Monitoring systems allow your resources such as apps and automation software to ensure they run as per schedule and without jeopardizing your business. Ideally, your monitoring systems should be able to empower your systems such that there is no opportunity for downtime or outages. What can you expect from your monitoring tool or a system?
- Ensure that no system crashes occur
- Increase the surveillance such that potential problems or trouble areas are caught by the monitoring system itself before they snowball into an outage
- It should be easy to deploy and run
- It should work and do its job such that it increases the productivity and efficiency of your existing system
Further, in the age of networked systems, your monitoring tools should also help outline and measure consumption of the bandwidth you are using.
- Your profits and business growth are tied in with your system performance. A consistently monitored system has fewer chances of failure.
- Reduce your overall burden of investing and maintaining expensive IT infrastructure. A monitored system will give lesser trouble, in the first place.
- Complement your overall business development efforts through proactive monitoring which allows your system personnel to catch potential trouble before it disrupts the operations.
Resource consumption monitoring
Ideally, your monitoring tools will also check your system and all apps on it for resource or bandwidth consumption patterns. When your system is checked in entirety, your resource consumption will also be revealed in the form of details of consumption by each app. Some advanced monitoring tools can also outline problems in advance, thus effectively allowing adequate repair and maintenance time before disrupting end-user experience.
IT service management is an essential today when most enterprises and small businesses are looking at providing timely deliverables to clients in diverse areas and industries. For most businesses, IT services management is synonymous with customer service and hence, a trouble point. However, it need not be that way. IT services, when managed efficiently, allow for better service delivery as well as reliable processes and operations.
IT service management implementation also helps streamline your IT functions such that processes are better optimized and more value-for-money.
Benefits of IT service management: There are several measurable benefits to deploying IT services within your business, including adding to the profitability of your business.
- Measurably reduce costs involved in running and maintaining your IT services and optimize existing resources through systematic streamlining
- Align your IT services with business needs and expectations with the help of management best practices
- Improve and add to the overall value proposition of your business towards your customer
- Improve overall business productivity through aligned goals and better understanding, company-wide
The future
If you are an enterprise or a small business currently, understand that this will not remain the case forever. In fact, most small businesses grow at a fast pace and may outpace the forecasts made in the beginning. IT services management can help you provide better services through better understanding of infrastructural capabilities and customer expectation and needs. Your IT services management can create strong foundation on which your business growth needs can continue to be met, regardless of changes in size of the business. Better still, it will allow your platforms to be ready for surges in growth without slacking either in client deliverables or customer services.
You use a lot of different web apps, so your system would need different monitoring tool to do justice to each of the apps. Right? Wrong. A single tool can do a good job of monitoring your system just as well, if it is designed effectively.
How do you define a single and yet effective monitoring tool for all the apps within your system?
Monitoring tools should be able to provide you with information in a form that is easy to understand; they should provide information about the performance of your systems and raise flags, if needed.
Monitoring simplified: Your system monitoring tool should not be too complex to deploy. It should combine ease of use and simplicity along with the ability to monitor key areas within the system. Ease of use together with ease of visibility when reading reports can be a vital factor in the efficacy of your monitoring tool. Reports can be in the form of graphs denoting statistics; for elements like transactions within a given time frame, percentages and graphs can provide data quickly and in a form that is easy to read. Remember, system monitoring can include both, overall performance reports and deeper, detailed reports.
Ease of access: System monitoring tools that come with customized dashboards or access can help you set performance metrics and customize the tool to meet your needs. Ideally, you should also be able to see various components within your application and how they interact with each other.
This is better managed without the use of complicated codes or interfaces. Choose a monitoring tool that allows you a simple interface as well as set monitoring parameters for your system.
Follow key actions, business transactions, SLA compliance: Your monitoring tool must track and report on the key transactions and adherence to SLA, apart from monitoring the entire system. This can raise alerts at the right time, without allowing the user experience to be disrupted.
Application performance could be gauged in terms of its ease of use, and the user experience affords. However, there are other components within performance of an application that may be more preferred above others.
Application performance needs to be studied in context of the transaction that the application is being used for. Performance can be outlined in terms of business requirement. These can include essentials such as number of users expected, response time, end-user experience, working together with other applications, etc.
Designed for the Cloud
Most small businesses are turning to the Cloud for the advantages it offers. You may need to ensure that your application performance will not be affected by working in the Cloud. Cloud apps need different infrastructure and you may need to check whether it is in place or not; pay special attention to tier dependencies in the case of complex apps.
