The only thing constant in the network world is change. The network is in place to support mission-critical applications that are constantly being updated with needs for new protocols, services, or greater bandwidth. Network assessment is vital to the health of any network as well as a key tool in identifying underutilized or out-of-date resources. A complete network assessment can identify elements in your network that are in need of an upgrade or replacement and elements in your network that can fulfill service or growth needs. Network assessment could be an easy task if network elements were all from a single vendor, in a single room, and managed by the same person. The fact is, though, that this is seldom the case.

Some key considerations that every IT administrator must face are:

• Configuration security and compliance
• Inventory management
• System uptime
• Managing and deploying updates in a heterogeneous environment
• Reporting