MICROmega Technologies, Netcordia form strategic partnership in SA

In its bid to corner the local market in top-end network management and configuration products, MICROmega Technologies (MMT) recently became the sole distributor of Netcordia products for the southern African region.

According to Tony Rolston, MMT's CEO, while US-based Netcordia is known and respected world-wide for its exceptional network management tools, the South African and indeed African market as a whole has a particular need for the products and solutions that NetCordia offers.

“Cisco certified engineers (otherwise known as CCIEs) and networking skills in general are in short supply throughout the developed and developing worlds, especially in South Africa,” he explains.

“Netcordia incepted the need to automate network management, which means providing a way to do more everyday with less time and laser focus from your best staff on the priority engineering jobs.” says Rolston. “The result was the company's flagship product, NetMRI.

“World wide, business is experiencing a growing dependence on network services as well as a shortage of appropriately skilled IT staffs. It is no longer efficient or cost effective to use fragmented real-time workarounds and extensive post event investigation to prevent potentially catastrophic network service interruptions.

“A holistic, enterprise-wide view supported by efficient analytics is becoming crucial to maintaining the network service levels necessary to meet user expectations at minimal business risk. NetMRI provides the ideal solution to this problem.”

Carolyn Dunlop, director business development - EMEA of Netcordia, describes the NetMRI solution as providing unique and in-depth out-of-the-box expert analysis, mapped against industry best practices to maximising network reliability and response time.

“The only thing certain in business today is change. Networks do not operate independently but are instead a key component of any successful business,” she explains. “It is therefore extremely important to always relate a network back into the business and understand that businesses and their individual needs are always growing.

“It is vital that in any minute of any hour we know how service is being delivered and what may have changed in the network to impact that service, Downtime is never an option.”

The problem of effective network configuration and change management (NCCM) thus forms the core of Netcordia's unique network management tools.

“65% of all problems created in a network are related to change,” explains Dunlop. “The IT infrastructure that supports all electronic communication, information storage and sharing, to name a few basic functions of a network, requires constant network changes and configurations.

“The nature of networks means that none of these changes are isolated however and one change can have numerous effects elsewhere, making it extremely important to have the necessary tools to track and manage these constant changes.”

According to Dunlop, investing in an NCCM approach to managing a network is a more strategic and ultimately empowering investment than other network solutions currently on the market.

“Having Netcordia as a strategic partner significantly increases our product offering to the local IT market,” concludes Rolston.