Traps and Notifications Receiver:
Introduction

It is important to keep in mind that the ideal network management system should be designed and implemented around the real work processes. It should focus the tools toward those staff members supporting the managed area in a manner which makes their job easier and faster. Information associated with a problem or symptom should mean something to the support personnel. If they see the problem at a glance, they should know which specific area that problem belongs and what to do to get started in the trouble isolation process. Other personnel in the organization should know that a specific technician is looking into the problem as the problem may be affecting other areas.

Help Desk personnel should know what is happening and who is working on what at a glance. If they are not familiar with the system in question, they should have adequate information at their fingertips to guide them in what to do, who to call, and what steps to take, even what questions to ask.

Additionally, the problems that affect other sites should be available to those personnel at a glance. The information must be at the fingertips of the other sites' Help Desk personnel so that they know, in near real time, what is going on. See how the focus of information should be; local when it is a local problem and global when it is a global problem. Also, the tools associated are more focused on the local situation and not the global picture.

Many network management systems in operation today, do nothing to pass information to the Help Desk - unless Engineering types are manning the Help Desk. This is where these applications really miss the boat in that they have been written by programmers and engineers without looking at the business case. Some of the programs were even written by programmers that have never had to support a network or so it seems.

The implementation must solve a business problem or increase efficiency of the current methods of accomplishing work while reducing overall costs. If the solution doesn't save money while providing a better service, it probably isn't worth accomplishing.  

The case for network management can be definitive by documenting current work processes that should be automated by the system as a whole. Each of the work processes to be automated need to be documented and addressed in the system design and implementation. 

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