Now that I’ve been in the technology arena for over 20 years, I feel as though I have a bit of perspective on the industry. Spending this much time on the front lines gives me the unique ability to pinpoint past trends that are useful in charting the best path to the future.
It Wasn’t That Long Ago…
I started my professional career working for Motorola in 1990. On my desk there was no PC. I had a 3270 terminal whose primary purpose for me was to access and utilize the MRP (Manufacturing Resource Planning) software. I also had a terminal on my desk that allowed us to perform word processing and spreadsheets. We didn’t run applications locally. They were run off of a Unix server maintained by IT. No one had email addresses or Internet access. That came to Motorola in 1994 if I recall correctly.
Why am I telling you this? More than anything, to paint a little perspective. Most people take PCs, the Internet and email for granted. We forget how rapidly things have evolved. Here’s one more thought to consider. Back in 1990 most people did not have cell phones. Those that did carried around what were called bag phones. They were about the size of a woman’s purse. That was mobile voice communications back in 1990.
Connections: Seeds of Need
It was probably the 1995 to 2000 time frame when companies started rolling out PCs to employees and building LANs (Local Area Networks). AppleTalk, LANtastic, Banyan Vines, Netware were some of the prevalent choices back then. I really can’t recall selling monitoring or management software back in that time frame. We were all more focused on trying to figure out how to make this stuff work so our users could take advantage of the productivity-enhancing capabilities of PCs.
Once we got through ‘The Year 2000’ crisis (or as it turns out, lack of a crisis), this Internet thing really started to take off in a big way. Our networks were all interconnected. We were interconnecting our remote offices to headquarters. I was at Cisco at this time – a fun time to be there. We not only had our computer systems able to talk to our other company offices, but we were also connected to the Internet. This allowed us to communicate with other companies via email and attachments.
This is where the early drivers for monitoring and management began to take root.
Early Monitoring and Management: Reactive and Event-Focused read more…
They say “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Well, at Monolith Software we’re receiving so much flattery from imitators, we can’t help but think – we must be onto something!
Unfortunately, this does muddy the waters for our customers and prospective customers. Buyer beware! The imitators have only copied our marketing message, not the product’s functionality.
A friend of mine who is a technology director at a large financial company sent me the following message yesterday:
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Hey Jeff!
How are ya? I’m sitting in a presentation from XxXxXxXxXxXx right now and it made me think of you…
…their opening pitch was about having a completely internal and unified code-base vs. the non-unified approach. I swear they could have just taken some of Monolith’s stuff and did a search/replace on the company name. : )
In 2011, Monolith’s momentum kept rolling toward our goal of increasing awareness and adoption of the unified infrastructure management approach. We posted significant milestones, maintained a steady sales pace and captured some headlines along the way.
We made a big splash with our new booth, new marketing campaign and several news announcements at TM Forum Dublin. It was a little shocking, but a lot rewarding, to hear this question repeatedly: “Monolith – isn’t that too good to be true?”
The unveiling of our new messaging – “The First. The Only. Unified Infrastructure Management Software.” – was well received by our audiences. And, apparently, admired by our competitors as well, several of whom adopted the Unified message in their own materials. While this claim can only be made by a solution built on a single code base (Only Monolith), we interpret this imitation as a form of flattery – confirming we’re on target with market needs and drivers. read more…
Monolith partner Cornastone is providing demonstrations at the GovTech 2011 show, September 11-14 in South Africa. Cornastone, led by the former founders of the OSS practice at Dimension Data, is a large integrator in the networking and service assurance space. They utilize Monolith as their end-to-end service assurance solution. Monolith displaces the old approach of weaving together disparate legacy tools.
Cornastone walks a GovTech 2011 attendee through Monolith
Recently I had the opportunity to meet with Darrell Winfield, a customer who deployed Monolith and can now share his experience start-to-finish. Time has the effect of enriching perspective, so I was excited to hear him reflect upon our Monolith implementation. This project was large, from a scope and budget standpoint. And it was intense, from a risk management standpoint. So, how did we score?
View the Video
As Vice President of Projects for an electronic financial transaction processing company, Darrell Winfield was responsible for the largest capital project the company had ever undertaken. read more…
Greetings from the front lines of the network performance management crusade. What’s today’s big buzz amongst service providers? A sea change is looming, as industry insiders grapple with two deceptively simple aspects of Customer Experience Management: 1. How do we define it?, and 2. How do we get it? From our perspective, the deceptively simple actually is simple, in concept, if we all calibrate our thinking just a bit. Executing on the following new tenets will greatly reward first-movers.
What is the New CEM?
