“Network operators clearly know they need to do better, but they aren’t getting the support they need,” said Shamus McGillicuddy, EMA’s vice president of research for network infrastructure and operations, in a statement. “They need budget to fill empty seats on their teams. They need better tools. They need more automation. They need more influence over modern architectures, like hybrid and multi-cloud networks. CIOs need to step up and give network operators the support they deserve, especially if those CIOs want to succeed with AI transformation. Networks will make or break those projects.”
The state of the NOC
Tool sprawl remains a chronic condition for network operations teams. The typical IT organization uses four to ten monitoring and troubleshooting tools to manage its network, a number that EMA said has barely moved in more than a decade. Yet EMA found no significant correlation between the size of a toolset and operational success.
The data shows how much room for improvement exists, regardless of how many tools a team has:
- 58% of network problems are detected proactively before users experience their impact
- Only 37% of alerts generated by network monitoring tools are indicative of a real problem
- Manual administrative errors cause 28% of network problems
- 29% of the average network professional’s day is spent troubleshooting
“IT pros believe that 53% of the network problems that they are dealing with on a day-to-day basis could be prevented with better tools, so that gives you some color around why only 31% of the people we surveyed felt like they are completely successful with network operations strategy,” McGillicuddy explained on a webinar about the study results. “Tool replacement is widespread. Seventy-three percent of the people we surveyed said they are likely to replace, at least somewhat likely to replace, a network observability or network monitoring tool within the next two years.”
