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5 Steps to Enhancing Network Observability for Your NOC

Jeremy Rossbach

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences.

A successful network observability practice means improving operational efficiency through baby steps. There is no reason you need to boil the ocean here and rip and replace your current toolsets or processes. But the more network complexity you deal with (software-defined tech, work from anywhere, public network usage, cloud), the more you need to continually improve network operations to stay ahead of this complexity.

Image
Broadcom

Stage 1 The Hyper-Reactive NOC

To combat swivel chair monitoring and hyper-reactive triage due to way too many monitoring toolsets, look for ways to Integrate or consolidate toolsets. 80% of orgs report a high priority to consolidate while 72% seek tight integration in their tools. Network operations with tight integration across tools have more success with NetOps.

Stage 2 The Reactive NOC

After starting the integrations or consolidations of toolsets, start expanding on the data collected and analytical features supplied by your monitoring solution to start reducing alarm noise and see the bigger picture of network device health. 57% reported they want more unified alerting (centralized alerting) while 56% say more event correlation is needed.

Stage 3 The Proactive NOC

In stage 3, network alert noise is moderate, virtual and software-defined technologies are monitored in silos by vendor-specific tools, leaving no correlation to underlay and overlay network performance. Here you should start to embrace AI-driven network observability solutions that have domain expertise in public cloud networks, WAN overlays, WAN underlays, Wi-Fi, and data center fabrics. 95% of respondents report that they don't get all of the ISP information they need to triage effectively.

Stage 4 The Predictive NOC

Here, you are doing a great job at collecting data across on-prem and public network infrastructure for end-to-end triage of network experiences, false alerts are rare and advanced analytics (AI/ML) is enabling predictive management with baselining, and anomaly detection. Consider expanding your observability into synthetics and web testing capabilities to extend visibility into public networks and an overall broader collection of data to enable proactive monitoring. Also, look to start adopting telemetry features to stream real-time events into a centralized event mgmt/analytics/reporting and automated workflows for traffic engineering, troubleshooting and network performance optimization.

Stage 5 The Automated NOC

In stage 5, you have full visibility across private and public networks to understand network performance at every hop in the end-to-end network path, advanced analytics for alarm noise reduction, configuration management and synthetic testing to evaluate the resilience of your network and public cloud and ISP networks.

Consider "low hanging fruit" network automation use cases like network configuration roll backs to known good state, enriching alarms with powerful event data or automated escalation of issues to level 2 or level 3 engineers and architects.

A mature network observability practice for your NOC  maps a progression from fragmented toolsets with limited coverage to a more integrated, platform approach with coverage for modern, hybrid networks and advanced analytics. As your network operations teams progress along this model, you can shift from reactive postures where most of their time is spent on responding to and troubleshooting alerts to a proactive posture where you are detecting and resolving problems before the business is impacted. 

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IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

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In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

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5 Steps to Enhancing Network Observability for Your NOC

Jeremy Rossbach

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences.

A successful network observability practice means improving operational efficiency through baby steps. There is no reason you need to boil the ocean here and rip and replace your current toolsets or processes. But the more network complexity you deal with (software-defined tech, work from anywhere, public network usage, cloud), the more you need to continually improve network operations to stay ahead of this complexity.

Image
Broadcom

Stage 1 The Hyper-Reactive NOC

To combat swivel chair monitoring and hyper-reactive triage due to way too many monitoring toolsets, look for ways to Integrate or consolidate toolsets. 80% of orgs report a high priority to consolidate while 72% seek tight integration in their tools. Network operations with tight integration across tools have more success with NetOps.

Stage 2 The Reactive NOC

After starting the integrations or consolidations of toolsets, start expanding on the data collected and analytical features supplied by your monitoring solution to start reducing alarm noise and see the bigger picture of network device health. 57% reported they want more unified alerting (centralized alerting) while 56% say more event correlation is needed.

Stage 3 The Proactive NOC

In stage 3, network alert noise is moderate, virtual and software-defined technologies are monitored in silos by vendor-specific tools, leaving no correlation to underlay and overlay network performance. Here you should start to embrace AI-driven network observability solutions that have domain expertise in public cloud networks, WAN overlays, WAN underlays, Wi-Fi, and data center fabrics. 95% of respondents report that they don't get all of the ISP information they need to triage effectively.

Stage 4 The Predictive NOC

Here, you are doing a great job at collecting data across on-prem and public network infrastructure for end-to-end triage of network experiences, false alerts are rare and advanced analytics (AI/ML) is enabling predictive management with baselining, and anomaly detection. Consider expanding your observability into synthetics and web testing capabilities to extend visibility into public networks and an overall broader collection of data to enable proactive monitoring. Also, look to start adopting telemetry features to stream real-time events into a centralized event mgmt/analytics/reporting and automated workflows for traffic engineering, troubleshooting and network performance optimization.

Stage 5 The Automated NOC

In stage 5, you have full visibility across private and public networks to understand network performance at every hop in the end-to-end network path, advanced analytics for alarm noise reduction, configuration management and synthetic testing to evaluate the resilience of your network and public cloud and ISP networks.

Consider "low hanging fruit" network automation use cases like network configuration roll backs to known good state, enriching alarms with powerful event data or automated escalation of issues to level 2 or level 3 engineers and architects.

A mature network observability practice for your NOC  maps a progression from fragmented toolsets with limited coverage to a more integrated, platform approach with coverage for modern, hybrid networks and advanced analytics. As your network operations teams progress along this model, you can shift from reactive postures where most of their time is spent on responding to and troubleshooting alerts to a proactive posture where you are detecting and resolving problems before the business is impacted. 

Hot Topics

The Latest

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...