Check infrastructure and application interplay
The performance of your application is dependent on both, the platform it runs on, as well as the infrastructure supporting the platform. If you want optimum performance, you must not forget storage capacity; without adequate storage, it is nearly impossible to have an application performing at its peak.
End-user experience
For applications involved in active transactions, it is worthwhile to check out the end-user experience as well. Applications designed around the transaction they are supposed to carry out, have a better chance of delivering on expectation regarding performance. This is especially true in the face of new technologies that are constantly emerging.
Application performance monitoring is done as much to ensure optimal performance, as to ensure service assurance. At a time when customers take to social media to air grievances, ensuring application performance is critical for businesses. Fortunately, timely monitoring can help ensure optimal application performance.
Several elements form the basis for successful application performance, especially in customer-centric businesses.
- Effective operations, keeping in mind the customer experience
- Effective management of the customer experience of the application and its performance
- Timely troubleshooting as and when needed
- Simplify your own IT management and help you streamline the function, with the least amount of hassles and low costs
How well your applications perform, and what is their contribution to the user experience will play a huge role in determining the trust your customers place in your business. Thus, application performance automatically impacts business and profitability.
How to ensure service assurance?
Choosing a performance monitoring tool for your applications can be one of the first steps. Comprehensive and real-time monitoring could help you keep track of the way in which your applications are performing. Monitor and watch out for the following factors:
- Complexity: Too much complexity can be troublesome. However, in case it cannot be helped, your monitoring tool needs to be able to cut through all of it to be able to review comprehensively and also spot hidden issues
- Reporting: To be totally effective, monitoring tools need to be able to spot the issue, analyze it, and be able to report on it. The reporting should be timely; it needs you to be able to resolve it and firefight, if needed
- A comprehensive monitoring tool will allow you adequate time to resolve the problem before it reaches shut-down stage
Transaction monitoring takes importance in the face of compliance with service terms and business delivery matters. Without timely tracking, it is difficult to gauge whether transactions are meeting business needs or not. Depending on the application, transaction monitoring could be closely tied-in with end-user expectations and ultimately, customer loyalty.
How does regular transaction monitoring help?
Ideally, transaction monitoring should be comprehensive, covering all aspects of application function and operations. When done proactively, transaction monitoring allows for several advantages including:
- Discovering issues related to transactions before they snowball into major problems
- Being able to raise alarms and alerts effectively, pointing to the cause of the issue, so it can be nailed effectively
- Depending on your application and if you choose a comprehensive transaction monitoring tool, it can review transactions across your entire IT infrastructure
- Transaction monitoring can also help pinpoint problem to the exact technical level where they are appearing
- You can also configure your monitoring tool to provide you with specific information; this can be facilitated with the help of a dashboard
Benefits of regular transaction monitoring
- Improves real time experience and availability- preventz accidents and unexpected problems and outages
- Increases detection of unaccounted for or 'missing' transactions
- Improves time taken in resolving issues
- Ensures compliance with defined terms and conditions
- Reduces costs measurably; through timely detection of problems
If your business is associated with finance, you must have transaction monitoring in place to prevent crimes and fraud. Regular transaction monitoring can also become part of your risk management solutions.
Service level agreement is not so technical as it may seem; it can actually help boost end-user or even customer satisfaction through ensuring compliance of the terms and conditions that have been determined for services provided by the IT department.
On a larger scale, service level agreements are good indicators of the performance of your system. These agreements can also help you figure out if the services being provided are in compliance with requirements. If the requirements are set or determined in consonance with the business development team, then your service level agreement can help facilitate loyalty of your customers through ensuring their needs are met.
Ensuring service level agreement (SLA) directives are met can result in several advantages, including:
> Defining and outlining expected standards of service; both from the side of the vendor, and that of the customer
> Ensuring and measuring compliance of IT services being provided
> Help define benchmarks and quality standards
> Help define process and implementation better
> Setting clear rules and making expectations easier to understand
> Helps goal-setting
Application performance monitoring and the SLA
Your application monitoring tool can help you monitor service level agreement compliance. Some tools will also provide service level reporting, which in turn can help you monitor service level agreement compliance. One of the advantages of choosing a tool that can help monitor SLA compliance is that it will ensure your systems run smoothly and with lesser disruptions. Some tools also have reporting levels to align the customer's perspective with IT goals and deliverables. These tools not only monitor individual components and services, they also help address the need to enforce the SLA directives.