Historically, the industry has been in reactive mode with customer service. We ferociously monitor and escalate alerts, many of which ultimately land in a growing customer credit tally. Reactivity is expensive! We have a saying here at Monolith:
Just back from TM Forum Management World in Dublin where we soaked up the pulse of the industry (along with an expertly poured Guinness or two). A few headlines came through loud and clear. No surprises here, but strong evidence of swells that will soon grow to tidal wave proportions.
The traditional, non-unified approach just isn’t working anymore. As the complexity, scope and scale of new service offerings accelerates, the need is becoming more urgent for an infrastructure management solution that can proactively address service assurance (SLA monitoring and management). We pointed out several examples of this in our interview with RCR Wireless, check out the video:
Many IT personnel are faced with an escalating predicament – a disjointed set of IT infrastructure management tools that have inherent limitations because they’re designed to manage individual, siloed functionalities. At the same time, IT budgets are tight, and adding more tools doesn’t deliver enough benefits to offset the increased workload to manage yet another tool.
This blog post kicks off a series of discussions outlining a new set of IT best practices. In particular we’ll take a look at the case study of Oracle, and how they use Monolith’s IT infrastructure management solutions to simplify their network complexity and to achieve significant, speedy return on investment.
As we kick off our first blog stream of 2011, it’s a great time to take a moment and reflect on our progress in 2010.
Monolith’s unique approach to IT infrastructure management is making a significant impact on communication service provider and large enterprise networks. Organizations such as USA Mobility, Fujitsu, IBBS, Oracle, Tata, Windstream, Iowa Network Services and others have adopted our unified solution. To support our triple-digit growth and expanding customer base, we’ve amplified our staffing resources, growing our employee base by over 100 percent. read more…
In a recent interview by Susana Schwartz forConnected Planet, Monolith’s VP of Sales, Bill Cannon, pinpoints an interesting reality facing Communications Service Providers (CSPs) that are rolling out new services: managing these new converged solutions means the ultimate destruction of existing OSS management silos. read more…
Have you ever conducted an Internet search on “TV Everywhere?” After reading a Wall Street Journal article written by Nat Worden on November 10, 2010, entitled, Subscriber Loss Issue in Cable TV, I was curious to see if there was any talk of technology’s role and its ability to sustain and grow subscribers, a.k.a., SLA Management. read more…
With regards to mounting service level management issues and challenges cable providers are facing, TM Forum has captured the pain points and more importantly—plausible solutions to the problem. Among issues raised, MSOs need: read more…
A recent survey posted by analyst Bojan Simic of TRAC Research uniquely captured an ongoing issue with business service management solutions – many offerings on the market today allow data and gathering (KPIs), but few solutions help make sense of KPIs in order to actually help a business. read more…
Monolith recently learned that Software Magazine has ranked the company at #472 within its prestigious Software 500 listing, as well as in the Top 10 Growth for companies under $10 million in revenue for its 127 percent growth.
At first look, this may not seem to be a lot to get excited about—or is it?
I see it all the time. So many companies are dealing with the negative impact that software vendor “certifications” have on meeting revolving requirements (e.g. a new IOS release), supporting a new device, or rolling out a new service. The majority of these customers have a service assurance tool where they believe they’ve purchased Out of the Box functionality. read more…
External validation is always great to receive. Recently I have gotten some wonderful feedback from a few new Channel Partners that we’ve brought aboard this year. Just yesterday I received an email from the CEO of a large VAR/consulting company who had the experience of going on a week’s worth of appointments in Europe with Bill Cannon, Monolith’s VP of Sales. Here is his feedback in an email to me: read more…
At Monolith Software, we’ve tried to focus as much as possible on development and innovation. Every day we see customers with growing management challenges. The only way to meet those growing challenges is with innovative and flexible software solutions, informed by real-world operational requirements. read more…
IT Dashboards have accumulated a bit of a mixed record: a good dashboard supported by clear policies and procedures can improve the quality of services delivered and make business and technology decisions easier. But even the best dashboards are somewhat myopic, and badly designed dashboards can lead to complacency, poor communication and eventually overlooked issues, degradations or outages. read more…
We often use this blog to address strategies we think are flawed– like trying to deliver comprehensive monitoring through a patchwork of acquired tools.
Now and then we need to highlight the strategy we’ve chosen: constant and consistent improvement of a uniform software solution, across a range of technology monitoring operations. read more…
The founders of Monolith Software spent the better part of a decade working with the products of the industry’s legacy leaders in the monitoring & management space. Judging from the freely-offered comments made by customers over the years, users of established software packages were adamant and unanimous in their frustration with having to rely on signed clients or browsers with Active-X or JRE (java runtime engines) in order to use the software. read more…
