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Make a Better Business Case for End-to-End Monitoring

Ted Wilson

Monitoring your middleware platforms with a consolidated monitoring application has been shown over and over to reduce the frequency and duration of severity 1 and 2 incidents and prevent losses of revenue attributed to downtime. However, making a strong business care for end-end monitoring and middleware monitoring can be challenging and can present unique learning opportunities. Here are some recommendations to help you make a better business case.

1. Use tangible benefits and savings only

Annual outage volume, agreed-upon Mean-Time-to-Resolution (MTTR) times, and Service Level Agreement (SLA) penalties are the most common. Soft benefits such as better use of IT resources, reduces damage to the brand, and fewer people on conference calls will certainly provide a benefit, but a hard savings is difficult to quantify and should probably not be included in the financial justification.

One large bank had as many as 115 people on their war room conference calls. And calls averaged several hours with one call last year taking 27 hours! While there is certainly a productivity gain to be made, your finance team is unlikely to agree on a hard savings amount by eliminating some of these calls.

2. Start small and pick the right application for your proof of concept

The “right” application should be one that will bridge the gap between the technology and the business. It is always great if you can quantify results based on your application or service running in your environment.

3. Get your main detractors socialized in this process as early as you can

This is not a popularity contest and you are probably going to be shining a bright light on some problem areas. But your detractors can become your biggest supporters once they are able to work with a common version of the truth that is based on actual performance data. They don’t have to miss out on many war room conferences to see the value in effective end-to-end monitoring.

4. Ensure the financial portion of the business case is conservative

Ensure that the financial portion of the business case is conservative and none of the assumptions can be argued by your finance team. Use internally available data obtained from the business owners, support teams, and your trouble ticketing system administrator. And remember that it is better to underestimate your savings and overestimate your costs. You want to show a fast payback based on conservative numbers that cannot be argued.

Ted Wilson is Chief Operating Officer at SL Corporation.

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Make a Better Business Case for End-to-End Monitoring

Ted Wilson

Monitoring your middleware platforms with a consolidated monitoring application has been shown over and over to reduce the frequency and duration of severity 1 and 2 incidents and prevent losses of revenue attributed to downtime. However, making a strong business care for end-end monitoring and middleware monitoring can be challenging and can present unique learning opportunities. Here are some recommendations to help you make a better business case.

1. Use tangible benefits and savings only

Annual outage volume, agreed-upon Mean-Time-to-Resolution (MTTR) times, and Service Level Agreement (SLA) penalties are the most common. Soft benefits such as better use of IT resources, reduces damage to the brand, and fewer people on conference calls will certainly provide a benefit, but a hard savings is difficult to quantify and should probably not be included in the financial justification.

One large bank had as many as 115 people on their war room conference calls. And calls averaged several hours with one call last year taking 27 hours! While there is certainly a productivity gain to be made, your finance team is unlikely to agree on a hard savings amount by eliminating some of these calls.

2. Start small and pick the right application for your proof of concept

The “right” application should be one that will bridge the gap between the technology and the business. It is always great if you can quantify results based on your application or service running in your environment.

3. Get your main detractors socialized in this process as early as you can

This is not a popularity contest and you are probably going to be shining a bright light on some problem areas. But your detractors can become your biggest supporters once they are able to work with a common version of the truth that is based on actual performance data. They don’t have to miss out on many war room conferences to see the value in effective end-to-end monitoring.

4. Ensure the financial portion of the business case is conservative

Ensure that the financial portion of the business case is conservative and none of the assumptions can be argued by your finance team. Use internally available data obtained from the business owners, support teams, and your trouble ticketing system administrator. And remember that it is better to underestimate your savings and overestimate your costs. You want to show a fast payback based on conservative numbers that cannot be argued.

Ted Wilson is Chief Operating Officer at SL Corporation.

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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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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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