A service level agreement need not be taken as a proverbial sword hanging over the heads of the IT personnel. Judiciously used, it works as an effective means of communicating expectations from the customer perspective to those in charge of managing the technical details.
The ideal performance testing tool
Service level agreements can also help ensure regular review and maintenance so that bugs are caught before they have caused severe damage. Service level reporting can prove to be extremely useful when it generates the necessary results in the stipulated time frame. Alerts are a necessary component of reporting as they bring to notice issues and problems, thus initiating troubleshooting wherever needed. Comprehensive performance testing tools approach the need for a service level agreement to be implemented across an organization. An SLA that is implemented across all of the systems in a business helps implement consistent performance and ensure smoother operations across the organization. Further, you can choose advanced options that allow you to test applications in a manner similar to that of an end user. This includes testing transaction time, response time, other factors such as ease of access, etc.
About the Author:
Tevron develops and delivers Application Monitoring Solutions, Service Level Agreement, IT Service Management, and end to end performance monitoring system available globally. Tevron has also successfully delivered enterprise Application Monitoring Solutions and Testing solutions to support every IT enterprise application to hundreds of customers across the globe. Tevron's solutions designed to support diverse environments, business processes and applications with a service oriented management.
If you thought IT service management serves only technologically-dependent businesses, or those companies that are into IT-dependent processes, you might be wrong. IT service management is the function that straddles both, service management and IT planning in an organization. Finance allocation, or financial planning for IT is also part of its purview.
Often, IT service management is seen as carrying the ‘voice’ of business services management, consumer insights, expectations and feedback to the IT department. Depending on these inputs, the IT department may need to change or modify some of its plans for the business. This could be as simple as tweaking a particular app or software to start performing as intended, or including some changed to an existing software program to ensure it meets a consumer need.
IT service management can help a business in a number of ways:
Prevent chaotic firefighting: If a situation caused by a software is spiraling out of control, it might call for better IT services management measures. Trend analysis and careful planning on inputs provided by the IT services management team can help prevent chaos.
Business metrics: IT services management can help provide a startup or new business with vital metrics. IT apps can then be customized and tweaked according to requirement to serve optimally and with reduced wastage or errors.
Plan for infrastructure: How do you invest in the infrastructure for your business? IT services management can help provide you with useful pointers when you set out to buy or invest in expensive infrastructure for your startup or new business.
IT services management can help your business in many ways, including in helping you improve the performance of applications and ensure they are utilized optimally.Even then, management of IT services may not be sought after actively by businesses. The reality though, is that when managed effectively, IT services management can contribute towards making your business more profitable. Here are a few of the ways in which the management of IT services can help a business:
- Elements critical to the business must be made part of communication to both, IT and business components. If it is the marketing resource you’re talking to, communicate the value of IT to them, highlighting the areas where it is indispensable to business operations. This can help you implement IT services, thus promoting effective management.
- When your IT services management is on track, most issues will undergo troubleshooting more smoothly. Proactive management can take care of most IT problems before they hinder business operations.
- IT services management can help you interpret various applications better; and also understand the effect of application performance on the end user and different business processes.
- If you have a Service Level Agreement in place, IT service management can help with reporting compliance.
When implemented successfully, IT services management can also help you determine elements necessary or components you need to watch out for when deploying a new application. Effective IT service management can help ensure your new application is meeting expectations related to its performance and helping the business in the manner intended.
Monitoring response time and availability of systems come into focus wherever applications are used; for automation purposes, as user interfaces, etc. Monitoring systems can be intimidating for a company, especially in case of multiple applications. Thorough and comprehensive monitoring can prove to be highly effort-intensive. This rings especially true for small and mid-sized businesses, where resources are scarce and the budget, restricted.
Further, even if the small business has IT resources, they are probably managing the network, ensuring uptime and performance; undertaking comprehensive monitoring for the system can further take up precious time and effort.
Comprehensive monitoring of applications is also influenced by the performance of the network. As a result, the scope of comprehensive system monitoring is pretty large. This can be compounded by the system complexity. Further, most complex systems can be spread over diverse applications, thus increasing the efforts for the monitoring tools. It must be remembered that regular monitoring increases efficiency of the system, in turn allowing for optimized performance.
How to define a healthy system when monitoring it?
