India Inc. continues to be in the adoption mode as opposed to the evolution mode as far as NM tools are concerned. Right now it is more an issue of getting people to adopt and use NM. Even awareness levels are not very high, so vendors will have to work on this. As awareness (NM functionality and its impact on business processes) improves, businesses will start demanding more in terms of enhancements and evolution. Till then, it is a matter of sticking to the basics and getting them right.

The key functionality of network management, which will drive business in 2004, will be the ability to monitor and configure the network so as to optimally utilize it. The primary component of the NM solution in 2004 will continue to be network availability management. Last year, this comprised almost 55–60 percent of the total NM market, followed by the network configuration management component. Most enterprises are still pursuing the monitoring areas, but have not thought about areas like OS and image management on a network. Even today, for a majority of enterprises, security features are not high on their priority list. But as the market matures, awareness about security will rise. Security has seen increased visibility and will gain further prominence since secure and trusted computing platforms are essential for the realization of Web services and wireless networking.

There should be an emphasis on the ‘total solution’ and ‘customer-centric’ approach. The year 2004 will see a growing movement away from box-selling towards creating an end-to-end solution, with an effective portfolio of services built around the software. In the past, the key service has been that of setting up a network; it ended there with little demand for additional services. The complete services approach will gain prominence during the year since continuing customer relationships will become critical. This trend will be further driven by the skills shortage and the growing complexity of networks. From the vendor perspective, it is going to be extremely important to build services on top of software; it will bring them to a different level since it will position them more as consultants rather than mere box-pushers.

The main bottlenecks for NM in India are

• Size of most networks is still small

• Dependency on networks is not high

• Criticality of networks is not high enough to warrant the need for managing them effectively

• Low awareness levels among enterprises.