Network complexity is creating major security and performance problems

An image of security icons for a network encircling a digital blue earth.
(Image credit: Shutterstock) (Image credit: Shutterstock)

As businesses move ever faster into a hybrid IT environment, their network complexity grows - which in turn, causes a number of worrisome challenges for IT pros.

A new report from SolarWinds surveying more than 1,000 IT practitioners, managers, directors, and senior executives found budgeting, time constraints, as well as observability challenges, are making hybrid IT tough to realize. 

More than a third (37%) of the respondents said they deploy monitoring strategies to manage complexity, but more than half (53%) said they didn’t have the proper visibility into the majority of their apps and infrastructure. Therefore, they struggle to detect anomalies, discover the roots of various issues, and ensure continuous availability and proper performance of business-critical apps.

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Prioritizing visibility

For SolarWinds’ president and CEO, Sudhakar Ramakrishna, now is the time for organizations to reflect and make necessary changes: “As organizations look beyond the pandemic, they must re-examine their investments from the past few years. Part of that requires organizations to have visibility into their IT environments to understand what’s working and not working, and where to prioritize their efforts to achieve the ROI targeted in their planned projects.” 

He also added that observability is now “the clear answer” for tech pros looking to manage increasingly complex surroundings.  “However, organizations must set aside time and resources to upskill and train tech pros to help them properly implement observability strategies and manage hybrid IT realities more effectively—and set up their teams and business for success in the long run.” 

There are four approaches that can be taken to help manage complexity more effectively, writes Chris Buijs, Field CTO, NS1, in his writeup here: infrastructure resource modeling; traffic management; network automation; and finally network observability.

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.

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