IT Archives - YetOpen

Why You Need an Open Source Monitoring Solution

by Lidia Balio | Apr 7, 2021 | IT, Monitoring, Open Source

Open source monitoring solutions can help you maintain your IT network while saving money and providing peace of mind.

Monitoring the network of your business is crucial for many different reasons, and you want to make sure that you are always able to check in on what is most important to you. For example, what devices are accessing your network? What does your uptime looking like? What are your bandwidth utilization rates?

However, utilizing proprietary software may have limited you to picking and choosing which issues from your network you’re allowed to monitor, due to lack of available features or cost. Open source solutions, on the other hand, are some of the most cost-effective, powerful, and customizable tools of your business.

What Is a Monitoring Solution?

Before explaining why you need an open source monitoring solution, it helps to define what we mean by a monitoring solution. As Cisco explains:

Network monitoring provides the information that network administrators need to determine, in real time, whether a network is running optimally

Below, we discuss 3 main reasons why you need to have an open source monitoring solution.

Reason #1 You Need an Open Source Monitoring Solution: More Features, at a Lower-Cost

One of the biggest benefits of open source software is being able to build the solution that is appropriate for your business at a fraction of the price of your typical proprietary software solutions. If you ever felt restricted by what proprietary software tools were out there–maybe you saw tools that offered certain features you wanted but lacked others, or the price was out of your budget–open source is your best bet.

Building a monitoring solution that is tailored to your business needs and is cost-effective also helps you put that extra budget towards other matters you need to attend to.

Reason #2 You Need an Open Source Monitoring Solution: Security and Peace of Mind

When you see the benefits of being able to add custom features that you enjoy using at a cost-friendly price, you may think that there has to be catch: maybe open source solutions are not as secure as my proprietary tool I’m using?

Actually, open source solutions are incredibly secure, however. As Nahla from toolbox.com states,“There is much less open-source malware, any flaws are usually found and patched right away, and most developers [in the open-source community] actively collaborate on making programs and apps more secure by default.”

Additionally, you want to feel comfortable with the solution you’re using and the future of the solution within your business. Sometimes there are features that are working incredibly well with your current proprietary software, and before you know it your provider tells you that if you want to continue using that feature, you’re going to have to pay for a new “premium” membership to have full access.

With an open source monitoring solution, you’ll always have access to every feature that you want or need, as long as you want or need it. Because the open source solution was developed for you, you will always be in charge of what features get to stay, which ones can be phased out, and which new features you’d like to add.

Reason #3 You Need an Open Source Monitoring Solution: Scalability for Your Business

Finally, we understand that for many businesses, the goal is set on growing, expanding, and trending upwards in your ability to serve more customers and clients.

The great news is that open-source solutions are prepared for such growth!

If you started out with only a few devices accessing your business’ network, or only interacting with a few clients through your website–open-source solutions can be great for a small company to get started. The added benefit is that as your business grows, and you need to monitor a larger network of devices and access points, you don’t have to worry about needing to purchase the next level of a proprietary software program, or needing to switch to a bigger company’s product to meet your newly expanded needs. With open source, you can use the same tools you have been using, and can work with a qualified developer to add new features as you need them, or even features that don’t exist anywhere else.

Whether you’re getting tired of paying too much for your current proprietary monitoring solution, or you’re thinking of features that you wish you had access to, consider going open source for your future monitoring solution.

3 Reasons Why You Need a Monitoring Solution for Your IT Network

by Lidia Balio | Mar 31, 2021 | Cybersecurity, IT, Monitoring, Uncategorized

You may not think you need a monitoring solution for IT network, but you’d be wrong.

As a company, you are always looking to do your best for your clients and for your own employees, especially when it comes to working online. Clients may be trying to access your website or their own tools virtually, and your employees may be utilizing the company’s network to perform their tasks throughout the workday. One of the biggest issues that can bring all of that work to a grinding halt is an issue with your IT network.

No matter how big or small your business is, being able to monitor your IT network at all times to ensure a high-functioning and quality experience for all who are connecting to it is paramount. But, before diving into the reasons why you need a monitoring solution for your IT network, it helps to define what we mean by a monitoring solution.

For our definition, we take Cisco’s concise explanation that:

Network monitoring provides the information that network administrators need to determine, in real-time, whether a network is running optimally.

Here are our top 3 reasons why you need a monitoring solution for your IT network.

Reason #1: Improve Your Network Uptime

As we mentioned above, if your IT network were to have an issue or fail, it can bring all of your business to a grinding halt — something that no business wants to have to worry about.

A network monitoring solution can help put some of that stressful thinking to rest. Your monitoring solution can allow you to stay updated on the status of your network every minute of every day without you having to manually go in and check things yourself. You can set up notifications to be sent to your phone or email when your monitoring solution notices an irregularity or any kind of network failure.

