By Bob Violino

Try to imagine a global business that doesn't depend on its voice and data network to run smoothly and effectively at all times. For that matter, try to imagine a company of any size not needing a reliable voice and data infrastructure. It's not easy. Organizations have become so dependent on their networks for communications, collaboration, sales, marketing, accounting, supply chain management and other business processes that it's difficult to imagine companies functioning without them. Yet despite this heavy reliance on — and investment in — voice and data networks, are organizations doing enough to ensure that their network infrastructure is performing optimally? In many cases, probably not.

To get a better handle on how voice and data services perform, some organizations are turning to network and voice management (NVM) solutions, which combine network fault and performance management to give IT departments proactive control and end-to-end visualization of complex, multivendor data and voice infrastructures. NVM is designed to improve quality of service and dramatically enhance the customer's experience.

These solutions boost service quality by detecting service degradations before end users are affected. CIOs and network managers can reduce the impact of service disruptions by identifying and resolving problems quickly. An NVM solution identifies the true causes of problems through root-cause analysis, event correlation and historical reporting.

Critical Applications
With critical business applications running over networks, it's vital to ensure that the network infrastructure is performing optimally. "Typically, there are a handful of [critical] applications, and if they're not running well, then the company is not doing well," says Jim Metzler, VP of Ashton, Metzler and Associates, a Sanibel, Fla., consulting firm that specializes in network technology. "For example, if ERP [enterprise resource planning] is not working, you can't ship products, and customers may go somewhere else."

Unfortunately, many organizations have overlooked the importance of network management, experts say. That's because many CIOs tend to focus primarily on applications, rather than servers or the network. Even among organizations that have implemented some level of network management, only a few are proactively solving network problems. Instead, network management solutions typically focus on identifying problems, then fixing them. While that's a necessary task, this focus can miss early warnings of performance degradation.

But organizations shouldn't overlook the need to ensure high-quality voice communications. In this age of e-mail, instant messaging, wikis and blogs, voice can almost become an afterthought when CIOs are considering network performance.

But organizations do so at their own peril, experts say. "Voice is the most critical application companies have," says Tom Hayes, VP of product marketing at CA.

Even with the growing use of data-based collaboration technologies such as email and instant messaging, "people still need to be on the phone and have good quality voice," Hayes adds. "Today, voice applications are running across every part of the network."

Sensitive Conversations
The emergence of voice over IP (VoIP) has created an even more urgent need for monitoring service quality, experts say. With that technology, voice runs alongside data packets over the IP infrastructure. Because these networks were designed for data, not voice, that can cause delays and other problems. Voice traffic is more sensitive to delay and jitter than, say, e-mail. "When you start putting voice traffic [over IP networks], you start to deal with critical issues that need to be managed closely," Hayes says. "Voice traffic is sensitive to delays, and it can be difficult to have conversations when the call quality is poor."

To help, CIOs should evaluate a network and voice solution that provides proactive fault and performance management of multi vendor voice and data networks. Additionally, the solution should provide a single, correlated view of network issues, with an assessment of root cause, to expedite problem identification and resolution.

Leveraging an NVM solution will help CIOs and their organizations monitor networks to see if there are degradations affecting voice or data traffic. CIOs will also be able to make necessary changes before users even know there's a problem.

A leading NVM solution should consist of three core capabilities: The first ensures quality of service across the infrastructure by documenting and managing against agreedupon service levels. The second provides fault management across multitechnology networks. And the third enables organizations to deliver reliable voice service for a variety of legacy and IP-based voice systems. All are based on intelligent algorithms that monitor real-time status and either take action or provide alerts before service is affected.

The solution should also let CIOs view historical data. In this way, they can track their organization's utilization trends and accurately predict capacity requirements. For example, CIOs can examine voice traffic patterns to determine whether a particular router has enough capacity. "NVM can predict — based on history — when you're going to need additional capacity," Hayes of CA says. "For voice traffic, trending and analysis allows the operations team to ensure that the proper high-quality bandwidth ('gold service') is available to support the voice application."

Indeed, monitoring networks from one end to the other ensures that if there's a breakdown in any one component of the IT infrastructure, the breakdown will be identified immediately. "Is the carrier service meeting performance expectations? Was the router inadvertently misconfigured? We're looking at all the pieces associated with the network in an integrated way," Hayes says. "The network information is correlated with other IT management information — for example, applications and systems — to identify the root cause of any issue. This helps us identify and resolve problems fast."

