A White Paper. Three Ways IT Performance Monitoring Can Save You Money And Time. Page 1

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1 A White Paper Three Ways IT Performance Monitoring Can Save You Money And Time Page 1

2 Introduction Companies rely on IT systems to help employees do their work efficiently, as a means to go-to-market faster and retain a competitive edge, and to report on the activities of the company and manage operations. Keeping IT at peak performance is crucial. Organizations have long relied on performance monitoring software to troubleshoot applications and networks to quickly identify those that have gone down or are performing poorly. Monitoring these assets is standard in companies of all sizes, to insure that the infrastructure performs reliably. The ideal IT performance monitoring tool should: Get the right information to the right people at the right time. Eliminate individual silos of information about the IT infrastructure. Improve IT system management and resource availability. In fact, monitoring solutions can become the core of an IT department s program of service level agreements (SLA) with the company s business groups, who rely on reduced system downtime and faster response times to do their jobs. An application and network performance monitoring tool can do even more. It can be the means to meet larger corporate goals of reduced costs, operational efficiency, and time savings for IT and other staff. A monitoring tool that meets multiple goals can be a very valuable corporate asset. While the number and variety of monitoring tools on the market today is enormous, many have just a single use, while others monitor several processes and resources and can become the gateway to improved efficiency. Let s look at three ways IT performance monitoring can help meet multiple goals, to save corporate dollars and improve the company s performance. Page 2

3 Getting the right information to the right people at the right time. Because companies count on their IT systems for everyday operations, employees, partners, and customers have a stake in high IT uptime and availability. That s why monitoring software is deployed, to insure that everyone has the proper access to essential IT resources. While performance monitoring solutions are an essential tool for the IT staff, they are also important to business users of IT resources and to corporate executives. Reports from a monitoring tool should provide information to people in different areas of the company to help them make informed decisions about IT and company operations, future purchases of resources, IT resource allocation throughout the company, and much more. A monitoring tool must provide the right information to the right people at the right time. Something for everyone: C-level, business users, IT staff But, everyone (C-level, business users, IT staff) can t understand a single type of monitoring report, nor should they. While many monitoring tools and reports are designed with just the IT staff in mind, people in various departments or divisions, whether IT or a business unit, need distinct information to help them in their own jobs. This variety of information should be readily available from the performance monitoring tool. The executive wants to know that the IT system is running efficiently and SLAs are being met, so that product or service development, production, and sales are at their optimum levels. Business users want to know that his/her own environment is running properly. If a problem occurs, s/he wants to be able to know if it is local to his/her desk or a more widespread departmental or building-wide issue that IT will resolve. The IT staffer needs the most information about performance, in order to pinpoint problem areas and resolve them quickly; s/he needs detailed performance reports that show the depth and breadth of the IT system and its operations. If the report information can t be accessed or understood easily at all levels, then the tool is too restrictive. Easy-to-use and easy-to-understand A monitoring tool should have a triage capability to sort out the information that s important to people in different areas of the company.. For example, Heroix Longitude has a Real-Time Performance Monitor that provides up-to-the-minute information. The easy-to-use dashboard uses a universally understood color code (green, yellow, and red) to show if an application is working properly, in danger of going down, or down. Yet, Longitude also generates highly detailed reports and graphs for IT staff, providing them with a higher level of technical data that is essential for them. Page 3

4 Real-time display facility that provides up-to-the-minute information on the performance of servers and network devices Single pane of glass While different types and levels of information are important, so too is the single pane of glass concept one console showing all components of your entire IT infrastructure. No one wants to move from one screen or application to another to get a total view of the environment, no matter what their need for information may be. Longitude is a powerful, easy-to-use central console that allows individuals at all levels and in all areas of the organization to view events and diagnose issues throughout the entire computing environment. With a monitoring solution that gets the right information to the right people, the company can gain productivity and efficiency. Page 4

5 Eliminate individual silos of information about the IT infrastructure. Multiple monitoring tools may watch your network, or applications, or servers. But, they also can create problems and inefficiencies. Monitoring in silos, whether it be a business group, a division, a geographic location, or a data center, may not get to the root cause of difficulties in IT systems that are connected and interconnected beyond an individual monitoring environment. For example, if you have multiple tools, how do you know which one to use for a particular situation? While you re running through the different tools to resolve an issue, your users may be without their IT resources. How long is too long for a problem to remain unsolved while the IT team is finding out which tool can pinpoint the problem? What effect will this have on SLAs? The cost of multiple monitoring tools It s not unusual for companies to have multiple monitoring tools. It may have occurred through company acquisition, or different groups within a company chose their own tools and a standard was never set. Or, performance monitoring vendors created add-ons to their original products or acquired additional products themselves through company mergers and never integrated them into a single resource. Whatever the reason, multiple tools require additional IT staff time to learn and maintain, and they cost the company real dollars in annual software fees. Often these tools do not work well together, so they have to be segregated on different platforms, costing the organization time and money. If you have two, three, or more monitoring tools, you need one IT person assigned to know each one, or one person has to know all of the tools. Then, IT staff must learn the annual or semi-annual product changes. Instead of spending this much IT staff time on multiple tools, what other valuable IT activities could they be engaged in? And, how much would your company save on software license fees? Consolidating information will bring rewards Cross-silo monitoring and event correlation with a comprehensive monitoring solution like Heroix Longitude can get to the answers much faster and keep IT systems running at peak performance. Longitude is a single solution to monitor applications, servers, and networks, and doesn t require multiple product experts. In fact, its auto discovery capability allows even business users to install and monitor their own environment in just 10 minutes. Longitude has no prerequisites for other software, so it s even easier for non-it staff to use, and saves the central IT staff considerable time. Page 5

