The Network Monitor

As it grows, your company will probably have an emergency at some point that warrants crisis management in IT. No matter if it's a data breach, natural disaster or product malfunction, you're usually the first blamed for its occurrence and the last credited with resolution. Even in the case of a weather event, sysadmins take the hot seat if user machines aren't up and running quickly. But as they say, people don't remember the mistake — they remember how you handled it.

Take pride in knowing that your company depends on its help desk. And when it comes to information technology problem solving, few skill sets are more valuable to ensure business continuity. Yep, even marketing execs and similar partners pale in comparison to those whose workload is defined by troubleshooting.

Historically, technology adoption has started in the workplace. Computing, unified communications, mobile devices, etc. all got the start in the corporate world and then made their way into the consumer space. In addition, when looking at age demographics, the early adopters of technology are typically twenty somethings.

U.S. armed forces take mobile network monitoring very seriously

Predicting the future isn't a perfect practice without a DeLorean. For support desks at SMBs, however, determining network bandwidth needs down the line is critical to sustained growth. The farmer's almanac may not cover network environments, but with a few helpful tips, you'll gain much-needed perspective on how to plan for current and eventual system requirements.

"The story of the blind men and an elephant originated in the Indian subcontinent from where it has widely diffused. It is a story of a group of blind men (or men in the dark) who touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement." (Source: Wikipedia)

Do you get bogged down trying to both maintain sufficient performance across your Microsoft applications, while troubleshooting related problems as they happen? If so, here are seven tips that will help you manage your software from Redmond:

Learn how to eliminate time wasters and get 30 minutes of your day back

In the early years of IT, data was stored on paper tapes

In my last post on the Ipswitch blog, I described how the Internet of Things (IoT) will change the nature of the IT team's role and responsibilities. The primary purpose of initiating an IoT strategy is to capture data from a broader population of product endpoints. As a result, IoT deployments are also creating a new set of application performance management (APM) and infrastructure monitoring requirements.

IT teams work valiantly behind the scenes every day to make sure their digital businesses stay connected.

Spotify recommends the next album you should play. Twitter customizes moments and stories you should be reading. The flash sale site Gilt personalizes online shopping down to your favorite brands and discounts. The best experiences on the Web and mobile apps involve clean design, interesting details and intuitive interactions. When companies strive to offer this experience in their apps, they often turn to the LAMP stack for enablement.

CES, the first big technology event of 2016, wrapped in Vegas last week and as expected, the Internet of Things (IoT) was a hot topic. If last year’s show was the one where everyone heard about the potential impact of disruptive technology, this year was certainly the year we saw the breadth and depth of the IoT. From the EHang personal minicopter to more fitness tracking devices than you could, erm well, shake a leg at, CES 2016 is abuzz with news of how technology is shrinking, rolling, flying and even becoming invisible.

It's been a year since Sony Pictures employees logged into their workstations, expecting to start a normal workday, when they were greeted by soundbites of gunfire, images of skeletons and threats scrolling across their monitors. To date, the Sony Pictures attack is arguably the most vivid example of advanced persistent threats used to disable a commercial victim. A corporate giant was reduced to posting paper memos, sending faxes and paying over 7,000 employees with paper checks.

Technology infrastructure has an expiration date. The problem? It's not stamped on the side of the carton. Or available online. The life cycle of any server, networking device or associated hardware is determined by a combination of local and market factors: What's the competition doing? How quickly is your business growing? Will C-suite executives approve any new spend?

Knowing which BYOD risks your fellow IT pros face is paramount in determining how to mitigate them. And the scope of BYOD's influence on company data hasn't stopped changing since your office first implemented a BYOD policy. What kinds of devices are users likely to bring to work with them? The range of devices encompasses more than just smartphones and tablets. Once these devices are identified, however, the risks they represent can help your team formulate a policy to keep resources safe when accessed from outside the network.

For the past few years, the tech industry has become fixated on kicking off the new year with a festival of connected devices at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The fact that this show has become so significant to the tech industry is another indication of the potential importance of the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) and growing impact of the ‘consumerization of IT’ on the way IT is adopted and managed.

Fashion designers and pop-culture mavens live by trendspotting; they pick up on what people are talking about, and distill it into styles and stories they care about.

In July this year, a computer fault forced United Airlines to ground its flights in the US for the second time in a matter of weeks. The problem, it turned out, was a ‘network connectivity’ issue caused by a computer router malfunction.

GeoEngineers is a small business with enterprise demands and a lot of pressure on its network. As an engineering firm with 400 employees located in 12 offices, managing the network presents many unique challenges. For example, its earth science engineers must be able to back up project files and submit data from the field at any time of day and from any location.