The BTM Blog

Here’s 5 of our favorite tips we’ve gathered over the years to assist you in getting the most from your Business Transaction Monitoring solution:

1. Start out by identifying your key transactions and Services.  Be selective.  Too much noise in terms of data and alerts can be detrimental.  Focus on actionable information, not just data for the sake of data.
2. Identify the key metrics associated with the transactions operational characteristics.  For example, does the daily or weekly volumes vary.  How does Service Delivery Performance change in relation to the time of day or week or month?  Are usage spikes normal due to an announcement or external event?
3. Start small, start simple.  A big bang approach will likely fail as it will be seen as too disruptive, or providing too much data.  Similarly, a complex initial approach may be seen as too disruptive.
4. Most importantly, design an action plan for each alert you may receive.
5. Finally, decide what the key success factors are in advance, and regularly measure your BTM usage against the success factors.

If you’ve any tips or tricks you’d like to share, please leave a comment.

There’s no doubt that enterprises have always known about Business Events, but it’s only in relatively recent times that Business Events are being recognized and processed as vital signals and indicators of Business activity.

Capturing and analyzing events the moment they occur provides valuable insights, capable of improving the reactions times and quality of decisions that every enterprise takes, and managed correctly is capable of transforming an enterprise from a knee-jerk reactionary organization into a proactive customer- and service-centric organization.

These events already occur within every organization, but not every organization is geared up to capture, evaluate and analyze this data.  John Rymer at Forrestor recently posed some questions directly related to how organizations might be struggling to capture, store, manage and analyze this potentially vast amount of event data, and asks for stats.  Should be interesting, but not just as growth stats of transactions volumes, but probably more in terms of enterprises waking up to the value of the event data they already produce but know nothing about.  Yet.

It’s easier than you might think to simply not keep up with a blog. Before you know it, it’s been 12 months or more since the last update.

We’ve decided to restart blogging again, mainly because people have made nice comments to me on the posts, and also because we’ve always got something to say!

We stopped blogging, not with a bang but with a whisper.  We’re back in the same way we went out. We’ll just quietly get on with it from here.

Sometimes (and most especially it seems in Europe), bad weather can bring a country to a standstill.  Not long ago, some snow fell in Madrid (pretty rare) and resulted in what appeared to be a national emergency including shutting down the airport for a small period.  The following is an email written by one of our guys trapped in Madrid airport.  I post this because it is amusing and well written, and because there is a very tenuous link between event causality and weather prediction.  And context.  This photo from the day will cause several people to question the definition of “Heavy Snow”.  So thanks Nigel!

Heavy Snow at Madrid Airport caused Mayhem

As I enter my 28th hour of captivity I am forming some sort of Stockholm Syndrome affinity with my kidnapper, Madrid Airport. Its really not so bad, there is food (small dried toasts onto which you can drop olive oil for a treat) and even showers (where what looks really like a fan switch in fact called the emergency guy).

Yesterday saw the entire airport shutdown for around 10 hours due to 100 or so snow flakes. When it opened I was lucky enough to get transfered onto the late flight (which ironically was the one I was originally booked onto before changing to the earlier one). So our late flight became later and later – every 15 minutes the board showed it slipping by another 15 minutes. Now the know-it-alls like me know Munich has a very strict midnight curfew for landing. German rules dictate that even if you are plunging from 30000 feet due to engine failure, you will need written permission from the mayor before you are allowed to penetrate the runway like a flying dart. In short, we knew there was no chance of the flight leaving so even though the plane was fueled up and waiting, it was all in vain. Quite pleased I did not get on as I had already spent 3 hours on the morning plane at the gate before being hoofed off due to the snow flake.

The night was fun. I made a bed by pushing two small chairs together which formed a comfy oval cave. I now walk like a hunchback and if lucky will straighten up by Monday. I noticed also that small tribes are forming – I was naturally drawn to the alpha males holding BA Gold Cards and minor tribes such as the Silver Card Holders and ´fresh from the swamp¨ occasional flyers are keeping away from us. If they do not bring something to replace the small toasts, we are considering starting to eat some of the Silver card holders.

So the plan today is I am on a wait list for 8.20. In Spanish ´Wait List´ translates to ´not a hope¨  but it will keep you from being a pain in the butt at the service desk for a couple more hours. As this Wait turns inevitably into disapointment, I am also booked onto a 16.20 which is actually confirmed. So only 10 more hours to go before I might get a flight. I am also considering the train which is 28 hours via Paris but it is hard to call – will I get that 16:20 dream flight home or won´t I ?  I think I will make the call if I miss the 16:20 and should then make it home sometime on Monday by train.

Otherwise I am having a pleasant time. Small diversions like using the toilet at the other end of the airport can kill nearly 50 minutes and I am looking forward to breakfast at McDonalds at 07:00. Its also fun watching the people, the airport is full of people who were here all night and many all day yesterday – there are the enraged, the cool, the up-all-night Redbull folks, sadly many of have kids which is just awful.

If you are wondering why we did not all go to a nice hotel – the roads were closed or extremely slow due to the snow-flake and we were told we were unlikely to get to a hotel before 2 or even 3am.

Planes Scuttling for Cover at Madrid Airport

The only thing that really worries me apart from forgetting what my kids look like is my socks. Over nearly 48 hours of walking, I swear I could see them gently glowing in the night. They redefine the word ´funk´ and I feel they should be sent to Jim and Mort as a record of our absolute committment to the cause.

Just of for a glass of wine for breakfast -  of course there is more booze than water in the lounge.