6 SLA s combine data across multi-tiered applications and provide a seamless view of availability and performance from a business perspective If your company is still using multiple monitoring tools, or complicated tools with add-ons and extra modules, stop the inefficiency of having more than one person doing the same job of tracking down IT problems. Heroix Longitude will save time, the scarcest commodity in corporations today, for your IT staff, as well as your business users and executives. Eliminating duplication of work in IT and the cost of multiple monitoring tools can really improve corporate profitability and save precious time. Page 6

7 Improve IT system management and resource availability. A comprehensive monitoring tool can be used for so much more than just determining if your applications or network are running well. If you don t use the information from a monitoring tool in a strategic way, you may be leaving problems unresolved, spending money unnecessarily, and hurting the IT department s credibility and the efficiency of your employees. Forecasting IT needs For example, if your monitoring tool can identify how and when IT resources are used by different individuals or groups, patterns can emerge to help the IT staff determine current and future needs for applications, networks, hardware, and other resources. Heroix Longitude lets you look at peak loads, capacity issues, and compliance with SLAs, as well as real-time and historical performance. It allows customization of SLAs, and produces reports that reflect real-time business processes, and performance and capacity issues long before users can be affected. The rich information gained from Longitude can help the IT staff plan for resource expansion or contraction where needed. This prevents overcompensation for potential problems with costly servers, storage, or applications that aren t really needed. Demonstrating the value of IT In addition to helping the company maintain a very lean, cost-effective IT environment that meets all SLAs reliably and continuously, the type of information gained from a comprehensive monitoring tool can also demonstrate the value of the IT department. When IT resources are down, IT is blamed. But, when IT resources are humming along, the IT department becomes almost invisible. When an IT manager uses a monitoring tool like Heroix Longitude, they can extend their value to the organization far beyond just being the repair team; they can offer informed recommendations on IT spending decisions. Page 7

8 Graphically rich, tables, charts, and graphs supply information to address performance and capacity issues Using historical reports for management A monitoring tool can also help by providing historical data on past problems and how pervasive or longlasting they were, so that long-term corrective action can be taken. Everyone usually remembers IT problems in a vague way. My app was down for a week. In reality, there may have only been onagain/off-again problems for three days. When there are problems, the IT team can use Heroix Longitude to accurately show the real extent and duration and avoid the reputation damage that could otherwise occur from inaccurate recollections of troubled times. Reaching beyond outdated manual methods It isn t uncommon for IT staffers to collect reporting information manually, using spreadsheets or other basic office tools, because management wants to know how their IT systems and applications are running every month, exactly what problems occurred, who they affected, how long it took to resolve, etc. The accuracy of these manual efforts can always be questioned, and the amount of staff time to assemble and calculate all of this information can be a huge drain on the IT team. When this effort is repeated each month, the inefficiencies in the IT department grow. With Heroix Longitude, executives can see their own summary reports that provide this information at the appropriate detail level. A monitoring solution can help create a lean IT system that meets users needs reliably, accurately forecasts future needs, and provide information that is vital to ongoing success and future growth. Page 8

9 Taking the next step to improved monitoring and management. We ve looked at three ways IT performance monitoring can save the company money, improve efficiency and performance, and help plan for the future. It s really simple adopt a monitoring tool that will Get the right information to the right people at the right time. Eliminate individual silos of information about the IT infrastructure. Improve IT system management and resource availability. Maybe it s time to evaluate your current monitoring tool. You may have inherited it years ago and it may not do what you need now. Maybe it s too complicated for anyone except the IT staff to use and much of their time is spent on activities and reports that others in the company could and should accomplish or access themselves. Maybe you can t collect and evaluate information about the entire environment, because multiple tools are used in separate areas, leading to duplicated efforts, too much staff time spent on different monitoring applications, and licensing fees that cost the company more than necessary. Maybe the IT team is hampered without a tool that can assess IT resource use, forecast future IT needs, recommend more efficient and less costly IT infrastructure, and help the IT department be recognized for their very significant contributions to company performance. Keeping IT systems running smoothly and predictably is required for companies to grow and perform well. An application and network monitoring solution that goes beyond just identifying problem areas and is a true management tool, is the choice of the leading companies today. Heroix, with its 25-year history of proven monitoring solutions, with products running on tens of thousands of critical servers, offers the fastest, easiest, most affordable application and networking monitoring software today. Download Longitude Now and you ll be monitoring in just 10 minutes. Heroix believes that the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice. Heroix is not responsible for any inadvertent errors. Heroix, Heroix Longitude and their corresponding logos are registered trademarks of Heroix. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification purposes and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright 2011 Heroix. All rights reserved. Page 9