Consolidation is a hot topic amongst service providers. The approach varies – it might be vendor consolidation or it might be tool consolidation. But in either case, the goal remains the same: reduce the infrastructure management cost structure while providing the best possible service.
Many vendors will give you a consolidation solution that looks good on paper. One single contract, that’s good, right? But the reality is, many times this is nothing but a mirage.
Why? Because these vendors, even with their single contract, are still implementing several disparate tools, having different OSSs, different databases and no unified presentation layer. Sure, they can string this all together, but does this really reduce costs? What the single contract doesn’t take into account is Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), speed/cost of deployment, and resources needed to maintain the infrastructure.
One2One Ep. 5 of our video blog shows that the only path to reducing cost structure is to utilize a unified infrastructure management solution having one common database, one common rules engine, and one authentication engine that lets you do all the things you did previously using several different tools. That solution is Monolith Software. (Just ask Oracle.)
View the video to learn how to maximize your game plan to reduce your cost structure. You can also see another real life scenario of how we did this with a customer here.
We have an in-depth TCO modeling tool that can help predict your ROI with Monolith. Contact us if you’re ready to see some numbers.
Over the past several months, there’ve been several consistent needs amongst service providers, including customer experience management, service assurance, SLA monitoring, operational efficiency, and tool consolidation. Increasingly, the spotlight is now shining on the creation of meta metrics, as these align quite directly to the big picture of the business. So, service providers are looking beyond discrete performance-based metrics such as KPIs, and bringing their focus toward meta metric values such as customer KQIs and even product KQIs.
At last year’s TM Forum, Monolith unveiled the benefits of a unified, single code base approach to infrastructure management. Since then, many vendors in our space have jumped on the bandwagon of claiming a unified approach. There’s a big difference between talking unified and delivering unified. And, when it comes to the creation of meaningful meta metrics, this distinction becomes increasingly important.
Episode 4 of our video blog One2One covers these topics and what Monolith will be demonstrating at TM Forum 2012, May 22 – 24 in Dublin. Also if you happen to be at Management World, visit us in the Expo Hall, Booth 16.
View the video below to learn about our approach to meta metrics. You can also check out our data sheet on “The Impact of True Unification.”
If you’re involved in network operations for a NOC, this should excite you. What’s the typical scenario when a problem comes into your event console? It’s a subjective and often tedious process, consulting manual documents or a runbook, then mixing in your own knowledge and experience to solve the problem.
The Custom Action Policy Engine (CAPE) is one of the ways we do correlation within Monolith Software. It provides a “virtual operator” type capability that automatically recognizes an event type, and automatically takes remediation actions.
Episode 3 of our video blog One2One reveals a real world scenario where the world’s largest international IP network provider uses Monolith’s CAPE to automate scenarios such as advanced security determination for devices and looking for two conditions within the same device.
View the video to see how CAPE works, and how it can make your life easier. It’s your own caped crusader for event correlation and remediation (sorry, couldn’t resist). You can also check out our data sheet on “Correlation & Enrichment,” or our tech brief on Automated Runbooks enabled through CAPE.
“It’s about time someone got it right!” That’s what a representative from one of the world’s largest service providers excitedly proclaimed in a recent meeting with Monolith Software.
Often, service providers are forced to wait several months for software updates needed to roll out new services. They tell us – “This is a big issue.” We agree, it’s a big issue. What are service providers looking for? An engine that allows them to adapt, be agile, and not be beholden to a software company.
We’re frequently asked how we handle device certification. The answer is stunningly simple. Monolith has an open process that supports literally every device in the marketplace, both EMS- and device-based.
Ep. 2 of One2One explores how open device certification gives service providers unprecedented speed, flexibility and agility in their infrastructure management and monitoring. View the video to see how Monolith can liberate service providers from the vicious cycle of traditional device certification. You can also download our white paper “Why Open Device Certification is the New Best Practice.”
In a recent blog post I took a historical look at how early generation service assurance management came into being. If you have not read Service Assurance – Looking Back to See the Way Forward, I encourage you to do so prior to diving in here.
Here we move forward to discuss the next evolutionary leap in service assurance. In other words, how the industry (enabled by Monolith Software) is moving from event-based service assurance to proactive, KPI-driven, metric-based service assurance.
Event management has dominated the management landscape in Service Provider NOCs (Network Operation Centers) for well over a decade now. SPs have also come to realize the need for augmenting their event management capabilities with availability and network performance management solutions. Unfortunately, when they made the decision to add these capabilities, there was not a vendor that offered an integrated solution. This meant adding more disparate components to the monitoring architecture. That proved to be an awkward solution, but still doable. Why awkward? Because for many SPs, the event management realm is owned by the NOC or Operations staff, and the performance management tools are owned by the engineering and network capacity planning folks. On top of this, new business drivers began to complicate things even further. read more…
First off,welcome to the premier episode of One2One, the video blog series from Monolith Software. One2One covers topics, challenges and issues of the day relevant to anyone involved with infrastructure management.
Episode 1 reveals our secret to slashing implementation time when system upgrades involve non-standard equipment. Recently we encountered this during a POC with a large client. As is often the case, our challenge was to prove how fast Monolith Software can be implemented. The client had a variety of equipment in place, and the vast majority of their equipment, we got up and running, no problem. However there was one specific vendor device that, when we tried to poll some statistics from it via SNMP, the result returned in a non-standard way. The device just choked in response to our data request. We learned that the equipment was not yet up to SNMP standard – this would’ve stopped any software update, from any vendor.
Based on our experience in this space, this kind of issue can take one, three or even six months to resolve in the typical scenario of waiting until the equipment vendor brought their device up to standard.
So how long did it take us to conquer this challenge? Monolith, because of its flexible rules-based code did it in ONE DAY. View the video and find out how:
And by the way, One2One is not just a conversation amongst us here at Monolith. Send us your comments, topics and issues you want to see covered. One2One is even better when it’s a conversation with YOU.
Stop me if you’ve heard this story before. A large corporation’s IT department initiates a software development project to fulfill an infrastructure management and monitoring need. This leads to cost overruns, scope creep, deployment delays, and discord between IT and the corporation at-large. It’s a shame that history repeats in this particular case. Because there’s ample evidence that less than a third of these projects succeed (completed on time and budget with all promised features).
Standish Findings By Year. Updated for 2009 report.
This is sobering news for IT managers who embark on in-house software development projects. Documentation that warns against this approach is voluminous. So, why are so many organizations still attempting these projects, and why are we discussing them? read more…
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…