A quick response time and increased availability are the hallmarks of a well-performing system. These are also the areas that should be monitored regularly to ensure a healthy system. These parameters can provide a fair idea whether the application is meeting requirements or not. But, in consumer interfaces, monitoring systems for these parameters can prove to be difficult. Real time monitoring of applications can prove to be immensely challenging.
Single solution for all
Ideally, a single comprehensive monitoring system can work wonders for busy organizations where diverse applications are used, such as web applications, legacy and client server applications. Further, single systems, if chosen wisely, are better at monitoring than several different ones which may gloss over several applications, inadvertently.
Choose a monitoring tool that supports not only diverse applications, but also different protocols and environments. For businesses that may have budget restrictions, a single tool can help by not just carrying out a comprehensive review, but also by bringing down costs. More importantly, an efficient monitoring system will ensure that the application is running as expected and is also helping in cutting down costs. Savings in terms of money are also determined by the manpower that is exempted from running manual checks on the system.
Comprehensive tests: An efficient monitoring system will run a large number of checks across the period of a day or 24 hours. This means a test taking place every minute.
Thorough detection: The monitoring system should be testing your applications in a thorough manner, including diverse protocols and services such as POP3, https, etc.
Reporting: After detection comes reporting. Unless problems are reported, action cannot be taken. Comprehensive monitoring systems will have a sound reporting system that highlights issues and problems so they can be repaired.
About the Author:
Tevron develops and delivers Application Monitoring Solutions, Service Level Agreement, IT Service Management, and end to end performance monitoring system available globally. Tevron has also successfully delivered enterprise Application Monitoring Solutions and Testing solutions to support every IT enterprise application to hundreds of customers across the globe. Tevron's solutions designed to support diverse environments, business processes and applications with a service oriented management.
Monitoring of mobile applications has taken center-stage now, since the advent of mobile devices. Mobile applications have already changed the way people do business and as a result, monitoring technologies too need to keep pace with changing times.
Because mobile applications interactions are different from conventional personal computer ones, their performance monitoring and management too needs a different approach. However, most businesses and organizations still persist with conventional monitoring systems.
Mobile applications need monitoring for key performance data like throughput, region-wise performance data, response time, active users, etc.
Whether your server and API requests are performing optimally or whether there are issues at the domain level, your monitoring solutions should be able to dive down to the root cause of the application error.
Because mobile devices are region and carrier-dependent also, your monitoring tool should be able to identify problems by region as well. This narrows down the search field for the issue and you can then isolate the problem and take steps to rectify it. There are several other features that are necessary to application monitoring for mobile devices. For example, you may need specific information such as error by domain name itself; unless your tool provides this, you will probably not catch those errors until such a time as they crash the application. Mobile application monitoring may also need to take into consideration the device versions and the geographical or physical location and the carrier providing the mobile services.
Optimized Monitoring
Apart from pointing out errors, comprehensive application monitoring can help you make crucial decisions. The findings of the monitoring tool can help you determine what areas need strengthening, which mobile carriers to depend on, etc. such that your mobile applications perform optimally.
Drafting a Service Level Agreement (SLA)? Make sure it is an effective one. An SLA will set the standards for the service quality and the route taken to achieve it. Service Level Agreements can be complicated to establish and if not well-defined, prone to non-compliance as well.
Outlining or Defining expectations
As a first step, defining the basic expectations from the project is important. After the project expectations are listed out clearly, the vendor can also decide whether or not they can be met. Both, the client and the vendor need to spell out the expectations in the beginning of the Service Level Agreement and the ability to meet them.
Defining the process
The client can also define the process they would like to be followed. This must be spelled out in the beginning of the Service Level Agreement; if pursued later, it can be dismissed as a communication lapse. Defining the process is important if the client wants the project to be executed a certain way. It can also help clear out confusions regarding client expectations and pave the way for clearer outlining of goals.
The meeting point
The Service Level Agreement should also serve as a meeting point, ideally. SLAs are primarily the bridge between the technical team creating the solutions and the business team representing customer needs. Only when both reach a meeting point, can the solution be termed as an effective one. The SLA needs to be drafted keeping in mind goals that are achievable in terms of IT services management. At this point, the agreement also needs to be reviewed and any omissions or changes addressed.
