• automatic creation of network topology,
• operational monitoring of quality of work of network equipment),
• the notification about failures in operation of the equipment,
• retrospective analysis of health of IT Infrastructure,
• creation of reports,
• diagnostics of the root reasons of failures (root cause analysis). For collection of data on health of IT Infrastructure are usually used: SNMP, WMI, Syslog, analysis of network traffic (network sniffing), emulation of network traffic.

Many producers of network equipment build in support of the technologies significantly simplifying monitoring of network switches and routers. Are among such technologies: NetFlow, sFlow, Cisco IP SLA (earlier - SAA), Cisco NBAR and others. When choosing a monitoring system it is important to know in what degree it supports these technologies. The monitoring systems offered today in the market can be separated into two categories conditionally. Systems intended only for operational management of health of network belong to first (low end). Systems which, along with operational management, provide a possibility of strategic management with health of IT Infrastructure belong to second (high end) (trending, root cause analysis, what if analysis and dr).

Monitoring of corporate IT networks and services is one of the most demanded services in the world market of IT services today - according to the MSP Mentor overview, in the world she heads the list of the most important instruments of support of smooth operation of the companies (96.6%), demand for it also grows in Russia. This requirement at the companies for which idle time of IT services is critical for key business processes and is fraught with serious financial risks, including - at the organizations with geographically distributed infrastructure which should work smoothly in mode 24x7 is most noticeable.

Despite decrease in volumes, the Russian market continues to develop. Amount of data grows, so, load of networks increases. So, the market of storage systems for 2013 in Russia rose by 11% up to 473.4 petabyte. Also the extent of networks grows. According to data of Federal State Statistics Service, in 2012 the number of workstations increased on average by 7–8%, 80% from them are in structure of local computer networks. Actively also the market of WLAN develops, transition to new standards, in particular, on 802.11n is performed. Centralization of management of wireless local area networks becomes also relevant. Demand determinants on clouds and virtualization increase. The annual average growth rate of the Russian market of cloud computing is 50%. The hybrid clouds assuming application of own infrastructure along with technologies of provider enjoy popularity.

As a result of active development at the enterprises load of network, therefore, on applications and devices grows. In parallel with it requirements to data processing rate, network functioning, servers, applications and data warehouses increase. This trend will remain in the near future. It is possible to satisfy the increasing need for operability of network in case of constant control and job analysis of components of infrastructure therefore solutions of monitoring of network, operation of applications and servers are vital for modern business. Often they are narrowly targeted: only monitoring of network or operation of servers and applications whereas modern network infrastructures are rather difficult and continue to become complicated with development of technologies. A system should consider a variety of architecture of networks, a multivendor set of devices. When choosing a product it is necessary to be guided by acquisition of the complete solution which allows to monitor operation of different devices and components of infrastructure.