5 things you should know about monitoring tools

Does your IT team have too much data and not enough insight? The problem may be that you're using too many monitoring tools. Take this short quiz... If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, it's time to think strategically about your performance monitoring tools.

1. Do you typically use various separate monitoring tools to troubleshoot individual workflows?

A recent study by Enterprise Management Associates showed that the typical large enterprise uses between 6 and 10 network monitoring and troubleshooting tools. Those 6 to 10 tools don’t even include the products they have installed but rarely use, as well as other types of monitoring solutions, like application performance or end-user experience monitoring. Surprisingly, 10% of large enterprises use more than 25 tools!

Many of these tools are open source or in-house custom tools designed for specific functions. The problem with this multi-tool approach is fragmentation and difficulty maintaining and keeping the different tools in sync with each other. Each tool must be installed, configured, maintained, and supported individually. If integration between tools is possible, it is a manual process. This not only negatively affects work efficiency, but ultimately leads to reduced overall cost efficiency.

In fact, the result is that network teams spend approximately two-thirds of their time troubleshooting and only one-third of their time working on strategically important projects.

A better option is to use a performance monitoring tool that will cover 90% of your needs, and through the REST API and Riverbed SteelScript, you have the flexibility to build the extensions you need to tailor the solution to your specific environment.

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2. Is collaboration across IT silos difficult or impossible?

As teams of experts focused on specific technical areas have evolved, so too have IT organizations. When problems arise, IT teams lean in and use their own tools to prove that nothing is wrong in their area. This often leads to finger pointing and a lack of collaboration with teams in other areas.

Domain-specific management systems provide visibility into a single technology area, such as network, infrastructure, or application performance. They match the skills of engineers and administrators in these silos but fail to provide an end-to-end view of the application environment.

The key problem with silo-based monitoring is that it increases operational costs, both personnel and capital costs. It slows down software deployment and configuration of new applications, and the lack of centralized control leads to extended diagnostic and troubleshooting times.

3. Does your team lack an end-to-end view into how infrastructure impacts service quality and end-user experience?

The need for an integrated approach to monitoring application performance becomes apparent when you consider the following factors: In today's hybrid IT environments, maintaining optimal application performance over time is difficult.

Today, an “application” is more than just software code on a server. It also includes

• A complex combination of multiple services called by an application;
• Data in multiple databases located in multiple locations;
• Physical and virtual servers hosted in local data centers and in the cloud;
• Multiple networks connecting data and services;
• Complex application software architecture;
• End users access applications from many types of devices in many locations.

In this environment, any single hiccup, any flaw in the service – whether it’s a server failure, an issue within the code, a problematic database, network latency, or user device compatibility – can cause the application to slow down or crash completely.

Without a clear view of every link in the application delivery chain, it is difficult to find effective solutions to application performance problems. Without consistent or integrated visibility, there is a risk of excessive finger pointing as discussed in question 2.

4. Do you have a headache correlating and analyzing different sets of infrastructure monitoring data?

According to Forrester Research, 64% of organizations use a fragmented approach to monitoring, so you're not the only one struggling with this issue.

When IT professionals can move from code-level application performance data to packet-level network performance data in the same event and same window, IT silos break down.

Only then will everyone see the same problem and the same data and be able to work together to solve the problem. Only then will the finger pointing and blame stop. Only then will the focus shift from proving each area is in the right to actually solve the problem.

Riverbed SteelCentral is a comprehensive, integrated performance management solution that provides centralized visibility and insights to ensure optimal performance of enterprise applications while maximizing IT efficiency and productivity. Whether the challenge is to monitor performance broadly across all applications, networks, and infrastructure, or to gain deep visibility into mission-critical application code, SteelCentral can handle it. It is the only end-to-end solution that combines user experience, application, infrastructure, and network monitoring to provide a holistic view of application performance.

5. Do you lack a way to demonstrate your team's effectiveness to management or to share your findings with colleagues?

No matter what your role is, effective communication of information is one of the most important skills you need to succeed in business. As an IT manager, effective communication becomes more difficult if your reporting tools are limited or inefficient.

You need to be able to generate reports that can be used by multiple departments:

• High-level management and business-wide summaries that provide at-a-glance visibility into the end-to-end performance of your entire application environment;
• Detailed technical reports for domain experts;
• Daily, weekly and quarterly summary reports to speed planning and analysis;
• Ad hoc reporting for sharing troubleshooting and diagnostic information across technology boundaries to accelerate problem resolution.

Then what?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, it's time to seriously consider enhancing and integrating your performance monitoring and troubleshooting tools. With a unified, hybrid approach to performance monitoring, you'll gain the accountability, control, and predictability you expect and demand.

But how do you move from your current siloed, domain-centric approach to a more integrated one? How do you create a performance center of excellence? The Riverbed SteelCentral platform can bring you a few steps closer to the answer.

Riverbed SteelCentral provides an integrated, cross-domain management platform that enables IT departments to:

• Capturing data and mapping application dependencies across the entire hybrid “system” that delivers application, cost-effectiveness and integrated capabilities. This means capturing high-definition, continuous data across all infrastructure components, all networks, all application servers and databases, all users and all time;
• Use advanced big data analysis engines to efficiently and extensively analyze large amounts of data, transforming data into real cross-domain performance insights and intelligence;
• Deliver highly customized, role-specific performance views and reports to all stakeholders and domain experts without sacrificing granularity and depth of analysis;
• Enables and promotes collaboration among IT teams by providing seamless, contextual access to complementary performance metrics, making troubleshooting easier;
• Provides unified, service-centric performance visibility into applications through a single performance management interface that automatically blends, correlates, and calibrates all data from monitored components.