Network Management: The Buzz about Outsourcing

Today's networks need to be scalable and upgraded periodically. Now think about the exponential costs of doing this, every year, or every six months.

Enter Management Services Providers (MSP). They'll monitor your network, analyze traffic, identify bottlenecks, alert and protect you from impending dangers while ensuring over 99 per-cent uptime for your network. With rising costs of maintaining and managing a network support department in-house, there is an increasing openness to the idea of outsourcing network management functions.

Broadly, network management can be outsourced in two ways - on-site and remotely. With the former, the MSP depute their engineers to your company to manage the network on a day-to-day basis from within your premises i.e. at site. With remote management, the MSP will monitor your network from their NOC (Network Operation Center). On-site management may be preferable for large, centrally located mission critical sites. Off-site (remote) management is better suited to businesses spread over remote locations, with branch offices etc.