The Next Generation Network Operations Center

How the Focus on Application Delivery is Redefining the NOC

By Jim Metzler for NetQoS

Published 2008, Posted April 2008

Abstract:

The majority of IT organizations are under considerable pressure to evolve to a next generation Network Operations Center (NOC). For example, a survey of 176 IT professionals has uncovered the fact that over a quarter of NOCs do not meet their organization’s current needs. In order to fulfill the current and emerging requirements, NOCs are being driven to do a better job of managing application performance, to implement more effective IT processes and to be able to troubleshoot performance problems faster.

While the survey results confirmed the conventional wisdom that a NOC is often stove-piped and reactionary, the results disputed the conventional wisdom that NOC personnel are focused largely on monitoring in general and that they spend the majority of their time on networking in particular. The survey results highlighted the fact that the inability of the NOC to identify issues before the user does hurts the overall credibility of the IT organization and that the role of the NOC is often not well understood – even within the IT organization.

The survey results also showed that while the vast majority of NOCs are undergoing significant change, not all NOCs are starting at the same place in terms of the functionality that they currently provide. In addition, IT organizations do not have a common vision of the structure and functionality of the next generation NOC. To be able to plan for the evolution of their company’s NOC in this demanding yet uncertain environment, network professionals need an awareness of what their peers are doing to address the challenges they are facing, as well as an understanding of how well their efforts are succeeding.

One of the goals of this white paper is to provide that awareness. Another goal of this white paper is to identify what IT organizations must do to migrate away from the current stove-piped, reactionary NOC and to an integrated operations center that effectively supports all components of IT.
 

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