KedronUK Has Come of Age!

KedronUK has reached the grand old age of 21 and will be celebrating this milestone with the team by attending the Henley Royal Regatta 2024!

We find it hard to believe we are making over two decades of success in the ever-evolving IT industry, so we wanted to take a look back and share with our customers where it started, what has changed and where we think we will be going next!

Starting out as a provider of network management tools in 2003, KedronUK quickly expanded its services to include application performance and end-to-end visibility. 

As the industry continued to shift and evolve, so did we. 

On Prem – Cloud – Hybrid
One of the most significant technology trends has been the shift towards cloud computing and virtualisation. As more businesses have moved their data and applications to the cloud, traditional IT management and monitoring tools faced challenges. However, we found it was important not to jump into cloud monitoring specific tools only, as users still accessed services within their own networks and as we deal with predominately large and secure customers, often critical/sensitive applications and data would remain on premise. We needed to ensure we provided the best possible solutions for Hybrid environments using as few monitoring tools as possible. 

We Entered the Cyber Security Market
Finally, the growing importance of cybersecurity has also impacted IT operation management and monitoring. With the increasing number of cyber threats and attacks, businesses need to be able to monitor their networks and systems for potential breaches and respond quickly when a threat is detected. 

This has led to the development of new security-focused tools and platforms that are integrated with IT management and monitoring systems to provide end-to-end visibility and protection. 

This is why, in 2017, KedronUK expanded its services to include cybersecurity. This move reflected the growing focus on Cybersecurity threats in the industry and the need for businesses to protect their networks and data from malicious actors. We also ensured we stayed close to what we are and what we are good at, which is fundamentally getting our customers the right kind of visibility from the complex environments. By providing technologies like Network Detection and Response, Threat Intelligence, SIEM, and SOAR we have been able to broaden on product portfolio, whilst ensuring we stay true to our quality design and delivery process.

Machine Learning and AI
Currently topical with our customer base is obviously rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). With the increasing amount of data generated by IT infrastructure, AI and ML have become useful tools for analysing and interpreting data to identify potential issues and optimise performance. 

In many ways this is only just beginning, but we have found again the importance of a pragmatic and balanced approach. From our works so far reviewing capabilities and their implications for the system we provide that, as important as this technology is, it should not be seen as the magic answer to all challenges. In fact, the best outcomes seem to come when this tech is layered on top of already functional and mature monitoring platforms. 

What’s Next?
Here we have a look at a couple of areas where we think will be busy next. Phil Swainson, our Head of Technology, plans to review each fo these areas in more detail in a series of future posts celebrating our big birthday. Each edition will come with a special offer so keep your eye out!

• Unification of SOC and NOC – Maybe because of our background and development, we have seen within our own portfolio, or because of the increased expectation of shared data via APIs and open standards, we see that there will be an increased awareness that multiple technology teams have very similar technologies running parallels. More and more there are vendor solutions that cover multiple domains offering opportunity for cost saving and technical efficiencies. An example here would perhaps be network Detection and Response and Network Performance Management, both solutions collecting network traffic from Taps, Packet brokers or SPAN ports for analysis. 

• CMDB Comeback – Sometimes CMDB is a dirty word, many have tried to build and maintain an accurate solution that meets individual business operational and compliance needs but many organisations we speak to are still left frustrated. For this reason, we have seen vendors move away from the term and start using other terms to describe similar functionality and narrow their focus into security and other niche’s, you could argue AIOPs is one of those to some extent. We think the concept is still correct and we just need better tolls and processes to achieve a reliable way of getting to the end goal that stakeholders can then learn to trust. We think this is one area where AI and ML is extremely interesting and can complement but also assure best practice and processes. However, again we think AI on it’s own won’t solve the total problem. We’ve got some interesting ideas about what will so watch out for Phil’s upcoming blog post. 

• IoT/OT and IT Convergence – Like or hate it, these worlds are coming together and end to end views of performance and security are critical, bridging the gap between these two technology areas and cultures is surely a challenge that needs addressing with a unified approach. 

We’d love to know what you think, both about how things have changed in the areas of performance and security visibility, and also what you think will be next!

Call us today on 01782 752 369
KedronUK, Kern House, Stone Business Park, Stone, Staffordshire ST15 0TL