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Your Five-Step Guide for Evaluating Network Monitoring Solutions

Your Five-Step Guide for Evaluating Network Monitoring Solutions

Your Five-Step Guide for Evaluating Network Monitoring Solutions

Solutions Review highlights five best practices for evaluating network monitoring solutions to help prospective buyers determine the tool that’s right for them.

With all the modern capabilities of network monitoring solutions, it can be difficult to evaluate the solutions that are right for your business. Determining the right tools for your business requires knowing what you’re looking for in a monitoring tool and how to interact with potential solution providers. That’s why we’ve assembled this five-step guide to help organizations evaluating network monitoring solutions understand what to look for.

Download Link to Data Integration Buyers Guide

If you’re looking for resources to help you evaluate remote monitoring solutions, our free Network Monitoring Buyer’s Guide has you covered. It contains profiles on the top network monitoring providers in the market today, including descriptions of the tools they offer and noteworthy features of each. The guide also features 10 questions you should ask prospective vendors and yourself before buying a network monitoring solution. You can check out that guide here. We also offer a buyer’s guide for free and open source network monitoring tools if you’re a small business or have a tighter budget but still want enterprise-grade monitoring for business networks. Download this guide here.

What are your network performance problems?

There’s an immeasurable number of network performance problems that affect your business network in different ways, so you want a monitoring solution that you know can address the specific problems affect your company. The first step in evaluating potential tools is realizing the issues you need to fix. That will form the backbone of the evaluation process from the buyer’s perspective, and can help narrow down your initial vendor list.

Establish network performance goals

Successful network performance isn’t a “one size fits all” deal; every business will have different goals regarding network performance. Defining your network performance goals allows your company to know how they should approach performance monitoring, which will help your business evaluate potential solutions. Because network monitoring tools are best used over time rather than for just fixing an immediate need, goals should cover both short-term and long-term performance requirements.

You need to ensure your network is performing well at all times. Our Network Monitoring Buyer’s Guide contains profiles on the top network performance monitoring vendors, as well as questions you should ask providers and yourself before buying. We also offer a Free and Open Source Network Monitoring Buyer’s Guide if you’re a small business or have a tighter budget but still want enterprise-grade monitoring for business networks.

Know how long it will take to meet those goals

Most network performance goals will not be set in stone forever, and the majority of network performance problems will eventually be solved. Therefore, keep in mind how long you expect it will take to meet those goals and/or when you need problems solved by. That will give you an idea of the length of time you’ll need to make your decision on evaluating and buying a network monitoring solution.

How in-depth do you want your network monitoring?

Network monitoring solutions come in all different shapes and sizes — and specifically, they offer different monitoring capabilities. Some monitoring tools only track certain performance metrics, such as bandwidth usage, network download/upload speeds, and throughput. Others go beyond monitoring your network and have a full set of IT infrastructure monitoring tools, including monitoring for applications, servers, databases, and IT services.

Understand your projected network growth

Your network isn’t static; it’s likely to grow in size as the years go on and your company expands. A network monitoring tool will need to expand to meet the demands of a fluctuating network. If you have any immediate or long-term projections for your network growth, keep them in mind as you narrow down your selection for monitoring tools.


Looking for a solution to help you improve your network performance? Our Network Monitoring Buyer’s Guide contains profiles on the top network performance monitor vendors, as well as questions you should ask providers and yourself before buying.

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Download Link to Data Integration Buyers Guide

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