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Making Life Easier for IT Staff

Ivar Sagemo

The challenging reality for most IT departments is that new software for integrating processes and thus improving productivity can turn out to be the source of additional IT headaches. This is at odds with what should be an organizational priority: making the IT department's life easier. Such an approach is wise not just to keep critical computing systems purring but to avoid disgruntlement and costly turnover within this important corporate group.

But when the word comes down to IT from above that new enterprise software will be installed, life usually doesn't get easier. This is particularly true in the case of monitoring tools for an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) like Microsoft's BizTalk. Widely used for managing disparate business processes handled by different software systems, it's obvious that ESBs need monitoring to prevent costly downtime. However, monitoring tools add yet another layer of complexity, which means more work for a typically burdened IT group.

What's typical with monitoring software is the need to hire external consultants for installation and tuning. There goes some of a department's scarce budget! Then there's the real tricky part — determining, after the consultants leave, what was implemented and what techniques worked best. "Plug and play" is usually a pipe dream for something as complex as ESB monitoring tools. Figuring out the baseline business traffic thresholds and traffic patterns to set up monitoring is very tough.

The typical route with monitoring tools is manually configuring, adjusting and re-adjusting thresholds and monitoring parameters, likely with very little input from the business side of an enterprise. It's often a shot in the dark that ends up delivering too many or too few alerts.

With this blindfolded approach, the daily reality for IT is having to investigate thousands of alerts , most of which they don’t believe are real and they just end up deleting— or perhaps they delete a few that are real. In essence, monitoring tools become reactive, sending warnings when the system has already broken down.

Image removed.

Unfortunately, there are other pesky issues to consider. Many ESB monitoring platforms are often extremely rigid and time consuming when it came to maintenance. Need someone on site to install and, in addition, these platforms are frequently bundled with other products and thus perform more than just monitoring, forcing IT personnel to have extra certification and training.

The biggest problem, however, is the specter of potential server downtime — the scariest issue of all. One recent study of U.S. data centers determined that the average cost of downtime was $5,600 per minute, with the average reported duration being 90 minutes. Even if an enterprise system is up 99.5% of the time, this still translates to almost 44 hours a year of downtime. This is the ultimate nightmare for IT.

With all these challenges in mind, it's welcome news that some IT teams have been able to weed through all the options and zero in on tools that avoid some of the common pitfalls. When the IT department of Aon Norway started reviewing monitoring tools, its goal was software that was as intuitive as the iPhone. Part of the world's largest insurance brokerage, Aon plc, this IT team had the same challenges as most IT groups but achieved a positive outcome.

Ivar Sagemo is CEO of AIMS Innovation.

Related Links:

Ivar Sagemo, CEO of AIMS Innovation, Joins the APMdigest Vendor Forum

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Making Life Easier for IT Staff

Ivar Sagemo

The challenging reality for most IT departments is that new software for integrating processes and thus improving productivity can turn out to be the source of additional IT headaches. This is at odds with what should be an organizational priority: making the IT department's life easier. Such an approach is wise not just to keep critical computing systems purring but to avoid disgruntlement and costly turnover within this important corporate group.

But when the word comes down to IT from above that new enterprise software will be installed, life usually doesn't get easier. This is particularly true in the case of monitoring tools for an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) like Microsoft's BizTalk. Widely used for managing disparate business processes handled by different software systems, it's obvious that ESBs need monitoring to prevent costly downtime. However, monitoring tools add yet another layer of complexity, which means more work for a typically burdened IT group.

What's typical with monitoring software is the need to hire external consultants for installation and tuning. There goes some of a department's scarce budget! Then there's the real tricky part — determining, after the consultants leave, what was implemented and what techniques worked best. "Plug and play" is usually a pipe dream for something as complex as ESB monitoring tools. Figuring out the baseline business traffic thresholds and traffic patterns to set up monitoring is very tough.

The typical route with monitoring tools is manually configuring, adjusting and re-adjusting thresholds and monitoring parameters, likely with very little input from the business side of an enterprise. It's often a shot in the dark that ends up delivering too many or too few alerts.

With this blindfolded approach, the daily reality for IT is having to investigate thousands of alerts , most of which they don’t believe are real and they just end up deleting— or perhaps they delete a few that are real. In essence, monitoring tools become reactive, sending warnings when the system has already broken down.

Image removed.

Unfortunately, there are other pesky issues to consider. Many ESB monitoring platforms are often extremely rigid and time consuming when it came to maintenance. Need someone on site to install and, in addition, these platforms are frequently bundled with other products and thus perform more than just monitoring, forcing IT personnel to have extra certification and training.

The biggest problem, however, is the specter of potential server downtime — the scariest issue of all. One recent study of U.S. data centers determined that the average cost of downtime was $5,600 per minute, with the average reported duration being 90 minutes. Even if an enterprise system is up 99.5% of the time, this still translates to almost 44 hours a year of downtime. This is the ultimate nightmare for IT.

With all these challenges in mind, it's welcome news that some IT teams have been able to weed through all the options and zero in on tools that avoid some of the common pitfalls. When the IT department of Aon Norway started reviewing monitoring tools, its goal was software that was as intuitive as the iPhone. Part of the world's largest insurance brokerage, Aon plc, this IT team had the same challenges as most IT groups but achieved a positive outcome.

Ivar Sagemo is CEO of AIMS Innovation.

Related Links:

Ivar Sagemo, CEO of AIMS Innovation, Joins the APMdigest Vendor Forum

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 ...

Image
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 ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...