“Network operators clearly recognize the need for improvement, but they are not getting the support they need,” Shamus McGillicuddy, EMA’s vice president of research for network infrastructure and operations, said in a statement. “We need budget to fill vacancies on our teams. We need better tools. We need more automation. We need more influence over modern architectures like hybrid and multicloud networks. CIOs need to step up and provide the right support to network operators, especially if they want to succeed with AI transformation. The success or failure of these projects will be determined by the network.”
NOC status
Tool sprawl remains a chronic condition for network operations teams. A typical IT organization uses between four and 10 monitoring and troubleshooting tools to manage its network, and EMA says that number has remained largely unchanged for more than a decade. However, EMA did not find a significant correlation between toolset size and operational success.
This data shows how much room for improvement your team has, no matter how many tools they have.
- 58% of network issues are proactively detected before users are affected.
- Only 37% of alerts generated by network monitoring tools indicate an actual problem
- 28% of network problems are caused by manual mismanagement
- 29% of the average network professional’s day is spent troubleshooting
“IT professionals believe that 53% of the network problems they deal with on a daily basis could be prevented with better tools, which explains why only 31% of those surveyed feel completely successful with their network operations strategy,” McGillicuddy explained in a webinar about the survey results. “Tool replacement is widespread: 73% of people we surveyed said they are likely to replace, or at least to some extent, replace their network observability or network monitoring tools within the next two years.”
