Network and server availability is a crucial part of maintaining business continuity and productivity. IT managers have to deal with tons of responsibilities and various challenges when it comes to network management. Maintaining the downtime at a minimum is of utmost concern. Keeping the size of your business in mind, several components need to be taken care of. Components like patching, device management, updates, compliance requirement, application configuration, and issues can arise due to environmental factors as well as the result of human error. So what's the best way to minimize network management challenges and how Cisco training and certification such as CCNA and CCNP can help? Let's find out.
Common Network Management Challenges Suspected for 2019
Network management requires dedicated attention to spot issues and maintain performance. Indeed, the network is the most important aspect of an organization operating in an IT industry. Without a flourishing network, business operations, data, and applications can grind to a halt. It is a crucial aspect that the enterprise leverages on using multiple software, tools, and human resources to ensure success.
However, the growth in the traffic and changes in the operations have made network management more complicated than ever. The support and design strategies for the network needs to be adjusted to take care of the growing challenges. Moreover, employees need to be trained too so that they are able to access corporate data, implement better technologies, and proliferate the existing system.
In short, it is important to prepare the network management teams for the growing networking challenges in the business for the years to come. And the best way to achieve it is to train your employees and offer them relevant certifications to improve their skills and knowledge and keep them up to date.
Cisco training and certification can play a major role in this. However, before we jump to how Cisco certification can help you in this regard, let's learn about the common network management problems enterprises face.
Poor Network Performance
One of the biggest problems that network engineers face is the poor performance of the current system. They do not only have to deal with a lot of traffic, but traffic coming in from all directions. Unless and until they have implemented the right equipment and tools at the mid- and end-points, it isn't possible to offer high-speed and responsive communication the applications need today.
Moreover, performance is much more than just speed. It includes other important factors such as reliability. Network designs should be efficient enough to handle load and spikes and provide alternate routes to restart communication. To run an IT business around the clock, there should be a 24x7 network availability too.
Security
Another major challenge is security when it comes to network management. With the growth in cybercrimes, it has never been more important to be extra cautious with the security aspect. This is particularly true because the perimeter of the current networking systems is unclear and therefore, blocking unauthorized access from the external resource can be risky for sensitive data.
A number of breaches occur when employees unknowingly respond to phishing emails. The best way is to utilize reliable security measures and use encryption to protect traffic. However, encryption isn't the only thing you can rely on. Training helps the employees understand the need to improve network security and use the right tools to implement that solution. Additionally, implementing multiple tools also require increased management and monitoring.
Configuration
With the growth in the network, it is very easy to ignore the network configuration problems. Devices may not be compatible with each other. And using firewalls to protect data and using manual policies only makes it more challenging and leads to inconsistencies and errors.
Cost
It's unfortunate how we set low budgets for networking, despite knowing the role it plays in the success of the organization. The network services are growing, and the budget needs to match it. This is especially true in a scenario where the network is equipped with the latest IT applications including video conferencing and telephony and requires a new level of network speed and quality.
Growth
It's easier to address network management challenges if the network system remains constant - which it doesn't. There's a constant in the number of devices associated with the network. Also, whenever a new connection is added on board, the vulnerability of the system increases.
Vendor Lock-In
If you are able to make reasonable decision making today and build your architecture on the basis of capabilities, you can reduce the occurrence of network management challenges in 2019 and beyond. Utilizing the more reliable solutions for your business today figures out how to support, integrate, and interoperate multiple solutions.
Cisco Training to Solve Network Management Problems
Teams are forced to deal with the growing networking challenges, especially if they are not provided the much-needed training and certifications to upgrade their skill set according to the current standards. Cisco training and certification can be your ultimate solution. It is not an individual entity but a collection of strong network administration tools to help you transform your network management knowledge to deal with the prevalent challenges.
The following are some areas that Cisco certification can help with:
- Educating the team about getting full visibility into the network, virtual machine performance, and applications. The ability to get down to the depth of the information helps identify issues and bottlenecks and enable them to take actions to maintain the optimal flow on the network.
- The training facilitates the sweeping control and visibility across the network.
- Training enables the team to utilize the tools to wield total administrative control over the system. For larger IT systems, the control expands to security and policy considerations.
- The team is more capable of transforming the data into usable information. Keeping the platform in use, it becomes easier for the team to use data analysis to deal with a serious challenge.
Conclusion
With training and virtualization solutions, organizations can utilize their time and resources in the best possible manner. Thus, it's important to tweak the productivity and knowledge to improve practical implication. Cisco training is your best bet when it comes to efficient business continuity without cutting costs.