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Beyond the "Single Pane of Glass"

Single Pane of Glass for Monitoring IT Performance is Not the Means to an End

End-user organizations are looking to take more of a service-centric approach when managing IT performance, and management vendors, for the most part, have done a good job of adjusting to this trend. Recently, I had the chance to see a number of demos of IT performance monitoring products that are based on different underlining technologies for collecting performance data, are being sold to different job roles within the organization, and even competing in different markets, but they all had something in common. The first screen of their performance dashboards looks almost identical. And products that are based on network monitoring technologies, data center management or application monitoring all of a sudden have the same look and feel:

• Green, yellow/orange and red markers for performance of your key IT services - typically in the top right corner

•Some kind of mash-up (mostly Google Maps) to show where these services are being delivered to and how their performance varies – typically in top left corner

• Icons representing different infrastructure parts that can be monitored for performance – typically in the bottom row

It is very encouraging that technology vendors are realizing that the days of infrastructure bias to performance monitoring are over and they are adjusting the way they are presenting performance data to end-users to reflect more of a service centric approach. It is also encouraging to see that the vendors are getting the message that a “single pane of glass” is the best approach to present network, application, server and database performance data to end-users. The key question is: What does it take to turn pretty icons, maps and links from a high level overview of performance of IT services to information needed for problem resolution?

Using a single platform to monitor the health of IT services is not much of a competitive differentiator, as the range of companies that are providing dashboards for monitoring the overall health of IT services goes across different technology classes – from networking vendors such as NetScout and Network Instruments over BTM vendors such as Nastel and Correlsense, APM platforms such as Foglight and Vantage and BSM solutions such as Zyrion, Netuitive or AccelOps. However, the depth of data that these tools can collect is very dissimilar, and they are using a different approach for collecting this data.

“A single pane of glass” solutions for monitoring the health of IT services has true value for the end-user only if it delivers all of the capabilities that they need to monitor each part of their infrastructure. However, many BSM products are still lacking major network monitoring capabilities, such as NetFlow capture and analysis, network behavior analysis (NBA), ability to recreate network behavior and others. AccelOps is one of the few BSM vendors that have NBA capabilities, while Uptime Software recently added NetFlow capabilities to their portfolio. It is a similar story with key application monitoring capabilities, such as response times measuring, end-user experience monitoring and Layer 7 analysis, as not all BSM products are offering these capabilities.

Ease of use, implementation and management is very important for end-user organizations, as they are increasingly looking to consolidate their IT management tools. Organizations are definitely becoming more interested in seeing across IT ‘silos’ and taking a service-centric approach for monitoring the health of their IT infrastructure. However, starting with monitoring the health of IT services (as opposed to monitoring the performance of infrastructure parts) is not the means to an end. In order for organizations to move away from using dozens of point solutions to monitor IT performance, vendors need to start offering platforms that would include all of the capabilities of networking, application, datacenter and database products.

About Bojan Simic

Bojan Simic is the founder and Principal Analyst at TRAC Research, a market research and analyst firm that specializes in IT performance management. As an industry analyst, Bojan interviewed more than 2,000 IT and business professionals from end-user organizations and published more than 50 research reports. Bojan's coverage area at TRAC Research includes application and network monitoring, WAN management and acceleration, cloud and virtualization management, BSM and managed services.

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Beyond the "Single Pane of Glass"

Single Pane of Glass for Monitoring IT Performance is Not the Means to an End

End-user organizations are looking to take more of a service-centric approach when managing IT performance, and management vendors, for the most part, have done a good job of adjusting to this trend. Recently, I had the chance to see a number of demos of IT performance monitoring products that are based on different underlining technologies for collecting performance data, are being sold to different job roles within the organization, and even competing in different markets, but they all had something in common. The first screen of their performance dashboards looks almost identical. And products that are based on network monitoring technologies, data center management or application monitoring all of a sudden have the same look and feel:

• Green, yellow/orange and red markers for performance of your key IT services - typically in the top right corner

•Some kind of mash-up (mostly Google Maps) to show where these services are being delivered to and how their performance varies – typically in top left corner

• Icons representing different infrastructure parts that can be monitored for performance – typically in the bottom row

It is very encouraging that technology vendors are realizing that the days of infrastructure bias to performance monitoring are over and they are adjusting the way they are presenting performance data to end-users to reflect more of a service centric approach. It is also encouraging to see that the vendors are getting the message that a “single pane of glass” is the best approach to present network, application, server and database performance data to end-users. The key question is: What does it take to turn pretty icons, maps and links from a high level overview of performance of IT services to information needed for problem resolution?

Using a single platform to monitor the health of IT services is not much of a competitive differentiator, as the range of companies that are providing dashboards for monitoring the overall health of IT services goes across different technology classes – from networking vendors such as NetScout and Network Instruments over BTM vendors such as Nastel and Correlsense, APM platforms such as Foglight and Vantage and BSM solutions such as Zyrion, Netuitive or AccelOps. However, the depth of data that these tools can collect is very dissimilar, and they are using a different approach for collecting this data.

“A single pane of glass” solutions for monitoring the health of IT services has true value for the end-user only if it delivers all of the capabilities that they need to monitor each part of their infrastructure. However, many BSM products are still lacking major network monitoring capabilities, such as NetFlow capture and analysis, network behavior analysis (NBA), ability to recreate network behavior and others. AccelOps is one of the few BSM vendors that have NBA capabilities, while Uptime Software recently added NetFlow capabilities to their portfolio. It is a similar story with key application monitoring capabilities, such as response times measuring, end-user experience monitoring and Layer 7 analysis, as not all BSM products are offering these capabilities.

Ease of use, implementation and management is very important for end-user organizations, as they are increasingly looking to consolidate their IT management tools. Organizations are definitely becoming more interested in seeing across IT ‘silos’ and taking a service-centric approach for monitoring the health of their IT infrastructure. However, starting with monitoring the health of IT services (as opposed to monitoring the performance of infrastructure parts) is not the means to an end. In order for organizations to move away from using dozens of point solutions to monitor IT performance, vendors need to start offering platforms that would include all of the capabilities of networking, application, datacenter and database products.

About Bojan Simic

Bojan Simic is the founder and Principal Analyst at TRAC Research, a market research and analyst firm that specializes in IT performance management. As an industry analyst, Bojan interviewed more than 2,000 IT and business professionals from end-user organizations and published more than 50 research reports. Bojan's coverage area at TRAC Research includes application and network monitoring, WAN management and acceleration, cloud and virtualization management, BSM and managed services.

Hot Topics

The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

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A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

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