Kevin Jackson

Kevin Jackson is a Network Monitoring Technical Solutions Consultant for Intermapper and has been helping customers manage their networks for nine years. Prior to joining Fortra, Kevin worked with Richard Fleischman & Associates in a variety of roles. After starting as a Technology Consultant at RFA, managing all IT-related opportunities, he was promoted to a Pre-Sales Design Engineer and Business Analyst. There, he focused on design as well as production disaster recovery solutions for both new and existing clients. Kevin has his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Indiana Institute of Technology and his Masters in Technology Management from the University of Phoenix.

External Resources from Kevin Jackson

• [Youtube] What is Intermapper? 

• [Youtube] Layer 2 Mapping with Intermapper 

Q & A with Kevin 

Why do you think network monitoring continues to be so important? 

Network monitoring is and has always been important and I think it continues to be important because of newer technology and that the fact that there's focus on disturbing networks via intrusions, attacks, disruptions of services, etc. Cyber-attacks are becoming more prevalent and prominent, which means that network monitoring is going to be more important. As the internet continues to expand and the Internet of Things grows, there are more devices that are using network resources. You have to have tools in place are able to support, monitor, and ensure that everyone is getting what they're supposed to get. 

What is the most interesting or impactful project that you’ve had the chance to work on? 

I think the most interesting and impactful project has to do with our Department of Defense. We have a very strong foothold in the DoD environment and, without going too much into detail, they have remote locations where they need to be able to monitor their important equipment. Having Intermapper dispersed over these types of environments was an interesting concept in how they had to deploy it and and manage it. It was a challenge for us, so we had to figure out different ways to make it happen and we were successful in that. That's why DoD has always been a big user of Intermapper and why they found our software very beneficial in the work that they do. 

Where do you see network monitoring heading in the next 10 years? 

There's going to be an absolute boom in network monitoring in the next 10 years. There is a multibillion-dollar kind of footprint laid out for the monitoring space and it's basically up in the air for whoever is able to take advantage of it. It's not an industry that's going to be slowing down anytime soon for all the various reasons that it's so necessary. We see a lot of disruption of service, we see these large companies that are losing credibility and losing money because they're missing the boat. They're not monitoring certain things or they have failure of business based on the lack of network visibility. I would say this: every customer, company, and even household should have some type of network monitoring solution within their space. 

What would you say is the greatest challenge facing customers who are trying to optimize their network? 

First and foremost, lack of awareness and lack of visibility. You can't optimize something that you don't know about. And that's the biggest challenge. Coming from that space and being in an environment, before you can make recommendations, you have to know what those recommendations are about. The biggest challenge has always been assessing what you have. What is running in my environment? And once you are able to figure out the "what," then you can figure out the "why" and the "how." A product like Intermapper will be able to give you that visibility into knowing what's in your space and then you can take the necessary step to optimize your network effectively.