Quick and Dirty Remote Monitoring.

Building ICT networks is all well and good but maintaining them is key. One of these keys is having a good monitoring system in place. For both rapid deployment networks & more long term ones, one possible solution is a remote centralized monitoring solution. Using a a service like Linode (linode.com) and a ready to use system monitor solution like GroundWork (groundworkopensource.com) along with a VPN it should make it possible to stand up a systems monitoring system in no time flat. While I haven't field tested this particular idea yet, at my current job we use a similar system. It even works over VSAT.
One of the downsides is that you take a performance hit on your back haul and if you loose connectivity to the remote side you lose administration as well. But this can be minimized with some critical thinking and systems tuning. Also one monitoring system can monitor multiple sites.