Are You Still Thinking About It, Or Have You Finally Started Monitoring Your IT Infrastructure?

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Whitepaper

Are You Still Thinking

About It, Or Have You

Finally Started

Monitoring Your IT

Infrastructure?

Eleven reasons why you should take

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Companies whose business processes and added value depend on the availability and performance of their IT systems have a new task on their strategic plan: the monitoring of hardware and software components in their IT infrastructure. If a server or even the entire network of a company fails, it can affect daily business, which means for many this issue needs to be given top priority. According to a representative survey of small and mid-sized companies in Germany in 2012, more than 75 percent of all companies polled had felt the impact of significant failures (TechConsult, 2013). However, only 61 percent of the IT officers were even aware of the theoretical hourly costs of a failure at their respective company. The results of the survey were even less comprehensible because there are already powerful and inexpensive tools that can reduce failures and calculate the costs of failures available.

We will summarize in this whitepaper the underlying reasons why thriving companies are implementing powerful tools to monitor their IT infrastructure.

It’s not the IT systems that suffer most under the effects of IT-related failures

It is both shocking and emblematic that many companies still heavily rely on their IT systems without implementing some sort of a

monitoring system for their IT infrastructure. Oftentimes, there are no answers to questions like why the telephones aren’t working, why we can’t create the monthly financial statements, or why the ERP database isn’t available. Or sometimes the costs or time involved in resolving these issues are high. The following rule of thumb has proven true in many situations in regard to the importance of monitoring for operating IT systems and reducing risks: ‘A company’s IT infrastructure is only as advanced as the system monitoring it.’

Organization, processes, and technology

Products and related technologies such as SNMP, WMI, and CMDBs often automatically come to mind when talking to administrators and IT experts about operating IT systems and monitoring their infrastructure. This sort of technology-oriented approach to the situation is only part of the problem, because the technology you implement is only part of the overall solution. There are three aspects that need to be given equal weight if you plan to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of your IT system sustainably: organization, processes, and technology. For example, a system that is easy to manage and can be

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adapted to the existing processes and conditions at a company is one way to help lower operating costs in the long term.

Open source monitoring solutions sound interesting, but often cannot be scaled and do not represent good value

Open source software used to be a ‘playground’ for administrators when it came to IT monitoring. In many cases, it was only

implemented in straightforward and static environments. While it is true that open source software meant minimal or no outlays for licensing, the overall costs are often substantially higher than the overall costs of a commercial solution due to the high operating costs of open source solutions. This is because the administrative tasks involved are often complex and resource draining, the troubleshooting cycles are longer, and the documentation is at times quite poor. Furthermore, the knowledge transfer is complicated and professional support is not free-of-charge. If you look at ‘Nagios vs. Icinga,’ you see that unpredictable events and personal interests can also influence or even determine the development process. For this reason, open source tools do not present us with a path for a secure future.

Tools are often developed or upgraded in a manner that is unclear or seemingly random and illogical. For this reason, companies that value adequate security, scalability, and maturity of functions in particular are forced to implement changes and enhancements themselves or commission another company with the task. This results in a

hotchpotch of components that will also need maintenance, which is often the reason that the costs are higher than they would be for professional software.

Every dynamic IT company genuinely needs a reliable and scalable solution to monitor their IT infrastructure. Likewise, it must also fulfill the company’s expectations in terms of pricing. And the company needs to be able to operate it cost-effectively.

An IT monitoring system must be integrated easily

When selecting IT monitoring software, it is important that you make sure that there are sufficient interfaces and it is easy to integrate the solution. Integration into existing IT systems is essential and vital to implementing the solution in the lifecycle of a monitoring solution. Furthermore, the ‘openness’ factor plays an important role in harnessing the IT performance information and maximizing it on all levels of a company. For company networks, it is important that the monitoring system features scalable architecture to cover all systems and locations of a company.

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We do not know what the computer repair guy next door is suggesting...

IT infrastructure has grown to become the central nervous system of many companies today. It often consists of many different

high-performance, networked components that are rather complex. For this reason, the monitoring solution needs to offer the IT infrastructure a means to perform diagnostic functions and apply remedies. On the other hand, this solution also needs to fulfill the demands of modern IT components in terms of monitoring availability and performance. A powerful monitoring tool enables the IT staff to analyze the ‘IT patient’ ad-hoc and implement preventive and corrective measures before any real problems occur. Today’s modern intensive care unit cannot perform effectively without a powerful system to monitor patients. IT operations are no different, because there is a professional system monitoring the main functions and parameters of the ‘IT patient.’ Both person’s health and a system’s availability require a holistic approach. Too many tools mean the death of an IT system’s effectiveness and efficiency

There’s no way to avoid problems if there are a multitude of IT monitoring systems in use in a company. A company opts to use a number of different IT monitoring tools for various reasons.