End-to-end visibility is especially important because many IT organizations have created "stovepipes" — different groups that handle security, networking, applications and other areas — and each looks at things in different ways, Metzler of Ashton says. "They don't tend to have common languages, processes and tools," he says. "So the networking guy might say, 'I'm looking at the network, and it's running really well,' yet the company is struggling on the Web site to book sales orders. To overcome that, you need that end-to-end visibility."

The Royal Netherlands Army (RNLA) implemented an NVM solution from CA to ensure the performance and reliability of critical IP, satellite, radio, microwave and telephony communications used by troops. RNLA requires reliable and accurate information from the front line and excellent ongoing communication links with its troops.

To meet those needs, the RNLA developed a communications infrastructure, called Theater Independent Tactical Army and Air Force Network (TITAAN). The infrastructure enables seamless, around-the-clock communications between commanders in operational posts and troops at the front line. TITAAN supports fully converged voice, video and data to create a unified operational picture of the Army that can be sent from remote outposts to headquarters.

The nature of the environment in which TITAAN is deployed — it is a military application, after all — makes management of the vast and complex infrastructure a serious challenge. To address the challenges, the RNLA deployed CA Spectrum®. The solution manages TITAAN servers, devices and applications, providing fault-detection capabilities, configuring devices automatically, and notifying field and command-post personnel of network problems.

In fact, the solution is at the heart of TITAAN's operational control system, ensuring that communication links between front lines and operational posts are maintained, and reducing network downtime, explains Marko van Daal, lead architect of management and control for TITAAN. The end-to-end visualization of data and voice is critical, he says. "If you don't have NVM, you don't have a common operational picture of your infrastructure," he says. "If we don't have visibility of the end-to-end flow within the network, then we don't know how we can become proactive if some links should fail."

Historical data from NVM is also important, van Daal adds. For one, historical data helps the RNLA to estimate its capacity needs. That's no small benefit, van Daal says, explaining, "Due to the dynamics within the infrastructure and the deployment — troop movements change the infrastructure setup — it's very hard to make a really good assumption on capacity usages." This historical data also enables the RNLA to track calls for security and trending purposes.

Among the key benefits of NVM are more reliable voice and data services, reduced network downtime and associated costs, improved staff productivity, and increased satisfaction for customers, employees and other users, says Glen Emo, president and CEO of Empowered Networks. His company helps customers assess and implement NVM solutions. The technology has been especially valuable to organizations moving to VoIP, he says.

Customers of Empowered Networks have deployed NVM solutions from CA to ensure that their voice and data network upgrade projects are successful and to reduce the risk of service degradation, Emo says. "Without this tool set in place, you're really just flying blind," he adds. "You have no sense of where you are [with] the performance of your network on a day-to-day basis."

One customer, a telecom service provider, deployed CA eHealth® for Voice and uses the technology to monitor the performance of its core network and as part of its managed network service offering. Now, when a customer of the telecom provider wants to evaluate a move to VoIP, the provider uses the solution to assess the customer's network for several weeks to determine whether the network can support high-quality voice service. Once the customer's network is approved for VoIP, the provider uses the solution to continuously monitor voice traffic, diagnose problems and provide reports on performance and usage trends.

Voice Monitoring
Another customer, an agency of the Canadian government, uses the solution to monitor its network as it rolls out VoIP in all its offices around the world, Emo explains. He adds that other clients have opted to use a variety of management tools that cover certain aspects of network performance, such as security, but fail to provide comprehensive, end-to-end monitoring. As companies rely more on VoIP to drive their critical business applications, they've got to be serious about having a robust voice and data network management strategy.

Although organizations understand the growing importance of business applications — both data and voice — they still don't put enough emphasis on ensuring that networks run well, Metzler says, adding: "In the majority of cases, when applications are beginning to degrade, the end user notices it before IT, and that's unacceptable."

NVM is one of CA's Capability Solutions and part of the company's broader Enterprise IT Management (EITM) vision and strategy. EITM offers a way to simplify IT management complexity and yield better business results. Capability Solutions are building blocks to EITM, providing an integrated approach to governing, managing and securing IT. Because the solutions are modular, companies can realize long-term value through incremental steps.

More specifically, the NVM Capability Solution helps organizations ensure that problems are solved long before customers or other users are aware of them — and that voice and data networks are performing at their best.

Bob Violino is a freelance writer based in Massapequa Park, N.Y. He covers a variety of business and technology topics.