Application monitoring ensures that your applications are all working as intended and users are not facing problems. Monitoring tools will provide information about business applications and their performance in the form of reports. Depending on the tool you have chosen, you may also have access to reports via email. Some application monitoring software will provide you with a dashboard that helps you track the usage and performance applications.
Application monitoring offers many options. Generally though, it is agreed upon that comprehensive monitoring is more effective. This means not just the application, but its environment will also be monitored, among other elements, for possible issues. The monitoring itself may be undertaken by using a locally-installed monitoring tool on the server or by employing different technical processes to collect information on the application.
The significance of timely alerts
If application monitoring is to be effective, you need to ensure that you get timely performance reports. Application monitoring also takes care of compliance with SLA besides helping with capacity planning.
Adequate monitoring allows you to take corrective steps in case of a problem; issue resolution can then be taken up before it starts affecting the end-user or customer transactions. Some critical functions and applications may also be subject to real time monitoring. Corrective action can then be taken to ensure that serious outages are prevented from affecting the business.
Timely alerts during monitoring can help ensure the health of your application. When problems area discovered on time, corrective action can be taken before outages happen. Timely intervention also ensures long-term damage to your system and infrastructure. Further, because you are alerted of problems and issues on time, your tech support system is ready to deal with them. Thus, timely application monitoring alerts also help you create an entire IT infrastructure that is far more manageable and dependable.
Well-managed infrastructure systems create lesser loads for the business, overall. Depending on the application needs and the monitoring tools utilized, you can also check robustness of your user-intensive systems such as emailing, instant messengers, websites and user interfaces and other platforms that help users engage and communicate. Databases and other information-rich systems can similarly be monitored to ensure they are working optimally.
The advantages
Insisting on a robust alerting system in application monitoring tools has many advantages to it.
> Reduced outages
> Higher uptimes for applications, services, etc.
> Rapid resolutions for processes that are not performing or have failed
> Resolution before application failure can affect end-users
> Reduced chances of revenue loss due to failed or poorly-performing applications
Optimally-performing applications will not affect customer transactions or operations that are critical to your business. Timely monitoring and reporting ensures that your applications are an asset to your business and a big help in increasing and maintaining the revenue stream.
About the Author:
Tevron develops and delivers Application Monitoring Solutions, Service Level Agreement, IT Service Management, and End to End Performance monitoring solutions available globally. Tevron has also successfully delivered enterprise Application Monitoring Solutions and Testing solutions to support every IT enterprise application to hundreds of customers across the globe. Tevron's solutions designed to support diverse environments, business processes and applications with a service oriented management.
Effective IT infrastructure and services management is the probably one of the first steps towards ensuring your business operations are running without interruption. Depending on the industry your business belongs to, you may have an online presence, a website that connects with your customers, or an online system of ordering merchandise, etc. Supporting all of this is your IT system. Apart from having a robust, heavy-duty system in place, you need to ensure you maintain it regularly to ensure hassle-free operations. IT services management, thus, is a dedicated responsibility that allows business owners the freedom to ensure an online presence without the bother of setting up a support system.
Some of the problems with having in-house IT monitoring could be:
> Lack of adequate technical knowledge about which tools to deploy for different functionalities
> Not enough bandwidth to accommodate resources that to install, maintain, and update monitoring tools
> Lack of resources to undertake and maintain comprehensive monitoring
The work carried out by IT services management companies or vendors includes comprehensive system monitoring, anticipating problems, and carrying out troubleshooting to resolve them. Different sectors within an IT set-up may need dedicated monitoring, and the service provider may utilize different tools for this purpose, or may work with one comprehensive tool.
Regardless of the tool used, the company or service provider that does IT services management for a business is also responsible for ensuring that problems do not escalate into bigger issues. As a result, managed IT services are always in demand.
The benefits of dedicated IT services management
> The business that actually needs its IT infrastructure looked after, does not need to worry about technical details or infrastructure purchase hassles, etc.
> Based on the vendor's method of monitoring, areas needing monitoring will be analyzed and reviewed for performance. Troubleshooting is also undertaken by vendor
> Mutually acceptable SLA can be drafted to ensure thorough monitoring
> Back up and support hassles are also managed by the IT services management vendor
Reliability is higher
Because the vendor supplying IT services management has technical understanding, reliability is higher. For a business to ensure effective IT monitoring, it will need to hire talent as well and further spend on training the talent as well. But professional vendors do not need any handholding because their information and knowledge is current and totally relevant to contemporary IT monitoring needs. As a result, the reliability is higher.