Being able to get an immediate update on any issues allows you to act quickly to get things back up and running before a client notices or before a business begins grinding to a halt.

Reason #2: Diagnosing Issues Swiftly

Building off of the fact that your monitoring solution will be able to inform you about any issues as they occur, it also allows you to diagnose what the issue is and what caused it quickly. Without a monitoring solution, if you were to be informed about a network issue on your own, you would have to work through multiple troubleshooting sessions manually to diagnose and determine where the error is occurring.

This could lead to more downtime for your network as you meticulously do your best to find the cause of your issues, what clients it’s affecting, and how to remedy the situation.

Reason #3: Improve Network Security

Unfortunately, as more business is done online, there are more opportunities for hackers to steal your data, and the last thing that you want to happen to your business is a large data breach.

As helpsystems mentions:

By regularly monitoring traffic on critical devices, it’s easy to spot suspicious changes in inbound and outbound traffic. Having in-depth visibility into network activity helps you proactively identify malicious network activity and find holes to patch that could turn into larger security issues in the future.

Having a monitoring solution allows some more peace of mind as you will know all there is to know about your network at any given time.

Whether you are thinking about adding a monitoring solution to your IT network for the first time, or you are thinking about transitioning to a new network monitoring solution partner, this is a critical investment that you absolutely need for your business.

DevOps Benefits for Business: What It Is and What It Can Do for Your Company

by Lidia Balio | Jan 20, 2021 | Customer Experience, Development, DevOps, IT, Operations

If you’re here to learn about DevOps benefits for business, you’ve come to the right place. As a company or organization that is continuously evolving, adding content and services, or implementing new technologies, it’s important to have an understanding of DevOps and what it can do for your company. However, before you get started in understanding exactly what you need to be doing, or what you expect from DevOps, it’s important to know what DevOps really means. Not only that, but we also discuss some of the major benefits of adopting a DevOps philosophy at your company.

What is DevOps?

The term DevOps actually comes from two different sides or focal points of a company: Development and Operations. But aside from being a simple combination of two different words, DevOps is so much more than that.

As Gartner defines DevOps:

DevOps represents a change in IT culture, focusing on rapid IT service delivery through the adoption of agile, lean practices in the context of a system-oriented approach. DevOps emphasizes people (and culture), and seeks to improve collaboration between operations and development teams. DevOps implementations utilize technology— especially automation tools that can leverage an increasingly programmable and dynamic infrastructure from a life cycle perspective.

DevOps has increasingly become a philosophy that a company should implement in order to improve communication and collaboration across teams that may have otherwise been siloed or have been working mostly independently of one another.

How Can DevOps Benefit your Company?

Many large tech companies such as Amazon and Atlassian have started to promote the power of DevOps philosophies in their work structure and how it has helped them create better products and services. So, how can DevOps benefit your company? Below are just some of the important benefits DevOps can create.

DevOps Benefit for Business #1: Increased Communication and Collaboration

The first major benefit of implementing DevOps is increased communication and collaboration in your company. What makes this improvement so important is how it changes the mindset of the various departments in your company. Communicating more often across department lines and focusing more on working together can help your teams focus less on department-specific goals, and spend more time focusing on company goals and how they can contribute to them. The more that employees work together across departments, the more likely they are to see the value in each other’s skill sets and how they impact the final product or service. Increased communication and collaboration also fosters innovation and ideation across the company as more opinions and thoughts are shared with more people.

DevOps Benefit for Business #2: Speed and Efficiency

The second major benefit of a DevOps philosophy is increased efficiency and speed in the work that your employees do. Due to the collaborative nature of DevOps, development cycles can be shortened, which means quicker deployment of systems, services, and products to the customer. DevOps can also help you do continuous service delivery for everything that your company has to offer, which is becoming essential in almost every industry. People want products and services that provide instantaneous support, updates, and upgrades.

DevOps Benefit for Business #3: Better Customer Experience

If your teams are communicating better, working together better, and the products you offer are getting delivered faster, you are also delivering a better customer experience. The customer experience no longer ends at the time of purchase. Consumers want support. They want help utilizing products and services. They want to make sure they’re buying the best product or service to meet their needs. And if they begin to doubt any of these things, they will look elsewhere the next time they decide to buy.

It is easy to lose sight of one or more elements of the customer experience. With multiple departments in the same company (production, marketing, sales, logistics, support, etc.) it is easy for wires to get crossed. It is easy for individual customers to fall through the cracks.

By increasing communication, collaboration, and development, DevOps can help your company ensure that every customer gets their needs met. It can improve customer satisfaction and customer retention.

If all of this piques your interest or you’re looking to implement a DevOps philosophy in your company, reach out to us at YetOpen and we can help you get started!