Networks have certainly grown in complexity in the last few years, as have the tools that manage them. Between the explosive growth of wireless networking and the sophistication of topologies and applications associated with the the LAN, gone are the days of simple up/down monitoring and copying device configs off to a TFTP server.
Management tools themselves can become bottomless pits for wasting man-hours if poorly designed or not matched well to a given environment. Frequently, the same people using the tools are those responsible for their upkeep, and time spent debugging a glitchy, complicated management or monitoring framework can detract from the primary mission of running and evolving a good network.
Its important to choose your tools wisely. Make sure you query similar environments for what they use (and how) before you purchase, and don’t believe for a minute that you are stuck with only mbasswhatever a network vendor provides for system management. And by all means, recognize that the care and feeding of management tools needs reasonable time and talent allotted in your scheduling forecasts and contributes to the total TCO of the tools that you buy.