Table of Recommendations for End-User Monitoring Solutions

Transcription

1 2005 CMP MEDIA SURVEY RESULTS: TRENDS IN END-USER MONITORING

2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Mercury recently enlisted CMP Media s help in conducting a survey of IT professionals to better understand the trends affecting the use of end-user monitoring solutions. This white paper will present the survey findings and discuss some of the important forces that are driving companies to accelerate and expand their use of these solutions. TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary 2 Introduction 3 Mercury End-User Monitoring Survey Background 4 End-User Monitoring What, When, Where, and How Often? 4 Forces Accelerating the Use of End-User Monitoring Solutions 5 Mercury Solutions 9 Mercury End User Management 9 Mercury SiteScope 10 Mercury Managed Services 11 For More Information 11 End-User Monitoring Usage Trends 6 Trend #1: End-User Monitoring Has Become More Strategic to the Enterprise. 6 Trend #2: Enterprises Are Monitoring from Outside their Firewall. 8 Trend #3: Companies are Conducting Both Real and Emulated User Monitoring. 8

3 Introduction More than ever before, today s enterprises are relying heavily on the health and performance of their computing infrastructure. Key corporate IT applications are becoming increasingly more strategic to nearly every business. In order to measure and manage the effectiveness of these missioncritical online applications, organizations must implement powerful end-user management solutions and practices. Many organizations need to ensure that their essential applications are available to customers and employees 24x7. The cost of downtime for many critical business functions, such as billing and procurement, can be devastating. One large cellular provider recently estimated that system downtime cost its enterprise more than $250,000 per hour. System downtime can also create major public relations nightmares. A large Fortune 500 company experienced this situation when a simple code change to its corporate website brought the entire site down on the same day that its corporate earnings were announced. These are clearly unacceptable circumstances for today s enterprises. Most companies have already implemented a variety of tools and procedures for monitoring their computing infrastructure. These traditional infrastructure monitoring solutions do provide a bottoms-up view of system performance, but infrastructure monitoring only provides part of the information needed to verify that key applications are performing as they should. Sophisticated end-user management solutions are essential for understanding the experience of real users accessing key applications. End-user management solutions monitor the actual user experience, including application availability and response time, to accurately measure IT performance from the end user s perspective. These solutions augment traditional infrastructure monitoring solutions, enabling IT to be proactive and deal with performance and availability issues before they escalate to the point where organizations and customers are negatively impacted. Early end-user management solutions consisted of multiple, non-integrated point applications, including the diagnostic tools that came bundled with servers. There was rarely any integration or interoperability between these sets of disparate tools. But the increasing complexity of today s IT infrastructure now requires the ability to manage heterogeneous environments with comprehensive and unified end-user monitoring solutions. These initial monitoring solutions relied on reactive end-user management practices that only alerted IT when system performance degraded or failed completely. Now enterprises are demanding highly integrated, proactive applications that provide the ability to identify and diagnose problems even before end users experience them. Today s systems managers need powerful and easy-to-use tools that can monitor all of the interactions between the diverse software, networks, databases, and infrastructure components that can affect the performance of their enterprises core online applications. 3

4 Mercury End-User Monitoring Survey Background Mercury recently enlisted the expert assistance of CMP Media LLC and CIC Research to conduct a research study to better understand the forces and trends shaping the use of end-user management solutions. All study participants had specific IT job titles and job functions relating to applications management, e-business/e-commerce, networking/telecom, or outsourcing. These professionals were all involved in procuring application/systems management, network management, performance management, or similar services for their companies. Only those who worked at companies with 50 employees or more were interviewed. The breakout of the 100 study respondents by company size was as follows: 1,000 or more employees 48% employees 41% employees 11% Survey respondents were asked about the frequency of their end-user monitoring activities, what kinds of applications were being monitored, what factors were driving the scope of their end-user monitoring activities, and how the importance of end-user monitoring had changed over the previous year. End-User Monitoring What, When, Where, and How Often? Several questions were asked about the variety and frequency of monitoring projects. 74% of survey participants indicated that they currently monitored some or all of their applications. Of that group, 75% monitored their custom applications and 62% monitored their applications. Specific survey questions and answers included: 1. How frequently do you monitor the end-user experience of your live applications? 80% 70% 60% 74% Currently monitored their applications 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 33% Monitored 24x7 26% Never monitored or only monitored when there was an application failure 4

