LogicMonitor are essential to ensure comprehensive visibility and proactive support of these transforming environments. LogicMonitor enables IT teams to monitor availability, health, and performance, detect anomalies, and address issues before they impact business operations. The investments made in a monitoring platform highlight the commitment to maintaining a robust and reliable hybrid infrastructure. For more information about how LogicMonitor helps you monitor the health and performance of your entire network infrastructure in a single unified platform, visit logicmonitor.com/network-monitoring.
In conclusion, the evolving enterprise networking trends of cloud adoption, SaaS applications, workforce decentralization, and the need for agility, scalability, and cost mitigation have driven CIOs to invest significantly in network transformation initiatives. By leveraging cloud-managed networking platforms, implementing SD-WAN, and adopting a SaaS-based monitoring platform, organizations can mitigate risk by providing assurance that the transforming hybrid infrastructure is resilient and high-performing to support their digital transformation goals. As hybrid infrastructures continue to evolve, it is crucial for organizations to stay abreast of these trends and invest in the right technologies and strategies to ensure their networks remain agile, secure, and efficient in the face of changing business requirements.
References:
1. Worldwide SD-WAN Infrastructure Forecast, 2022–2026. https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=US48793922
SaaS or Software–as-a-Service is a term that describes many applications on the web today. Whether you’re using TurboTax (tax season is coming up) or Twitter, most people use SaaS platforms on a daily basis without even realizing it. Many businesses rely heavily on SaaSs to support their business via customer relationship management tools (CRMs) like Salesforce, internal systems like Atlassian’s Jira and Confluence, and broad inter-and intra-company communication via platforms such as Office 365 and Zoom. Monitoring all of these separate SaaS applications can be time-consuming and challenging.
In this article, we will cover:
- Why monitor SaaS?
- What metrics should you monitor?
- How to monitor SaaS in LogicMonitor
- Example adding O365 Monitoring in LogicMonitor
Why Monitor SaaS?
When it comes to monitoring Software-as-a-Service there are a few targeted reasons to monitor SaaS performance.
The most basic reason is to make sure that your SaaS is not standing in the way of completing your business-required tasks. That could be as simple as adding email or as complex as managing a large-scale marketing campaign. Each of these tasks has a different risk tolerance and impact. It may also be important to understand either the status (is it up or down) or even specific performance values (requests are taking more time than expected).
You may also choose to monitor your usage based on the limits of your SaaS. Whether those be licenses used, space limits, or API calls, all of these could be over-provisioned or hitting thresholds that limit a SaaS’s ability to function well.
Being able to monitor all of your SaaS applications and all of their important metrics and statuses in one place allows you to have clarity on the business impact and availability of your SaaSs.
What Metrics Should You Monitor?
Most SaaS applications offer some level of status metric. The most basic level is whether the entire SaaS is online and functioning properly. While this level provides the least amount of actionable information, it can be a good start.
Diving a level deeper would be monitoring the status of your specific implementation of the SaaS. That ranges from looking at the specific region your SaaS is hosted within the SaaS application to looking at specific interactions on your APIs.
Going even further, metrics monitored should include API call rates, response times, reads and writes of data, user logins, quality of service, and any other metrics that prove a given SaaS is working to its fullest potential and helping improve business performance. You also want to be alerted when any of these metrics fall outside of normal operating realms for your organization.
Last but often not least, you want to monitor usage compared to limits. Storage capacity out of a max limit could require you to pay for more space or stop being able to store new data. This would lead to a major business interruption. Unused licenses could incur monthly costs that could be eliminated so monitoring your consumed licenses verse a limit is also a common metric.
You’ll also want to be alerted of any events that occur within the SaaS that could result in poor user experience, whether that be an internal stakeholder or an external contact. Many SaaS applications can also provide these metrics.
How to Monitor SaaS in LogicMonitor
Adding monitoring for SaaS applications should not be prohibitively hard. Many SaaS applications allow monitoring and metric information via APIs. LogicMonitor allows you to provide a few simple fields that can be added to allow LogicMonitor to call those APIs and gather data.
LogicMonitor utilizes an agentless collection of metrics to allow extreme ease of monitoring and quick implementation. Simply give a couple of fields which are often a combination of Client ID, Authorization Token, API Key, or Secret Key, and be on your way to monitoring.
LogicMonitor provides out-of-the-box DataSources and EventSources that pull back metrics to be monitored. These metrics are gathered on dashboards to be viewed and interpreted easily.