Higher accountability
Unlike an in-house system where blaming and passing responsibility may lead to derailing of the IT systems, vendors who manage IT services end-to-end take care of the monitoring in a comprehensive manner. This means there is higher accountability on the part of the monitoring team and your systems get taken care of, efficiently.
About the Author:
Tevron develops and delivers Application Monitoring Solutions, Service Level Agreement, IT Service Management, and End to End Performance monitoring solutions available globally. Tevron has also successfully delivered enterprise Application Monitoring Solutions and Testing solutions to support every IT enterprise application to hundreds of customers across the globe. Tevron's solutions designed to support diverse environments, business processes and applications with a service oriented management.
Performance testing has seen newer challenges in the cloud environment. Most businesses on restricted budgets find that online promotion or a strong online presence can help them. Further, many users prefer conducting their business online, making the case for cloud-enabled applications stronger. However, technology, including cloud technology, is dynamic and ever-changing. This presents newer grounds to cover, for performance testing methods as well. What worked well some months ago may not be adequate right now.
When it comes to performance testing solutions, the one element that comes to mind immediately would be real-time testing. But application monitoring needs to go beyond only real time testing, and bridge development and deployment, while keeping a sharp eye on its real-time performance. In cloud-based apps especially, the important of constant monitoring cannot be overlooked.
Certain elements are common to most application and performance testing.
Performance testing for cloud-based apps
Cloud-enabled applications have many advantages, such as helping to reduce operational costs. A small or mid-sized business firm can also successfully manage a business without needing to first make heavy investments in manpower or infrastructure in-house. Cloud based apps and resources use the cloud itself as a storing place, and the company that is harnessing it. Thus, testing for performance of cloud-based apps does not begin and end in the company's IT room. It is not dependent on the company that is using cloud technology. Instead, cloud-based applications will be affected by not just their platforms and environments, but also the different and rapidly changing environment within the cloud itself. Testing solutions for the performance of cloud based apps will need to take this into consideration.
Ensuring constant monitoring
Perhaps the one surefire method of ensuring strong performance of cloud-based apps is constant monitoring and hence testing and review methods too may need some modification. As part of performance testing of cloud-based apps, their ability to match expectations and requirements can be reviewed right from development up to deployment.
Updated performance testing solutions
Most cloud-based application monitoring is a service. If you have a vendor providing you services, you can ensure that your performance testing is in sync with the latest software changes and is keeping pace with the application updates. Your testing solutions could include a multi-pronged approach where the application is not tested in isolation.
Comprehensive performance testing
Your cloud-based application is dependent on its environment as well. Ideally, your application monitoring solution should take into account the working environment and the platform it is working on. Most performance testing should also reveal or detect discrepancies before they become apparent. For small or mid-sized businesses that operate through cloud-based applications mostly, sound performance monitoring and thorough and consistent application testing is indispensable.
About the Author:
Tevron develops and delivers Application Monitoring Solutions, Service Level Agreement, Performance Testing, and End to End Performance monitoring solutions available globally. Tevron has also successfully delivered enterprise Application Monitoring Solutions and Testing solutions to support every IT enterprise application to hundreds of customers across the globe. Tevron's solutions designed to support diverse environments, business processes and applications with a service oriented management.
If you were to analyze and dissect application monitoring, you would see that there really is no single answer to the question about what influences it. When undertaking monitoring, it is important to remember that most applications do not work in isolation. There is an interdependent maze that most applications operate within. This maze includes other applications as well as the software platform used.
Application monitoring may need to take into consideration the hardware details of the system as well. Factors such as hardware performance, capacity and speed can affect application performance. Further, if the platform on which the application runs, develops a problem, application monitoring alone may not be able to help.
Application monitoring, thus, is not just about the state of the application; it is equally about optimal performance. Optimized performance is not just about the functioning of a single application, it is about how all the different elements related to an application interact and engage to finally enable the application to perform.
Application monitoring may need to go as in-depth as the levels of coding. At times, comprehensive application monitoring may take into account the kind of coding undertaken in writing the application. Apart from coding, application performance monitoring will also take into account the loads that the application will handle. Load testing is a significant aspect of comprehensive application monitoring.
As networked environments grow in complexity, workloads are increasing at an unprecedented rate. The widespread adoption of different devices such as smart phones and other handheld communication devices is also aiding in increased virtualization. As a result, application monitoring now has greater grounds to cover.