5 2. What kinds of applications are you monitoring? 80% 70% 60% 40% 75% Custom applications 62% 30% 20% 10% 0% 28% 28% ERP CRM 16% J2EE 10% Other applications 3% Websites 3. How many applications are you monitoring? 0-19 More than 500 applications 6% applications 11% 58% applications 25% Forces Accelerating the Use of End-User Monitoring Solutions There are many forces driving IT to increase the usage of end-user monitoring solutions. The most significant motivator was the desire to prevent any damage inflicted by viruses or malicious hackers. Another strong driver was the desire to ensure the functionality and performance of key software applications. Over half (55%) of respondents indicated the need to make applications available 24x7. 5

6 Survey questions included: 1. What factors are driving the scope of your monitoring projects? 90% 80% 70% 60% 40% 30% 20% 10% 86% Preventing (or reacting to) hostile intrusions to your network (e.g., viruses, worms, malicious hackers) 75% Ensuring proper functionality of your software applications 71% Monitoring the general health and availability of your hardware 67% Ensuring a positive end-user experience 45% Proactively monitoring network bandwidth 39% Verifying service-level agreements 0% 2. What forces are affecting the hours your applications are available? 60% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 55% Increased use of round-the-clock applications (24x7 catalog ordering, etc.) 40% Increased use of remote devices allowing employees to access internal systems outside of regular business hours 29% Expanding global operations 16% Increased implementation of flex time for employees End-User Monitoring Usage Trends The survey uncovered several key trends in end-user monitoring: Trend #1: End-User Monitoring Has Become More Strategic to the Enterprise. Survey results indicated that end-user monitoring is increasingly becoming more strategic to today s enterprises. Two-thirds (66%) of respondents indicated that end-user monitoring was very important or one of the most important factors contributing to their company s success, and 43% of survey participants indicated that the importance of end-user monitoring had increased from the previous year. 6

7 The survey also showed that end-user monitoring is gaining higher visibility across the enterprise. In addition to application developers, IT, and QA teams, more than half (52%) of the respondents indicated that their line-of-business managers and more than one-quarter (27%) of C-level executives now regularly review end-user monitoring reports. 1. Which of the following best describes how you would classify end-user management's role in your organization? 66% Very important 34% Necessary 2. Has the importance of end-user monitoring for your organization changed over the past year? 2% Decreased 43% Increased 55% Stayed same 3. Which of these groups in your organization regularly review end-user monitoring status reports? 60% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 54% Application developers 52% Line-ofbusiness managers 31% QA teams 27% C-level executives 20% Finance 14% Legal 8% 6% IT Other 6% None 7

8 Trend #2: Enterprises Are Monitoring from Outside their Firewall. As end-user monitoring grows in importance, companies are focusing more on monitoring from their end users location. For global companies with worldwide customers, monitoring from where their customers are means monitoring outside the firewall from multiple domains and geographies. Monitoring from outside the firewall enables companies to understand the last-mile and more rapidly triage availability and performance problems when they occur. In fact, of the study participants were monitoring their applications across multiple domains or geographies. Of those monitoring from multiple locations, 48% were monitoring from over six domains or geographies. 1. Do you monitor from multiple domains and geographies? Yes No 2. How many geographies or domains do you monitor from? 52% Between one and five 26% Between six and ten 22% More than ten Trend #3: Companies are Conducting Both Real and Emulated User Monitoring. The survey also investigated respondents attitudes toward the importance of conducting real- vs. emulated-user monitoring: Real-user monitoring observes the behavior of actual users on the system. It helps to quantify the impact or to measure performance and availability of all users for verifying service-level agreement (SLA) compliance. User emulation refers to the process of proactively driving virtual transactions against applications using simulated users, alerting IT teams to potential issues before actual customers have any problems. End-user emulation can also be used for SLA compliance and reporting. 8

