Out of Band Management & The Virtual NOC
I recently came across an interesting article at SearchNetworking. The piece was thought provoking in its approach to distributed networks and distributed NOC operations. We may not often think in these terms, but it’s important to enumerate the benefits that Out-of-Band (OOB) Management provides to the organization. We often think about OOB as an “emergency” service, but clearly there’s more to the story:
By moving to distributed network management and out-of-band networks, you are automatically reducing travel both to and from the NOC, as well as truck rolls to repair remote network devices. This will result in reduced emissions from traffic and an overall “greener” network. But even if you don’t care about the environmental impact, you should care about the savings. A virtual NOC with out-of-band management is also more cost-efficient. Commute time is converted into work time, employee retention is increased, fault resolution time is dramatically decreased, and network reliability is improved. All in all, there is a dramatic reduction of total cost of ownership of the network.
The article made me think that if businesses can reconsider traditional operations models, the flexibility provided by such a stance can be tremendous.
Additionally, if the security for such an operations paradigm can be properly hardened, the upside is huge. If you want to see the whole article you need to register at the SeachNetworking website; here’s the link:
http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/tip/Distributed-network-management-means-no-more-hard-NOCs
Adam Cady
Senior Account Executive