Monitoring system video: How We Oversee 2000+ Network Devices

I wrote 2 blog posts about our most productive assistant in early 2018 – surveillance/monitoring system. How I found out that we needed it and what we could do with it. We keep things in order and we sleep soundly thanks to the system (at least in terms of networks 🙂 ) because we know that everything works.

Since an image is worth a thousand words, and a video a thousand images, I have created a video showing the monitoring system we use. Originally, I believed that it would only take a few hours and all would be done. Finally, it turned out to be a work of about 24 hours and the result is not as much I would imagine (there is noise in the background, my voice is uneven, some things could be better described…). I respect youtubers so much more after this very experience (it’s not as easy as I have thought). 🙂

Video is also part of our new website for internal network managers. Our colleague Lucka has worked on the site. We think that by working together we can create a safer and more reliable IT environment. I base my opinion on our experience. At the moment, we have customers without internal IT (most of them), but also with internal IT departments.

I see the following benefits in cooperating with internal IT departments:

• Internal IT is in daily contact with users and knows what is happening within the company (giving us, for example, suggestions for improving some functionality). As we are almosť always working off-site, we do not have such a user contact.
• On the contrary, we are in daily contact with manufacturers and suppliers. We know who to contact in case of problems (which are beyond our IT administrators skills) or what new servers/switches/routers to choose (because we have experience with more than 100 other customers). We have “hard earned” channels of communication, paid premium levels of support, and technology and security specialists. It would often be financially inefficient for a customer to have these specialists or subscriptions internally – they don’t need them most of the time.
• Internal IT knows the information systems the customer uses in detail. We will never have such detailed knowledge – it would be too expensive for the customer to train us, and we are equally focused on other technologies we need.
• We have great tools and technologies for efficient network management, security, and automation. We then share these with internal IT and improve it on the basis of feedback and shared discussions. We have also begun to organize joint meetings/sessions where we share our experience and the latest know-how from the IT world.
• A small IT department will also find convenient to leave for a holiday and turn off their mobile phones and clean their heads (I haven’t had this option for 7 years).

I am convinced (and my experience confirms it) that when we work together with internal IT to manage the network, we can get more done and of higher quality. Which will be necessary for the following prospects: lack of people, growth in devices, increasing complexity and more sophisticated cyber threats.

What do you think about it? Please share your experience with relationships between internal IT and outsourcing companies. What do you think about our monitoring system?