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8 Signs You Have an IT Monitoring Visibility Gap

Mike Marks
Riverbed

When you look at key trends driving the IT market, it's clear that the end user is at the center of converged "next generation" computing services that integrate cloud, mobility, and virtualization. The average workforce user relies on at least 3 devices per day – their mobile phone while they commute to the office, their tablet as they wait in a conference room for a meeting to occur, and their desktop or laptop once they get back to the office.

And the workforce relies on a whole set of applications which may or may not be under IT's control – cloud-delivered apps like Office 365 or Salesforce.com, apps run in data centers owned by outsourcers, not to mention "Shadow IT" apps the user simply decides to download, bypassing the enterprise app store.

The opportunity is clear. IT must manage all of these technologies in a seamless way to ensure they deliver excellent service. To succeed, IT requires visibility into the end user experience as the workforce moves among these various applications and devices throughout their day.

The Challenge – The IT Monitoring Visibility Gap

If the opportunity is clear, so is the challenge to IT. Why is this a challenge? Much of the problem has to do with the siloed nature of most IT monitoring products. Most monitoring and management technology focuses on monitoring the performance and availability of the application components in the infrastructure. Application Performance Management and Systems Management tools focus on web servers, app servers, databases, and hosts. Network and Storage Management tools focus on routers, switches, gateways, and storage infrastructure. Virtual monitoring tools focus on the hypervisor and OS resources. And Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Mobile App Management (MAM) are focused on metrics and analytics having to do with mobile devices and apps, respectively.


The problem with this siloed approach to IT management is that it lacks the perspective of what the end-users, the workforce, are actually experiencing as they use applications to conduct business. These separate monitoring tools can all show "green" to the IT Ops team, indicating satisfactory component performance and availability, when in reality the workforce is still complaining because they are experiencing slow performance on their devices when executing critical business activities, like applying a credit, looking up a patient record, executing a trade, or using a mobile app in the field.

The reason the workforce is still complaining despite the fact that your data center management tools show everything green, is that you can't measure end user experience from the vantage point of the data center "looking out". You can only measure it from the end user's perspective "looking in". That's the primary reason for the "IT Monitoring Visibility Gap" – the gap between what your tools are telling you and what your users are experiencing.

Be Thankful for Those Complaining End Users

Despite the billion dollar a year market for system management tools, analysts like Forrester estimate that 70-80% of problems impacting the end users are not detected by IT. (Forrester IT is a Business Risk). So if you're in IT, you should be thankful if your users complain to you. At least you know you have a problem so you can resolve it. But what about those users who suffer in silence and don't complain to you? That's when the IT Monitoring Visibility Gap becomes really painful.

8 Signs You're Suffering from an IT Monitoring Visibility Gap

Without accurate, real-time information about how end users are actually experiencing and interacting with their applications, devices, and network, you are subject to suffering from an IT Monitoring Visibility Gap.

Mike Marks is VP of Product Marketing at Riverbed

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8 Signs You Have an IT Monitoring Visibility Gap

Mike Marks
Riverbed

When you look at key trends driving the IT market, it's clear that the end user is at the center of converged "next generation" computing services that integrate cloud, mobility, and virtualization. The average workforce user relies on at least 3 devices per day – their mobile phone while they commute to the office, their tablet as they wait in a conference room for a meeting to occur, and their desktop or laptop once they get back to the office.

And the workforce relies on a whole set of applications which may or may not be under IT's control – cloud-delivered apps like Office 365 or Salesforce.com, apps run in data centers owned by outsourcers, not to mention "Shadow IT" apps the user simply decides to download, bypassing the enterprise app store.

The opportunity is clear. IT must manage all of these technologies in a seamless way to ensure they deliver excellent service. To succeed, IT requires visibility into the end user experience as the workforce moves among these various applications and devices throughout their day.

The Challenge – The IT Monitoring Visibility Gap

If the opportunity is clear, so is the challenge to IT. Why is this a challenge? Much of the problem has to do with the siloed nature of most IT monitoring products. Most monitoring and management technology focuses on monitoring the performance and availability of the application components in the infrastructure. Application Performance Management and Systems Management tools focus on web servers, app servers, databases, and hosts. Network and Storage Management tools focus on routers, switches, gateways, and storage infrastructure. Virtual monitoring tools focus on the hypervisor and OS resources. And Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Mobile App Management (MAM) are focused on metrics and analytics having to do with mobile devices and apps, respectively.


The problem with this siloed approach to IT management is that it lacks the perspective of what the end-users, the workforce, are actually experiencing as they use applications to conduct business. These separate monitoring tools can all show "green" to the IT Ops team, indicating satisfactory component performance and availability, when in reality the workforce is still complaining because they are experiencing slow performance on their devices when executing critical business activities, like applying a credit, looking up a patient record, executing a trade, or using a mobile app in the field.

The reason the workforce is still complaining despite the fact that your data center management tools show everything green, is that you can't measure end user experience from the vantage point of the data center "looking out". You can only measure it from the end user's perspective "looking in". That's the primary reason for the "IT Monitoring Visibility Gap" – the gap between what your tools are telling you and what your users are experiencing.

Be Thankful for Those Complaining End Users

Despite the billion dollar a year market for system management tools, analysts like Forrester estimate that 70-80% of problems impacting the end users are not detected by IT. (Forrester IT is a Business Risk). So if you're in IT, you should be thankful if your users complain to you. At least you know you have a problem so you can resolve it. But what about those users who suffer in silence and don't complain to you? That's when the IT Monitoring Visibility Gap becomes really painful.

8 Signs You're Suffering from an IT Monitoring Visibility Gap

Without accurate, real-time information about how end users are actually experiencing and interacting with their applications, devices, and network, you are subject to suffering from an IT Monitoring Visibility Gap.

Mike Marks is VP of Product Marketing at Riverbed

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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