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Event Management: Reactive, Proactive or Predictive?

Larry Dragich

Can event management help foster a curiosity for innovative possibilities to make application performance better? Blue-sky thinkers may not want to deal with the myriad of details on how to manage the events being generated operationally, but could learn something from this exercise.

Consider the major system failures in your organization over the last 12 to 18 months. What if you had a system or process in place to capture those failures and mitigate them from a proactive standpoint preventing them from reoccurring? How much better off would you be if you could avoid the proverbial “Groundhog Day” with system outages? The argument that system monitoring is just a nice to have, and not really a core requirement for operational readiness, dissipates quickly when a critical application goes down with no warning.

Starting with the Event management and Incident management processes may seem like a reactive approach when implementing an Application Performance Management (APM) solution, but is it really? If “Rome is burning”, wouldn’t the most prudent action be to extinguish the fire, then come up with a proactive approach for prevention? Managing the operational noise can calm the environment allowing you to focus on APM strategy more effectively.

Asking the right questions during a post-mortem review will help generate dialog, outlining options for alerting and prevention. This will direct your thinking towards a new horizon of continual improvement that will help galvanize proactive monitoring as an operational requirement.

Here are three questions that build on each other as you work to mature your solution:

1. Did we alert on it when it went down, or did the user community call us?

2. Can we get a proactive alert on it before it goes down, (e.g. dual power supply failure in server)?

3. Can we trend on the event creating a predictive alert before it is escalated, (e.g. disk space utilization to trigger a minor@90%, major@95%, critical@98%)?

The preceding questions are directly related to the following categories respectively: Reactive, Proactive, and Predictive.

Reactive – Alerts that Occur at Failure

Multiple events can occur before a system failure; eventually an alert will come in notifying you that an application is down. This will come from either the users calling the Service Desk to report an issue or it will be system generated corresponding with an application failure.

Proactive – Alerts that Occur Before Failure

These alerts will most likely come from proactive monitoring to tell you there are component failures that need attention but have not yet affected overall application availability, (e.g. dual power supply failure in server).

Predictive – Alerts that Trend on a Possible Failure

These alerts are usually set up in parallel with trending reports that will help predict subtle changes in the environment, (e.g. trending on memory usage or disk utilization before running out of resources).

Image removed.

Conclusion

Once you build awareness in the organization that you have a bird’s eye view of the technical landscape and have the ability to monitor the ecosystem of each application (as an ecologist), people become more meticulous when introducing new elements into the environment. They know that you are watching, taking samples, and trending on the overall health and stability leaving you free to focus on the strategic side of APM without distraction.

You can contact Larry on LinkedIn

Related Links:

For a high-level view of a much broader technology space refer to the slide show on BrightTALK.com which describes the “The Anatomy of APM - webcast” in more context.

For more information on the critical success factors in APM adoption and how this centers around the End-User-Experience (EUE), read The Anatomy of APM and the corresponding blog APM’s DNA – Event to Incident Flow.

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Event Management: Reactive, Proactive or Predictive?

Larry Dragich

Can event management help foster a curiosity for innovative possibilities to make application performance better? Blue-sky thinkers may not want to deal with the myriad of details on how to manage the events being generated operationally, but could learn something from this exercise.

Consider the major system failures in your organization over the last 12 to 18 months. What if you had a system or process in place to capture those failures and mitigate them from a proactive standpoint preventing them from reoccurring? How much better off would you be if you could avoid the proverbial “Groundhog Day” with system outages? The argument that system monitoring is just a nice to have, and not really a core requirement for operational readiness, dissipates quickly when a critical application goes down with no warning.

Starting with the Event management and Incident management processes may seem like a reactive approach when implementing an Application Performance Management (APM) solution, but is it really? If “Rome is burning”, wouldn’t the most prudent action be to extinguish the fire, then come up with a proactive approach for prevention? Managing the operational noise can calm the environment allowing you to focus on APM strategy more effectively.

Asking the right questions during a post-mortem review will help generate dialog, outlining options for alerting and prevention. This will direct your thinking towards a new horizon of continual improvement that will help galvanize proactive monitoring as an operational requirement.

Here are three questions that build on each other as you work to mature your solution:

1. Did we alert on it when it went down, or did the user community call us?

2. Can we get a proactive alert on it before it goes down, (e.g. dual power supply failure in server)?

3. Can we trend on the event creating a predictive alert before it is escalated, (e.g. disk space utilization to trigger a minor@90%, major@95%, critical@98%)?

The preceding questions are directly related to the following categories respectively: Reactive, Proactive, and Predictive.

Reactive – Alerts that Occur at Failure

Multiple events can occur before a system failure; eventually an alert will come in notifying you that an application is down. This will come from either the users calling the Service Desk to report an issue or it will be system generated corresponding with an application failure.

Proactive – Alerts that Occur Before Failure

These alerts will most likely come from proactive monitoring to tell you there are component failures that need attention but have not yet affected overall application availability, (e.g. dual power supply failure in server).

Predictive – Alerts that Trend on a Possible Failure

These alerts are usually set up in parallel with trending reports that will help predict subtle changes in the environment, (e.g. trending on memory usage or disk utilization before running out of resources).

Image removed.

Conclusion

Once you build awareness in the organization that you have a bird’s eye view of the technical landscape and have the ability to monitor the ecosystem of each application (as an ecologist), people become more meticulous when introducing new elements into the environment. They know that you are watching, taking samples, and trending on the overall health and stability leaving you free to focus on the strategic side of APM without distraction.

You can contact Larry on LinkedIn

Related Links:

For a high-level view of a much broader technology space refer to the slide show on BrightTALK.com which describes the “The Anatomy of APM - webcast” in more context.

For more information on the critical success factors in APM adoption and how this centers around the End-User-Experience (EUE), read The Anatomy of APM and the corresponding blog APM’s DNA – Event to Incident Flow.

Prioritizing Gartner's APM Model

APM and MoM – Symbiotic Solution Sets

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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