Oftentimes, it is because there are a potpourri of legacy programs, defective products, and organizational challenges existing within the company’s IT system. When a variety of proprietary tools are being used, the system’s response times drop, the effectiveness of the monitoring system is impaired, and business processes suffer as a consequence. Effective and efficient operations, together with improved business performance, can only be ensured by having consistency on the level of the monitoring system.

We aren’t really that concerned about the internal customers

Operating costs can in part be reduced if you implement a sufficiently detailed system to monitor the availability and performance of IT components in our networked world. For example, when indicators of poor end-user performance are detected, this could be a warning sign that there are critical problems in portions of the back office

infrastructure or that a virtual machine is experiencing resource problems. Problems are bound to happen if these indicators are not detected or if the responses to them are inappropriate. Customers who order products over the Internet generally do not have much patience with poorly monitored websites. Each additional second spent waiting

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unnecessarily can cost another customer, not to mention the loss in sales as well.

Prevention is often less expensive than bug fixes

The motto underlying the monitoring philosophy of an IT environment is: ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’ One must never lose sight of the economic aspects of prevention because it, too, can cost money. A company can operate far more effectively if it is capable of detecting and remedying problems in a proactive manner, mitigating their impact before it is felt. You could almost say that reacting to problems is expensive, or even reckless. If an IT system fails, the IT monitoring system attempts to help by identifying the root cause quickly and effectively and restoring the necessary quality of service.

IT monitoring can be compared to an insurance policy

Availability and performance monitoring of a company’s entire IT system bears a certain resemblance to an insurance policy. The bigger and more spread out a company’s resources are, the greater the strategic importance of monitoring and ensuring the IT infrastructure’s performance is. Only in this manner is it possible to ensure the

continual value contribution of the IT system. To make a comparison: If you do not pay your insurance policy, you end up paying for the damages yourself. The same thing happens if you do not monitor your IT.

IT Infrastructure 2.0

The requirements of IT monitoring have changed with trends such as the advent of cloud computing and outsourcing. It does not matter if the IT service is run in the server room next door or hosted by a third-party data center that is thousands of miles away, the important factor remains: the ability to analyze application and system performance with little outlay and few diversions. A solution that monitors all aspects of the servers, applications, and services independently, regardless of its location with on-site, virtual, or cloud-based

components, needs to be implemented, so it can fulfill the conditions of ensuring effective and efficient operations.

Productivity for IT operations primarily depends on the tools you use IT companies are coming under increasing pressure from continual growing legacy problems, a steady flow of new tasks, and decreasing IT budgets. Operating costs, which are dominated by staffing costs, consume a large portion of the spending earmarked for IT. For this reason, most companies have a vital interest in operating their IT

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systems with as few HR costs as possible. Employing staff to remedy problems in the source code of third-party applications is no longer a feasible alternative. An IT monitoring solution needs regular

maintenance to ensure that the company receives critical software fixes for its IT system as quickly as possible. There’s no other way to ensure that a company can continue doing business without interruption.

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Contact Us

If you would like to know more about monitoring your IT infrastructure or are interested in receiving a Web demo, point your browser to

www.blue-elephant-systems.com. You can also write us an e-mail at

sales@blue-elephant-systems.com or call us at +49 711 4004 2525.

Blue Elephant Systems – Your Specialist for IT Monitoring Solutions Blue Elephant Systems GmbH researches, develops, markets, and implements solutions for managing and monitoring large-scale IT infrastructures. Blue Elephant Systems GmbH is your partner for projects in any industry thanks to its extensive experience in the business and its longstanding business relationship with major corporations. The company also provides consulting in IT monitoring and IT management training programs, in addition to the MIDAS Product Family. The expertise gained at Blue Elephant Systems GmbH has been put to the test by more than 100 companies on the Fortune Global 500 list. These companies rely on the support and migration services as well as the software solutions offered by Blue Elephant Systems GmbH. The company’s main headquarters are located in Stuttgart, Germany. It’s subsidiary Blue Elephant Systems Inc. is based in Tuscaloosa, AL, USA.

Copyright

Author: Joachim Hörnle, August 2013.

Copyright 2013, Blue Elephant Systems GmbH. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, translated, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from Blue Elephant Systems GmbH. Information contained here is subject to change without notice. All product designations and names of services referenced herein remain property of the respective brand owners. BLUE ELEPHANT SYSTEMS and the BLUE ELEPHANT SYSTEMS logo are registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. All other product designations and names of services referenced herein remain property of their respective owners. If you have any questions about these conditions, send us an e-mail at info@blue-elephant-systems.com. BLUE ELEPHANT SYSTEMS GmbH, Zettachring 2, 70567 Stuttgart, Germany

Are You Still Thinking About It, Or Have You Finally Started Monitoring Your IT Infrastructure?

Whitepaper