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5 Tools to Help Virtualize Your Network Operations Center

Michael Procopio

With the adjustment to the new normal of remote work, IT Operations teams are struggling for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest problems is disrupted communications patterns. At the office, it's easy to ask a coworker a question. For most, their subject matter experts — who were a desk or two away — are no longer readily available. Organizations now face a lack of tools that can funnel information one place leaving an operator to view multiple IT operations tools on different systems.

To deal with this situation, businesses should start by virtualizing your Network Operations Center (NOC). Here are five tools that can help:

Group Chat Tool

Operations teams need to modify their processes to remain effective in a remote working environment. Issues that once required a quick walk over to the IT team now demands a chat or call.

There is also a lot of benefit in just hearing other people talk about something that you can add value too, which goes away when you are remote.

Person to person chat tools have been around since AOL, but group chat tools provide new functions that are particularly useful for IT teams.

Single Pane of Glass

A recent study by Enterprise Management Associates shows that, on average, IT Operations teams have 23 tools. When working at an operations center, moving between the screens of various tools, while inefficient, is not impossible. There is a lot of desk space for all those monitors or wall space for projection.

For example, I have two monitors in my home office, and could even do three, but not 23 (remember that's just the average). I can bring up more virtual windows but that is not always as efficient as separate monitors.

To avoid the need for 23 separate monitors, IT teams should integrate tools to be condensed into a "single pane of glass." This makes it easier for an operator to keep track of everything going on and ensures everyone sees the same data.

Correlation and Analytics

A follow on to the single pane of glass is bringing all alerts and metrics into a single tool that you can apply event analytics and AIOps to all data.

For example, integrating synthetic monitoring data with system and network data can link an application performance slowdown with a network or system problem that is causing an application performance problem.

ChatOps

ChatOps, in this context, is the ability of IT operations tools to communicate with humans via a group chat tool. A chatbot takes commands from the group chat software and passes it on to the IT operations tool, then takes the tool's response and puts it in the group chat. This improves staff efficiency by allowing anyone in the chat room to issue a command where everyone can see the results. ChatOps becomes the physical version of everyone standing behind you while you type commands and see results on your monitor.

IT Process Automation

Automating tasks provides multiple benefits. It reduces human error, speeds execution, and can roll back a change. With advanced orchestration tools, you can control access to the workflows representing each task and can provide an audit trail.

Automation has the added benefit of reducing costs. In fact, I've seen customers save upwards of $4M by adopting IT process automation.

In conclusion, while most of the discussion has been focused on tools, a change in processes or culture may be needed to make the most of them. For the current situation and with the prospect that this situation will repeat in the future, your operations teams need to be able to be virtual when necessary. If you haven't started virtualizing your NOC yet, the best places to start are group chats and a single pane of glass. Group chat gets communications as close to being in the office as possible. Consolidating as much information as possible in one place minimizes context switching, which disrupts focused thinking, increasing the amount of time to find and fix the problem.

Most disaster recovery plans never thought to account for the situation we are going through now, but given the current realities organizations still need to ensure their teams remain effective. The tools described here help increase the efficiency and quality of your operations, even if you never had to work at home before.

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5 Tools to Help Virtualize Your Network Operations Center

Michael Procopio

With the adjustment to the new normal of remote work, IT Operations teams are struggling for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest problems is disrupted communications patterns. At the office, it's easy to ask a coworker a question. For most, their subject matter experts — who were a desk or two away — are no longer readily available. Organizations now face a lack of tools that can funnel information one place leaving an operator to view multiple IT operations tools on different systems.

To deal with this situation, businesses should start by virtualizing your Network Operations Center (NOC). Here are five tools that can help:

Group Chat Tool

Operations teams need to modify their processes to remain effective in a remote working environment. Issues that once required a quick walk over to the IT team now demands a chat or call.

There is also a lot of benefit in just hearing other people talk about something that you can add value too, which goes away when you are remote.

Person to person chat tools have been around since AOL, but group chat tools provide new functions that are particularly useful for IT teams.

Single Pane of Glass

A recent study by Enterprise Management Associates shows that, on average, IT Operations teams have 23 tools. When working at an operations center, moving between the screens of various tools, while inefficient, is not impossible. There is a lot of desk space for all those monitors or wall space for projection.

For example, I have two monitors in my home office, and could even do three, but not 23 (remember that's just the average). I can bring up more virtual windows but that is not always as efficient as separate monitors.

To avoid the need for 23 separate monitors, IT teams should integrate tools to be condensed into a "single pane of glass." This makes it easier for an operator to keep track of everything going on and ensures everyone sees the same data.

Correlation and Analytics

A follow on to the single pane of glass is bringing all alerts and metrics into a single tool that you can apply event analytics and AIOps to all data.

For example, integrating synthetic monitoring data with system and network data can link an application performance slowdown with a network or system problem that is causing an application performance problem.

ChatOps

ChatOps, in this context, is the ability of IT operations tools to communicate with humans via a group chat tool. A chatbot takes commands from the group chat software and passes it on to the IT operations tool, then takes the tool's response and puts it in the group chat. This improves staff efficiency by allowing anyone in the chat room to issue a command where everyone can see the results. ChatOps becomes the physical version of everyone standing behind you while you type commands and see results on your monitor.

IT Process Automation

Automating tasks provides multiple benefits. It reduces human error, speeds execution, and can roll back a change. With advanced orchestration tools, you can control access to the workflows representing each task and can provide an audit trail.

Automation has the added benefit of reducing costs. In fact, I've seen customers save upwards of $4M by adopting IT process automation.

In conclusion, while most of the discussion has been focused on tools, a change in processes or culture may be needed to make the most of them. For the current situation and with the prospect that this situation will repeat in the future, your operations teams need to be able to be virtual when necessary. If you haven't started virtualizing your NOC yet, the best places to start are group chats and a single pane of glass. Group chat gets communications as close to being in the office as possible. Consolidating as much information as possible in one place minimizes context switching, which disrupts focused thinking, increasing the amount of time to find and fix the problem.

Most disaster recovery plans never thought to account for the situation we are going through now, but given the current realities organizations still need to ensure their teams remain effective. The tools described here help increase the efficiency and quality of your operations, even if you never had to work at home before.

Hot Topics

The Latest

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...