When undertaking monitoring, it is worthwhile taking everything that touches the application into consideration.
Epic application performance monitoring needs to take into account the large sizes of databases that the application covers. Because Epic applications cover the medical and healthcare industry, performance testing solutions need to include areas such as Practice Management, Hospital Billing, Ambulatory and Inpatient EMR, etc. Epic also covers departments and ancillaries, and takes care of interoperability matters and the need for connecting affiliates.
As agencies involved in healthcare, including hospitals, medical groups and integrated healthcare organizations move towards adopting Epic applications, the need for adequate testing solutions is only going to increase. Further, because of the nature of industry that Epic applications serve, their effective performance is fundamental to the agencies using them. Services such as emergency rooms cannot afford to have applications that are not up and running when needed.
Epic consists of large databases that cover clinical as well as revenue functions for healthcare organizations. Epic performance needs to take into account not only healthcare concerns such as patient details, but also aspects such as system health, compliance with SLA, real user experience, etc. Performance monitoring for Epic applications also takes into account the environments.
Epic applications improve the productivity of physicians by helping to simplify the practice, including aspects of patient engagement. Eventually, effective Epic application performance results in better care delivery. The applications within this system take care of more than 100 specialties, all designed to make healthcare simpler with the use of pre-built content on reports, documents, order sets, etc. This makes for faster and effective care-giving, including for chronic care cases. For healthcare providers, the performance of their Epic applications must never flag, particularly since the system supports some critical areas within medical care, resulting in measurable increase in quality of care provided.
Performance testing is vital throughout the lifestyle of any application. However, if done in the early stages of application development, it can help save organizations a significant amount of costs and efforts that may need to be put in at a later stage. Often, in the initial stages, pressures for quick deployment lead to rigorous performance testing being put off, or postponed for a later stage.
Reviewing performance of any application has to be an ongoing process, because despite rigorous testing, the real world throws up challenges that may be unusual or not understood previously. Even after different reviews and tests are conducted on particular software, assessing its efficacy in the real world can be a challenge, given network conditions and user behavior. Probably one of the biggest challenges faced by experts is accurately predicting application performance on the basis of its testing.
Not integrating product development with performance
Not many developers understand the need to integrate performance in the development and deployment plan for an application. As a result, performance testing gets jeopardized, beginning with development of the application. Also, the application may lose out on the benefits of performance testing applied in initial stages, costing the organization a lot more in poor performance or frequent performance glitches in the later stages. This can get compounded depending on which stage of its lifecycle the product is at. At post-deployment stage, the costs and efforts of fixing software issues can be high enough to cause significant damage in terms of money, and worse, user experience and loyalty.
As a major Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management, and business software management tool, the Microsoft Dynamics suite presents a lot of usable features, including multiple modules and software configurations, making testing an even more challenging prospect. However, when successfully deployed, it can make for a very effective application to maximize your efforts and optimize your services in terms of both, quality and time.
What are the areas that need careful scrutiny for Microsoft Dynamics Testing?
1. Planned testing: Ideally, the testing should be a well-planned affair. If you're employing a vendor to carry out the deployment, ensure that the testing is comprehensive.
2. Make testing mandatory: The business for whom deployment is to be done, should be informed about the testing so that adequate provision of time can be made.
3. Anticipatory checks: Based on the requirements for the Microsoft Dynamics suite and its functionality, certain problems can be anticipated and testing undertaken for them, specially.
4. Covering all ground: Testing should include every aspect of the business requirements from Microsoft Dynamics.
5. Taking care of technical details: If your vendor is familiar with testing and Microsoft Dynamics performance monitoring, activities such as data migration, if needed, should be identified and tested.
6. Creating mock scenarios: If the testing environment can replicate a possible situation involving Microsoft Dynamics environment, the viability of the entire operation gets verified better.
7. Testing Performance: Performance and factors like availability need to be thoroughly tested as well. To an extent, this can ensure that problems in the future get taken care of.
Management or review of application performance can often be incomplete because it tends to concentrate on the process of monitoring alone, and not for errors that may be expected or anticipated to occur in the lifecycle of the application. One of the reasons for this could be that anticipating problems or errors is never an easy task. Further, problems that do not have a precedent are often not easy to predict. Application monitoring is an intrinsic part of performance management, but it cannot prevent issues and application failures by itself, but if it is applied in a thorough manner, it may help raise timely alerts and reveal corrective measures that could be taken.