9 Almost half (48.5%) or respondents were performing emulations of end-user experience, and over half (51.5%) of survey participants felt that it was important to monitor using both emulated end users and actual end users. By using a combination of real-user monitoring with user emulation, companies can benefit from the best of both worlds they are able to proactively detect problems, understand the impact of availability/performance issues on real users, and proactively manage service levels. 1. Do you currently perform proactive emulations of end-user experience? 48.5% Yes 51.5% No 2. How important is real versus emulated end-user monitoring to you? 5.1% Emulated-user only 51.5% Both are important 13.1% No preference 30.3% 51.5% Real-user only Mercury Solutions Mercury provides several powerful solutions for effective end-user monitoring, including Mercury End User Management Mercury s end-user monitoring application, and Mercury SiteScope an agentless monitoring software that helps maximize the availability of an enterprise s entire IT infrastructure. Mercury End User Management Mercury End User Management complements system/infrastructure monitoring strategies and is the only solution to combine real-user and emulated-user monitoring into one integrated application. Mercury End User Management proactively monitors application availability in real time, enabling IT to fix issues before customers experience problems. 9

10 Mercury End User Management proactively emulates end-user business processes against applications on a 24x7 basis for over 50 protocols web, non-web environments, and packaged applications such as Siebel, SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, Citrix, and others. Plus, it enables IT to assess business impact on real users across multiple domains and geographies, and manage end-user performance from a wide number of supported desktops, handheld, and devices. Mercury End User Management includes Business Process Monitors for emulating end users, Real User Monitors for measuring true transaction performance of all users of Web applications, and Client Monitors for measuring the real user experience of specific known users. Organizations can use one or more of the monitors depending on their application monitoring requirements. Mercury SiteScope Mercury SiteScope is an agentless monitoring solution designed to ensure the availability of distributed IT infrastructures, including servers, operating systems, network devices, network services, applications, and application components. This proactive, web-based infrastructure monitoring solution is lightweight, highly customizable, and doesn t require high overhead agents on production systems. It lays the framework for a comprehensive monitoring strategy. Mercury SiteScope also serves as a monitoring foundation for other Mercury offerings, such as Mercury Business Availability Center and Mercury LoadRunner. With Mercury SiteScope, IT operations teams gain the real-time information they need to verify infrastructure operations, stay apprised of problems, and solve bottlenecks before they become critical. FIREWALL WEB SERVER FIREWALL APPLICATION SERVER DATABASE SERVER Suite of monitors track 65+ IT infrastructure components. Users can easily configure alert and automated error recovery settings. SITESCOPE SiteScope identifies problems using detailed reports and performance date. Mercury SiteScope monitors IT infrastructure performance and availability, and alerts operations groups to problems. 10

11 Mercury Managed Services Mercury Managed Services is the recommended delivery method for Mercury s application management solution. Mercury Managed Services enables enterprises to: Jump-start implementations using Mercury s pre-deployed, high-availability system. Configure and modify the views, monitors, alerts, and reports based on specific customer requirements. Script business processes and modify them as needed. Utilize initial training and ongoing mentoring based on proven best practices. Mercury Managed Services provides an extensive monitoring infrastructure that allows enterprises to gain insight into the end-user experience both inside and outside the firewall. Mercury maintains a network of host machines, to help measure end-user performance experience at any time, from any of 80 global locations. Mercury Managed Services also offers the option to migrate the monitoring configuration and data to an in-house environment when the enterprise is ready. By leveraging Mercury s pre-deployed infrastructure, operations, and expertise, IT organizations can benefit from faster time-to-value at a lower total cost of ownership. IT organizations can focus on their core competencies and rely on Mercury to assist them with configuration, scripting, data analysis, and ongoing mentoring. IT GOVERNANCE MERCURY IT GOVERNANCE CENTER TM MERCURY QUALITY CENTER APPLICATION DELIVERY APPLICATION MANAGEMENT MERCURY PERFORMANCE CENTER MERCURY BUSINESS AVAILABILITY CENTER TM TM TM Solutions for: J2EE.Net SAP Siebel Oracle PeopleSoft FLEXIBLE DELIVERY OPTIONS MERCURY MANAGED SERVICES Combination SERVICES FOR IN-HOUSE DEPLOYMENT Mercury Services offers flexible delivery options for Mercury s BTO offerings. For More Information To learn more about end-user monitoring using Mercury End User Management or Mercury SiteScope, contact your local Mercury sales representative, or visit

12 Mercury is the global leader in business technology optimization (BTO). We are committed to helping customers optimize the business value of IT Mercury Interactive Corporation. Patents pending. All rights reserved. The Mercury logo, Mercury Business Availability Center, Mercury End User Management, Mercury LoadRunner, Mercury Managed Services, and Mercury SiteScope are trademarks or registered trademarks of Mercury Interactive Corporation in the United States and/or other foreign countries. All other company, brand, and product names are marks of their respective holders. WP