Business is heavily dependent on its computer systems. You need over 99% uptime guarantees from your IT Department.

This is a major undertaking for any team, especially with good people being hard to find — or, at least in today’s economy, hard to afford. Most IT staffs implement a monitoring system of some sort or need to for that uptime guarantee to be even close.

Even with monitoring being your first line of defense against failures, proactive monitoring and remediation is time-consuming and requires specialized resources on your teams.

Network Monitoring Software, Systems and Tools

Do-It-Yourself vs. Managed Services Providers

In days past, I would have told you to find a best of breed product and just do it yourself. It may cost you less in the long term, it may not. At least you have complete control of the environment. It takes a working knowledge of advanced networking and management along with a team to stay on top of issues. Knowing full well that teams cost the most out of any budget, these days you just can’t afford to sustain that many high-end personnel.

This being the case, working here at DedicatedIT, I know more about the ROI of out-sourcing the management and monitoring of your systems and can say with complete confidence, this is the way to go. It brings with it the systems, tools, team and knowledge to handle any situation you may find yourself in. It allows you to focus on your business and not worry about the ‘oh crap our backup was not working for the past six months and I need to get that email the CFO deleted yesterday that will make or break a $100,000 deal’.

It allows you the comfort to know that you can go on vacation and your users are in good hands that don’t need to be held on a daily basis. It allows you to finally take the IT budget from that blood red splotch on the GL to a friendlier shade of black as you don’t consume HR with insurances and payroll taxes. Basically, you get the peace of mind that only a top rated IT team with project specialists and top level support engineers can provide. Keep this in mind while making your decisions.

Open Source vs. Proprietary Software

While we all love open source systems. I have found that specialized applications for network monitoring always come with more functionality or, at the very least, less headache in setup and support. I’ll give you a few at the bottom of this post.

Client Application vs. Web Based

We all hate that dreaded 3am call, “the server is down”, from a user who never works that late but what they are doing tonight happens to be critical.

You got the call because your first level technician was sick and being the responsible IT manager that you are, all calls end up at your cell phone even though you are actually across the country on vacation. Now, I know that I don’t always have the ability to get my laptop online and sometimes need to use someone else’s access.

If you utilize a client based monitoring/management system, you rely on getting to that application before you can do thing 1. However, even if the client based application looks pretty, a web based application is more reliable. All of our management systems have a web based interface which can be logged into securely from any location that has internet access. This has saved me in the past and I’m sure it will do the same for you.

Monitoring the Internet

The Internet is a vast network that no one can truly monitor it all. What can be monitored, however, is the use of the internet by your users. When it comes to your company’s internet usage or bandwidth monitoring tools, DedicatedIT has selected a few elite vendor’s products. I personally don’t believe in the ‘one size fits all mentality’ and have seen first hand that no single product fits all clients’ needs.

Free Monitoring Tools

At the bottom of this post, I’ll give you a list of a few cool free tools. Please remember that tools alone can only do so much. To truly get that 99% uptime, you will need a team to back those tools and systems… that is where we come in (see… THE SECRET).

Free Monitoring Services

When I was a kid, I was always taught that ‘nothing in life is free’. This is not always true. I have provided you a list of some free stuff to prove it. So after years of experience I have refined that to ‘nothing worth anything in life is free’ which brings me to our secret I mentioned earlier:

*THE SECRET*

We take our network monitoring, server monitoring and proactive remediation services seriously which is why we provide you with a 30-day, money-back satisfaction guarantee. Learn more about our basic 24×7 Remote Monitoring and full Proactive Network Management.

Open Source Monitoring Systems:

Free Monitoring Tools: