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General Information
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July 28, 2006
• Vol.28 Issue 30
Page(s) 30 in print issue
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Keep An Eye On Your Applications
Maintain Satisfactory Customer Experience Through Application Monitoring
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Application monitoring of your network infrastructure via automated hardware and software monitoring tools is integral for maintaining customer satisfaction as they interact with your SME’s online systems.
Scott Safe, vice president of marketing for Network Physics, makers of the NP-2000 NetSensory Enterprise network application management appliance, sees the rise of application monitoring in the small to medium-sized enterprise space driven by the proliferation of the Web into extranets that tie together partners, customers, and buyers. “Monitoring performance for satisfactory customer experience enables you to fix any issues before you lose customers,” says Safe.
 The Importance Of Application Monitoring
James Kobielus, principal analyst of data management for Current Analysis, a technology analyst firm, sees application monitoring as a subset of application management important to providing management a view into an application infrastructure’s performance, security, and environment. “Application monitoring is important because you run your business on applications,” he says.
“Application monitoring also shows your customers, investors, and partners industry best practices,” says Kobielus. As much as application monitoring can support the customer experience, it can also help monitor your applications to see they meet SLAs (service level agreements) you may have in place with customers, making it good for business on multiple fronts.
Application monitoring tools enable your data center team to better serve internal and external customers because your team can be proactive and armed with real-time alert information, so they can hone in and perform appropriate remediation within your application environment. An application and network infrastructure monitored by an application monitoring tool can spare the data center team from being reactive to network/application infrastructure issues, freeing them up for other important business-critical tasks.
Network Physics’ Safe says that application monitoring has business relevance because of the importance of maintaining a satisfactory customer experience. The introduction of application monitoring into your SME can help quell the inevitable finger-pointing that can happen in IT groups during postmortem sessions after a failure.
Kobielus also points out the important assets of application monitoring, including the maintenance of 7x24 operations, audit trails (changes, user access), and legal reason for compliancy programs such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA (two programs requiring application monitoring of user accesses and events to maintain compliancy).
Inside Application Monitoring
Application monitoring occurs two ways. The first is nonserver, typically integrated into the application software, with the system monitoring application availability and disk space. Depending on the application, there might be an automated alerting capability.
Second, the requirement for application monitoring has also led to the rise of third-party application monitoring suites that monitor “the customer experience,” including transactions over the Internet between the user (customer or partner) and your application infrastructure. Typically, such application monitoring solutions are hardware appliances running hardware agents, software agents, and sniffer software to monitor network traffic. All the application monitoring data is available from a central management console. The real-time data appearing on the central management consoles shows the status of the network and application infrastructure through various reports.
Application monitoring solutions from vendors such as Microsoft, Attachmate (formerly NetIQ), and Network Physics include a customizable set of alerts that can traffic alerts to the appropriate data center staff for resolution. Deviations in the normal application traffic ebb and flow trigger alerts. The application monitoring tool can send alerts via email, SMS, or IM, depending on the software’s feature set. When shopping for application monitoring software, it’s important to put configurable alerts as a requirement because it makes mobilizing the appropriate staff to an application issue much easier. For example, if the application monitoring tool detects server issues, it notifies the server team to resolve the issue; if it detects network issues, it alerts the network team.
As the Web has become a preferred applications platform, many application monitoring tools are rising to the challenge to include the monitoring of SOA (service-oriented architecture) and end-to-end monitoring of distributed applications. 
by Will Kelly
Building The Case For Application Monitoring
When building the business case to purchase an application monitoring tool for your SME, you should consider the following:
• Does your SME have to comply with Sarbox or another compliancy program?
• Are you having issues keeping your SLAs with customers?
• Can the alerts offered by an application monitoring tool streamline problem resolution efforts?
• Do you have customers, partners, and/or vendors accessing your application infrastructure? What is the dollar amount of that business? |
Sponsored Links
AdventNet ManageEngine OpManager
Offers combined WAN, server, and applications monitoring with integrated help desk, asset management, and WAN traffic analysis functionality
www.Processor.com/AdventNet13
Certeon S-Series
Helps increase the speed, security, and scalability of mission-critical WAN-based applications
www.Processor.com/Certeon
Cesura Business Certainty
Helps your IT organization ensure an end-user performance problem never gets a chance to escalate to impact your business
www.Processor.com/Cesura2
Gigamon GigaVUE-MP Out-of-Band Data-Access Solution
Provides dynamic connectivity for out-of-band monitoring tools such as IDS, sniffers, and application monitors
www.Processor.com/Gigamon
Lantronix SecureLinx Management Appliance
A master control center that seamlessly integrates equipment connected by console servers, KVMs, and remote power managers
www.Processor.com/Lantronix1
NetQos SuperAgent
Tracks and measures user response time without desktop or server agents
www.Processor.com/NetQos
Network Physics NP-2000 NetSensory Enterprise
Report performance for key business functions, sites, and services and prioritize troubleshooting
www.Processor.com/NP-2000
Northwest Performance Software NetScanTools Pro
An integrated collection of Internet information-gathering utilities for Windows
www.Processor.com/NWPSW
Packeteer iShare
An intelligent overlay between business frontlines and IP networks, Packeteer appliances scale to deliver optimal WAN application performance at every location
www.Processor.com/Packeteer |
View the chart that accompanies this article.
(NOTE: These pages are PDF files. You will need Adobe Acrobat to view these pages. Download Adobe Acrobat Reader.)
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