“The server is down,” he said as I walked into the office on Thursday. “No it isn’t,” I answered. “What is your trouble?” He went on to explain his issue and it turned out to be a network connectivity issue from his desk.Sound familiar? Such scenarios happen around the world every day. End users thinking that they understand what’s going on in the technological infrastructure while the technical staff fights off all the wrong reporting to try to get to the bottom of things.How do you do it? As an on-demand strategic technology consultant (think CIO on-demand), I see this kind of issue all the time. It seems that a lot of non-IT people think that their ability to install Microsoft Office on their home PC or help their family members with their home network means that they can make technology decisions at their companies. Unfortunately for all involved, nothing could be further from the truth.However, that means that the demands on the technology staff are greater than ever. How do you address that?As food for thought, I learned recently about SevOne, and their new flagship product, the SevOne Performance Management Appliance. Performance management has been a real pain in the neck for a long time. The systems are very difficult to use, and visibility is poor. Modern drill-down Web interfaces don’t exist. The architecture hasn’t changed much in the past decade.Until now, it seems.SevOne’s appliance implements a distributed application already in-use at such large networks as Matria Healthcare and Comcast. For instance, Jay Scott, performance engineer at Matria mentions the ability to drill into the reports to get to the core of the issue as being quite a contrast to legacy solutions that require running reports until you find the one you need. Jeff Gill, senior director of Network Surveillance for Comcast notes that SevOne allows them to redistribute national performance data to regional and local technical support, effectively getting the information into the hands of staff that can address the issues.I see this as an important evolution in managing the infrastructure.What do you do? How do you get visibility into the real issues? Do you see a solution like SevOne as providing valuable insight? Stephen Hultquist is a contributing editor to InfoWorld Test Center and an on-demand CIO for emerging and other fast-moving companies. Careers