If your company’s network isn’t performing at its best, neither are your employees. Network performance management (NPM) is vital for ensuring networks run smoothly and at optimal performance, but it’s also often overlooked.
Given the complexity of any given network and all the factors that can impact its performance, network performance management must be given proper time, consideration, and resources. So, let’s look at network performance management, why it matters, and what network performance management tools can do for you.
What is Network Performance Management?
Network performance management is the optimizing, securing, and overseeing of a network. This includes monitoring the network, analyzing its performance, and finding ways to improve its functionality so that work relying on network performance can go smoothly and efficiently.
Network performance management is vital for a healthy business infrastructure, as it improves productivity and helps protect the network from potential issues or threats. Without good performance management, an organization’s network can stumble and slow to a crawl or be left vulnerable to a cyberattack.
Understanding the Impact of Network Performance
Some might wonder why network performance matters; surely a few seconds of loading time won’t slow down a business that much, right? Well, let’s consider the impact of network performance.
First, consider how many devices companies and their employees use for work every day. Between computers, smartphones, specialized devices, personal devices for companies with bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and so on, there’s a significant number of devices connected to a single network, generating a ton of network data.
What happens when the network’s performance begins to suffer? A slow network doesn’t just cost a single employee a few minutes each day – it impacts the entire organization, leading to hours upon hours of lost productivity.
Then consider what would happen if the network crashed altogether. In addition to the time and productivity lost, it could cause the company to lose valuable data or work that will take a while to recover.
Additionally, network performance management helps monitor the devices connected to the network. This is valuable for ensuring each endpoint is supported, along with identifying and preventing intrusions.
In short, network performance management is vital to seamless and efficient work across a company's network.
Network Performance Management vs. Network Performance Monitoring: What’s the Difference?
Perhaps you’ve already heard of network performance monitoring and want to know if it’s the same as network performance management. While the two do share many similarities, they are not the same.
Network performance management is focused on improving network efficiency and ensuring long-term performance. Its goal is to make sure the network runs smoothly and efficiently over extended periods and can support each of the devices connected to it.
Network performance monitoring, on the other hand, primarily tracks performance in real time and alerts users about potential issues. This is more focused on the here and now, monitoring for any problems that need to be addressed in the short term.
Key Processes Involved in Network Performance Management
Network performance management software uses multiple processes to monitor and support networks, and each one is vital to the network’s overall health and efficiency. These processes include:
Traffic analysis: Digital traffic, like real-world traffic, can be frustrating when it slows to crawl. Traffic analysis monitors the speed of your network’s traffic and optimizes routing to prevent congestion, improving performance across the network.
Network monitoring: Network monitoring is vital to understanding how your network performs. This collects data from across devices to identify patterns, abnormalities, and potential problems so they can be handled properly.
Performance optimization: The goal of network performance management isn’t just to monitor the network to ensure nothing goes wrong — it’s also to find ways to optimize performance. This includes identifying potential issues, ways to improve network traffic, enhancing the quality of service, resolving problems, and so forth.
Troubleshooting: Troubleshooting is an important part of any network performance management process. If an error or issue occurs, troubleshooting not only resolves the problem but also identifies the cause so it can be addressed and prevent future issues.
Fault management: Fault management detects and resolves network issues. Quickly identifying and fixing problems helps ensure stability and reliability, so you can maintain efficiency and avoid network failures.
Configuration management: Configuration management ensures your device settings are up to date and meet your company’s needs. This includes security patches, firmware updates, and more, while keeping all your devices and endpoints properly configured to your business standards.
How Does Network Performance Management Help Your Businesses?
With all that said, what are the benefits of network performance management? Proper management brings many benefits to businesses, including:
1. Improved Network Uptime
Nothing slows down productivity quite like downtime. Good NPM can ensure your network runs smoothly and address issues as they emerge, ensuring more uptime and fewer interruptions.
2. Faster Issue Resolution
The best time to resolve a problem is before it occurs. Network performance management can identify abnormalities and potential issues as soon as they appear, so they can be addressed and fixed before they become a problem.
3. Cost Savings
What happens when your network runs more efficiently, downtime is reduced, and your network runs faster? You get more value out of your network and all its investments. Good performance management leads to cost savings, as it reduces the losses caused by poor networks.
4. Improved User Experience
No one likes slow connections, constant crashes, or frequent network issues. Network performance management helps networks run fast and smoothly, creating a better user experience for employees and customers across your network.
Challenges Businesses Face in Network Performance Management
For all its benefits, network performance management is not without its challenges. Several common obstacles can make management a difficult task, but with proper preparation, they can be mitigated.
Common network performance management challenges include:
Limited resources:
Companies only have so many resources to work with, and IT teams may already be stretched to their limits. While network performance management tools can monitor networks, detect issues, and analyze traffic, IT teams still need agents and resources to carry out improvements and fixes.
Scalability issues: As companies grow, so does the amount of data being collected and processed through their networks. Network performance management software needs to be scalable enough to keep up with the company’s growth, otherwise it will start to falter.
Lack of skilled personnel: While network performance management tools can include automation features, a skilled IT team is still necessary for many tasks. If a company doesn’t have the skilled agents needed for network management, then the management software won’t be able to do their work.
Integration issues: Most business networks have a large number of tools and systems integrated into them, which can be a challenge for monitoring tools to connect with. If, for instance, a system uses legacy or proprietary protocols, it can be a challenge to connect everything properly and gather all the data the monitoring tools need.
Best Practices for Optimizing Your Network Performance Management Strategy
If you’re working on a network performance management strategy, you don’t have to go in blind. These are some of the best practices for optimizing your strategy:
Conduct Regular Assessments
Regular monitoring and analysis of your networks will help you identify patterns or potential issues you’ll want to watch. Be sure to track your device status, packet flow statistics, throughput rates, and more to ensure smooth traffic.
Leverage Automation Tools
Many routine, time-consuming tasks can be automated. This saves time and makes life easier for your agents, as it gives them time to focus on more pressing issues. Automating tasks like configuration updates, performance checks, patches, and so on can keep your network up to date and reduce the risk of human error.
Prioritize Key Network Areas
Be sure to set your priorities, including what metrics and KPIs you’ll want to track. This will help your teams focus on the areas that matter the most without getting bogged down with irrelevant data.
Train Your Team
Network performance management software can’t operate itself. Your staff should be trained on the performance management tools you use, how to use them effectively, and how to respond to issues they detect. This will help ensure your team is getting full use out of the software and keeping your network performance at its best.
Enhance Your Network Performance Management Strategy with Splashtop Remote Solutions
If you’re looking for a powerful tool to enhance network performance management, then there’s only one name you need to know: Splashtop.
Splashtop AEM (Autonomous Endpoint Management) empowers organizations to streamline IT operations and automate IT tasks while setting policies across their networks and gaining insight into all their connected devices.
With Splashtop AEM, you can monitor your endpoint health, patch statuses, compliance, and more. Additionally, proactive alerts and smart actions help you identify and resolve potential issues across your network, and automated updates ensure you always have the latest security patches and updates.
With Splashtop AEM, you can:
Automate IT tasks across distributed environments.
Customize and enforce policies throughout your endpoints for security and IT compliance.
Automate updates for operating systems and software
Monitor your endpoints from a centralized dashboard.
Quickly identify and fix potential issues with real-time alerts.
Automate routine tasks throughout your network
This makes Splashtop the perfect solution for improving network efficiency and performance. You can experience it for yourself today with a free trial:
