
Author Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.
Stephen Brown is the Product Marketing Manager for network analysis vendor Network Instruments with nearly a decade of experience in network management and security. Areas of interest include data loss prevention, network compliance, and VoIP management. Stephen is a member of InfraGard and graduated with a degree in Marketing from the University of Iowa.
Open any popular IT publication and you’re bound to see countless articles on how cloud computing is going to change everything from application management to climate change. With all these claims, it can be hard to understand what cloud computing really is and how it will impact network management.
In this article, we’ll cut through the hype and provide practical advice for monitoring the cloud.
What’s Old is New
The first thing to understand is that we’ve been here before. Terms like “private clouds” refer to existing practices of running applications over the Internet and across WAN connections. Going back even further, you might recall when time-sharing was the prominent model of computing. By allowing a large number of users to interact concurrently with a single computer, time-sharing dramatically lowered the cost of providing computing capability, and made it possible for individuals and organizations to use a computer without owning one.
The Internet has brought the concept of time-sharing back into popularity. Expensive corporate server farms and private data centers can host thousands of customers all sharing the same common resources. “New” business models, such as Software as a Service have become popular due to the cost/benefit ratio they provide customers.
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