Adding O365 Monitoring in LogicMonitor
Software as a Service (SaaS) based and cloud-based products and services may sound like they’re referring to the same thing. True, if the service exists “in the Cloud,” it may be both SaaS and cloud-based. While your SaaS-based application will almost certainly be cloud-based as well, your cloud-based services may not always be SaaS-based.
SaaS is a component of cloud computing. Cloud-based computing has three main components, Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS).
What Is a SaaS-Based Application?
A SaaS-based application, broadly, is any software you run that’s not on your premises. With rare exception, this means most SaaS-based products are run via a web browser or similar and hosted in the Cloud. SaaS is not a plugin and does not sit on your devices.
SaaS-based products have been widely available since the 90’s tech boom when a need for a wider array of cost-efficient computing led the way for software to be hosted centrally and distributed out to meet the demands of rapid scale, often globally, for growing businesses.
SaaS can often increase ROI overall, as there are often lower costs associated with deploying and maintaining SaaS-based applications. The cost-effectiveness of SaaS has remained one of the biggest advantages of SaaS-based software, lowering TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and increasing margins for B2B and B2C businesses in the information age.
Additionally, choosing SaaS offers a variety of other advantages. With SaaS, you are guaranteed to run the latest, most recent version at all times, with no updating necessary. As SaaS continues to grow and improve, so does the benefits it provides to the consumer.
Examples of SaaS-based applications include Google G-Suite, Office 365, Salesforce, Cisco Webex, and Zendesk.
What Is Cloud-Based?
A cloud-based product or service is anything running in the Cloud. This includes SaaS-based applications, as well as PaaS and IaaS-based. If you require an internet connection to properly run a service, it’s probably cloud-based.
The Cloud is developed as a way to share data faster and more effectively. Technology advancements have allowed for entire servers and storage to be hosted in the Cloud, which comprises the infrastructure portion of cloud computing.
Infrastructure as a service serves to utilize entire infrastructure without the need for on-prem servers. AWS, GCP, and Azure are all mostly IaaS. Your infrastructure, in the Cloud. That said, many services within these overarching cloud platforms can be categorized as PaaS.
Platform as a service builds on top of IaaS and includes the components or framework to create and manage applications. Examples include AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS Lambda, and Zoho. The frameworks PaaS provides is often used by developers so they can accelerate the development of their applications.
Reiterating the biggest difference between SaaS and cloud-based services, SaaS is only one part of the larger Cloud. The biggest difference between the two is the magnitude with which cloud-based can be utilized.
What Are the Main Business Advantages of Cloud/SaaS-Based Services?
Cloud-based and SaaS-based services hold similar advantages including:
-No need for lengthy installations. With everything in the Cloud, there are no drivers that need to run, and all updates can happen instantaneously. Additionally, as the Cloud is often hosted and not owned, it’s on the third party to ensure everything is running smoothly and up to date, so you can experience little to no downtime from their side.
-Data can be shared and synchronized faster across your entire network. Everything from code updates to business emails can be shared and collaborated on in real-time.
-Far more cost-effective than entirely on-prem. Storing part or all of your infrastructure in the Cloud is often the most efficient way to manage your company’s data.
–Added redundancy to prevent data loss and outages. Layers of redundancies can be added easily in most cloud environments, making it harder for outages to happen and for data to be lost entirely.
-More secure. Public and private clouds can be used together to add crucial security measures.
The Future of Cloud-Based Products
As the capabilities of what can be done in the Cloud continue to grow exponentially, so do the complexities. Part of an infrastructure, platform, or service can be in the Cloud, and part can be housed on-premises.
Now that we are entering the information age, one thing cloud products do that on-prem products don’t do is collect large amounts of anonymized data and use this within their software algorithms to improve the user experience; making their cars drive more safely (Tesla), suggesting new music that you are likely to listen to (Spotify), or helping you identify the root cause of a network issue more rapidly (LogicMonitor, humble brag). The continued growth of SaaS-based platforms creates that future.
Security concerns can require certain information decentralized, while collaborative projects can require data synced in the Cloud and on-prem in multiple places. You need to be able to manage your entire cloud infrastructure, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
LogicMonitor is a cloud-based service that can monitor all components of computing, whether on-prem or in the cloud, to ensure you have visibility across your entire IT infrastructure. Check out our platform to learn more.