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Log Data Now Outranks Traditional Data Sources for Network Operations Management

Jim Frey

As network managers, engineers, and operators strive to protect the integrity and performance of enterprise networks, they are faced with an onslaught of data and metrics. They must wade quickly and carefully through this deluge in order to perform monitoring, troubleshooting, and planning. With recent trends moving technology toward software-defined and programmable infrastructure, as well as the parallel convergence of IT operations across multiple technology domains, network log data is being increasingly both used and appreciated. But proper and effective use of network log data is not without its challenges.

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) released its latest research report entitled Log Analytics for Network Operations Management which takes a detailed look at the ways in which network log data is being harvested, analyzed, and used for network operations management. Based on the experiences and findings of over 190 enterprise practitioners, log analytics best practices are provided.

Some of the key findings in this study include:

■ 96% of participants indicated that network log data was of average importance or higher within their overall hierarchy of network management data sources, and 64% felt is “More important than most” or “Most important”.

■ 75% of shops are either currently using a central log analysis system or are planning to consolidate the multiple tools they have into a single system.

■ The biggest challenge most face when using network log data is “Knowing what to look for” and consequently the most highly valued feature for log analytics is “Fast search”.

■ Over 90% of organizations are applying one or more forms of advanced analytics in the processing of network log data, such as root cause analysis, proactive alerting, threat identification, and performance trending.

■ Over 80% of organizations are using network log data to support higher level BSM/ITSM initiatives, most particularly for IT service quality monitoring (61%).

EMA has been tracking the role that network log data plays in network management disciplines for years. What is most striking is that log data now outranks traditional network management data sources such as SNMP, NetFlow, and packet analysis as most heavily used and valued for multiple use cases. EMA recommends that networking professionals add log data to their portfolio of viewpoints while also seeking a means to closely integrate and align that viewpoint with others in order to get the most impactful results.

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Log Data Now Outranks Traditional Data Sources for Network Operations Management

Jim Frey

As network managers, engineers, and operators strive to protect the integrity and performance of enterprise networks, they are faced with an onslaught of data and metrics. They must wade quickly and carefully through this deluge in order to perform monitoring, troubleshooting, and planning. With recent trends moving technology toward software-defined and programmable infrastructure, as well as the parallel convergence of IT operations across multiple technology domains, network log data is being increasingly both used and appreciated. But proper and effective use of network log data is not without its challenges.

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) released its latest research report entitled Log Analytics for Network Operations Management which takes a detailed look at the ways in which network log data is being harvested, analyzed, and used for network operations management. Based on the experiences and findings of over 190 enterprise practitioners, log analytics best practices are provided.

Some of the key findings in this study include:

■ 96% of participants indicated that network log data was of average importance or higher within their overall hierarchy of network management data sources, and 64% felt is “More important than most” or “Most important”.

■ 75% of shops are either currently using a central log analysis system or are planning to consolidate the multiple tools they have into a single system.

■ The biggest challenge most face when using network log data is “Knowing what to look for” and consequently the most highly valued feature for log analytics is “Fast search”.

■ Over 90% of organizations are applying one or more forms of advanced analytics in the processing of network log data, such as root cause analysis, proactive alerting, threat identification, and performance trending.

■ Over 80% of organizations are using network log data to support higher level BSM/ITSM initiatives, most particularly for IT service quality monitoring (61%).

EMA has been tracking the role that network log data plays in network management disciplines for years. What is most striking is that log data now outranks traditional network management data sources such as SNMP, NetFlow, and packet analysis as most heavily used and valued for multiple use cases. EMA recommends that networking professionals add log data to their portfolio of viewpoints while also seeking a means to closely integrate and align that viewpoint with others in order to get the most impactful results.

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Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

For years, DevOps teams operated under a simple assumption: collect enough telemetry, and you can find and fix any problem. That assumption is breaking down. Modern enterprises now operate across microservices, hybrid cloud environments, APIs, Kubernetes, and highly automated delivery pipelines. Releases happen continuously, dependencies shift constantly, and failures spread faster than teams can diagnose them ...

New Relic surveyed IT and engineering leaders from the media and entertainment (M&E) sector to understand what's working — and where challenges persist with their observability practices. The findings reveal how M&E organizations are navigating rising platform complexity, audience expectations, and AI-driven change. Below are five takeaways that stand out ...

Let me start with something I've seen play out more times than I can count. A team hits a wall with the cloud. Costs creep up, then spike. Performance starts to feel inconsistent. Someone in finance asks a simple question like "why did this double?" and nobody has a clean answer ... Maybe this isn't the right place for everything. That realization feels like a breakthrough, like you've identified the problem. In reality, you've just identified the starting line ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 24, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network observability tool sprawl ... 

In cloud-native systems, scaling is often as simple as moving a slider. For on-premise databases, the stakes are different. Over-provisioning hardware is expensive. Under-provisioning leads to performance bottlenecks that are difficult to fix once the equipment is in the rack ...

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