I’ve spent my fair share of time working in IT operations and IT operations still think in terms of infrastructure – servers, routers, load balancers, etc. Monitoring infrastructure is relatively simple. Is it working? Or not?
Some monitoring products will collect data about the infrastructure. For example, using the case of the lightbulb, data such as the temperature of the filament, the length of time the bulb is on, the electricity consumed, etc. How is that relevant to supporting the business? It’s not.
Supporting the business is much more difficult and less straightforward. Especially since they’re simply not interested in the efficiency of the server, how much CPU is being consumed, or how much latency in the network. The business is only interested in Business Transactions and by extension the software services that support the execution of these transactions.
A different style of monitoring is required. We need to detect anomalous behaviour. This might manifest itself as a deviation from normal durations or volumes, or an emerging pattern of decreased responsiveness or increased errors. To detect patterns that emerge over time requires a different approach and a different solution.
Also, a good solution should not distract by deep-diving into technical environments or produce perfectly unintelligible dashboards (and I’ve seen some beauties!), or have status screens that are more than half red as standard (ahem a certain CEM vendor!).
But the biggest difference – and this is one that most IT depts have a difficult time understanding – is that the ultimate purpose is to ensure that the *business* is being adequately supported. So that means aligning monitoring and resources around supporting key business activities (and therefore Key Business Transactions).
So a good solution is one where the Key Business Activities are identified and monitored, with easy to read dashboards showing the key metrics, automatically detecting behaviour deviations and making it easy for IT Operations to see exactly how well they are supporting the key business activities.
That way, everyone from Business to IT is rowing in the same direction – speaking the same language and using the same metrics for success.
Talk to us about an evaluation of WestGlobal Vantify and see what we can do for you.