Monitoring is a topic most IT teams talk about, but often implement incorrectly. When people hear “monitoring,” they usually think of a software tool, a dashboard, or red–green alert screens. However, monitoring is not just a set of tools or charts. The real value of monitoring lies in detecting issues before users notice them and taking action proactively. As IT infrastructures grow and diversify, asking “is everything working?” becomes meaningless. Modern infrastructures simultaneously include physical servers, virtualization platforms, network devices, firewalls, access points, and dozens of software systems running on top of them. Mail servers, file servers, camera systems, web applications, industry-specific business software… all must stay operational at the same time. This is where monitoring comes in: identifying issues before they fail. ...

Zero Trust: Not a Product, but an Architecture of Processes and Behaviors Zero Trust is a concept mentioned in almost every security presentation today. However, when we look at its implementation in the field, we often see it applied in the wrong place, with wrong expectations, and using the wrong tools. The main reason for this is that Zero Trust is positioned as a technology or a purchasable product. In reality, Zero Trust is not a licensed, boxed, or vendor-specific solution. It is an architectural perspective and, more importantly, a mindset. ...

A Core Network Is Not a Product List Switch – Firewall – AP selection, integration, and capacity reality Most enterprise network projects start at the same point: product selection. And most of them break at the same point: products that do not work well together. Because what we call a “core network” is not three boxes (switch, firewall, access point) standing side by side; it is those three boxes carrying identity together, producing segmentation together, enforcing policy together, and most importantly, sustaining operations together. ...

This foundational article explains why IT infrastructure should be designed as an integrated system rather than a set of disconnected products, forming the baseline for the Core Network series.