When you’re talking about network management, observability can mean different things. Generally speaking, it builds off of the monitoring and management that organizations are already doing. However, where a traditional network management solution might stop at the “What”, observability means going deeper into the “Why”.

As an example, traditional tools will allow the NOC to see when network performance drops. That’s the “what”. The issue is sent over to the network engineers, who have to investigate the issue on their own to determine the cause. Once they figure out the "why", they can develop a fix and close the issue.

A network management solution with observability automates and expedites this process. Instead of stopping at the “what”, observability lets the NOC see the "why". Using more data from more sources, and leveraging advanced analytics to make sense of the data, this solution will provide context to the network event. In NOM’s case, the drop in performance might be correlated with a change event viewable through the Change Overlay in the network performance graph. We call this Change Monitoring.

While Change Monitoring isn’t the only element necessary for network observability, it is an essential part of the equation. To demonstrate the importance of monitoring for change, we’ve created this infographic. The TL;DR is this: Observability supercharges your NOC.

When the NOC can see more context around network events, network engineers can spend more time on fixing the issue rather than investigating the cause. Sometimes the NOC can solve the problem without ever involving the network engineers. This can dramatically reduce MTTR, which benefits the entire organization.

Related Items

NOM Reporting — SaaS Practitioner Portal
NOM 2022.05 Documentation
Recorded Webinar: What’s New in Network Operations Management – May 2022 Release

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