Measuring The Value Of Broadcast Network Management Systems

Implementing an end-to-end, multi-vendor network management system can have an immediate positive impact on your operation and deliver a surprisingly quick return on investment, writes Chris Barlow, Technical Director at Astec.

The role of an end to end, multi-vendor Network Management System is very often underestimated. In lots of cases, standard IT network management tools or element management systems provided by broadcast equipment manufacturers are generally regarded as being suitable for most applications. On the other hand, they can be regarded simply as a system which is able to monitor lots of equipment from numerous vendors, offering little tangible value and leading to alarm fatigue as support teams struggle to deal with the volume of alerts the system generates.

However, a modern Network Management System such as iBroadcast from Astec offers so much more; in simple terms it is continuously monitoring all critical parameters across your entire ecosystem, performing real-time performance analysis, providing automated diagnosis and in many situations it can even make decisions and take the appropriate action automatically. Furthermore, it offers a centralised control capability, unifying underlying systems and consolidating control through a single, intuitive user interface.

IT network management tools may provide a subset of these capabilities and are generally the first implementation when it is recognised that some level of network management is required. Whilst these tools may provide a significant amount of out of the box capability, this is usually limited to monitoring only. Furthermore, they do not provide the valuable context to enable you to understand the impact of an issue on your operation.

Element Management Systems on the other hand, are typically provided by manufacturers to monitor and manage the configuration of their own equipment. Whilst many offer third-party connectivity, their product roadmap will be largely biased towards support of their own equipment so the level of integration of third-party equipment and systems will be less extensive than a vendor agnostic solution. And as the number of Element Management Systems you have across your platform increases, so does the amount of space required in your control rooms to host their user interfaces. Plus you have the added challenge of determining the root cause of any issues when every system may be telling you a different version of the truth.

So why is iBroadcast any different? Essentially it combines the capabilities of IT management tools and Element Management Systems but offers much more in addition. It becomes the single, high-level application through which the underlying supervision systems can be consolidated, enabling you to effectively have a single point of reference across your entire ecosystem. It orchestrates the aggregation of data from the underlying systems to provide a clear picture of the real-time status of your entire operation which can be invaluable in rapidly pin-pointing the root cause of an issue, significantly reducing the time to solution.

How do you measure the value that iBroadcast delivers? There are many ways. Firstly, implementing iBroadcast can provide a more streamlined operation, significantly reducing the workload of operations and support teams. This enables you to achieve more, with fewer resources, by arming those resources with the most accurate and up to date information that enables them to make timely, informed decisions.

Secondly, beyond simply reducing the time to detect, diagnose and overcome an issue, additional value can be derived from avoiding issues in the first place and identifying areas for performance improvement that you didn’t previously know existed. With iBroadcast, you can even monitor the performance of your business against strategic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) over extended periods of time, allowing you to track your performance against these objectives and spot and react to deviation before it has a detrimental impact on the services you provide to your customers.

Furthermore, the pace of change in the industry is incredibly fast and the current shift towards IP-based video infrastructures is creating anxiety and uncertainty. To iBroadcast, the underlying equipment or technology is abstracted away so any changes can be quickly and easily integrated to provide control and monitoring continuity, thus mitigating the risks of large-scale technology refreshes.

Finally, when you have the capability to measure the performance of your operation in real-time, you can store the data for historical analysis. This provides you with an operational 'flight-recorder' which can be used to understand the sequence of events that led to an issue. This can be invaluable in preventing those issues from recurring, but of much greater potential value is the insight that data can provide through advanced analytics, driving changes and improvements in your business processes which can identify and support new revenue opportunities.

www.astecsolutions.com