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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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E-commerce is set to skyrocket with a 9% rise over the next few years ... To thrive in this competitive environment, retailers must identify digital resilience as their top priority. In a world where savvy shoppers expect 24/7 access to online deals and experiences, any unexpected downtime to digital services can lead to significant financial losses, damage to brand reputation, abandoned carts with designer shoes, and additional issues ...

Efficiency is a highly-desirable objective in business ... We're seeing this scenario play out in enterprises around the world as they continue to struggle with infrastructures and remote work models with an eye toward operational efficiencies. In contrast to that goal, a recent Broadcom survey of global IT and network professionals found widespread adoption of these strategies is making the network more complex and hampering observability, leading to uptime, performance and security issues. Let's look more closely at these challenges ...

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The 2025 Catchpoint SRE Report dives into the forces transforming the SRE landscape, exploring both the challenges and opportunities ahead. Let's break down the key findings and what they mean for SRE professionals and the businesses relying on them ...

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The pressure on IT teams has never been greater. As data environments grow increasingly complex, resource shortages are emerging as a major obstacle for IT leaders striving to meet the demands of modern infrastructure management ... According to DataStrike's newly released 2025 Data Infrastructure Survey Report, more than half (54%) of IT leaders cite resource limitations as a top challenge, highlighting a growing trend toward outsourcing as a solution ...

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Gartner revealed its top strategic predictions for 2025 and beyond. Gartner's top predictions explore how generative AI (GenAI) is affecting areas where most would assume only humans can have lasting impact ...

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AWS is a cloud-based computing platform known for its reliability, scalability, and flexibility. However, as helpful as its comprehensive infrastructure is, disparate elements and numerous siloed components make it difficult for admins to visualize the cloud performance in detail. It requires meticulous monitoring techniques and deep visibility to understand cloud performance and analyze operational efficiency in detail to ensure seamless cloud operations ...

Imagine a future where software, once a complex obstacle, becomes a natural extension of daily workflow — an intuitive, seamless experience that maximizes productivity and efficiency. This future is no longer a distant vision but a reality being crafted by the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence ...

Enterprise data sprawl already challenges companies' ability to protect and back up their data. Much of this information is never fully secured, leaving organizations vulnerable. Now, as GenAI platforms emerge as yet another environment where enterprise data is consumed, transformed, and created, this fragmentation is set to intensify ...

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