Elements to take care of, when managing application performance
Performance management needs to focus on whether the application will meet its end-user expectations or not. Outline application expectations, if needed, before going ahead with the monitoring agenda. Application monitoring will work best when it goes hand-in-hand with end-user expectations. Understanding user expectations will also help you outline a monitoring plan that will take precise as well as overall care of all the most important areas within the application. Another advantage to outlining user expectations is to ensure that you have all the monitoring tools in place. This will also ensure optimizing of the application monitoring process itself.
Remember to also measure the impact of application monitoring on the performance of the application, versus the results in case there is no monitoring in place.
How to determine the ideal time for application monitoring?
There is no fixed way by which to determine the right time to begin application monitoring. However, certain elements can become pointers.
> Over utilization: If an application is being utilized above its core capabilities, it may utilize more memory and need monitoring to pinpoint the precise problem. Over utilization may occur in terms of usage time or the number of users accessing it at any given time.
> System crash: At times, errors may occur unexpectedly. This can result in sudden breakdown or total stopping of the application's functions. Application monitoring that is thorough and comprehensive can catch a potential error before it brings about a complete system breakdown.
> Software failure: Software failures can be major contributors to application breakdown. However, regular monitoring can help raise timely alerts and allow you to take corrective action before the software fails entirely.
> Regular updates: If your software is not updated regularly, it can remain vulnerable to threats such as virus attacks or even hardware failure and configuration problems. Application monitoring can help determine critical updates needed and raise timely alerts so that appropriate action can be taken.
Critical elements
Application monitoring should cover everything, from server downtime to software, to processes and services, as well as hardware. Application monitoring can also include configuration changes. Application monitoring must be implemented keeping in mind it must be kept in mind that costs incurred in repairs and maintenance could be significantly higher than those incurred in monitoring.
About the Author:
Tevron develops and delivers Application Monitoring Solutions, Service Level Agreement, Automated Testing Solutions, and End to End Performance monitoring solutions available globally. Tevron has also successfully delivered enterprise Application Monitoring Solutions and Testing solutions to support every IT enterprise application to hundreds of customers across the globe. Tevron's solutions designed to support diverse environments, business processes and applications with a service oriented management.
The Cloud is changing the way businesses operate. This has brought the spotlight onto RDS (Remote Desktop Services) monitoring. RDS systems are seen as the need of the hour for most small businesses. Monitoring comes close on the heels of any system that makes work easier for you, through automation or application of logic.
Why choose RDS, if monitoring is so essential to it?
RDS is the way to go, for enterprises small-sized businesses. The RDS system can reduce costs for these businesses especially when combined with an effective monitoring system.
Benefits of RDS set-up
> Outsource all time-consuming operational and administration needs to optimize time and effort.
> Cut down on the need for heavy, one-time investment in infrastructure and manpower needs.
> Harness professional expertise, even across geographically distant areas.
There are several other benefits to deploying RDS systems, all of them basically helping ensure more productivity and increased savings, ultimately.
Profitability and monitoring
Like with other applications, optimal working translates into money and time saved for your business. RDS monitoring can help generate alerts and red flags well before an application shuts down, thus preventing the end-user from experience problems. In the case of RDS, end users are employees, and thus, problems and issues can lead to loss in productivity and wastage of time.
In case of comprehensive RDS monitoring systems, real time monitoring could be combined together with specific application monitoring, to ensure problems are caught before they grow into bigger issues.
Choosing RDS Monitoring
RDS monitoring needs to incorporate several elements, including:
> History of effective monitoring in Application monitoring.
> Flexibility to adapt to changes in monitoring needs, including technical adaptations.
> Adequate expertise to cover a range of needs, as per different businesses.
> Expertise and professional know-how to cover diverse industries and RDS deployment in them, including areas needing monitoring.
> Ability to carry out different kinds of monitoring, including real time monitoring, capacity planning, as well as performance testing.
> Good understanding of Cloud technology, and how it works, to be able to provide for repairs, if needed.
Ideally, when choosing an RDS monitoring provider, you should check for all of the attributes, and also the following features:
> Does the vendor support different types of business applications?
> Do they have knowledge and understanding of very complex business applications such as Thick client?
> Do they give you the option of a single monitoring solution that could test all applications hosted within RDS Cloud?
> Cloud technology is dynamic and ever-changing. Will your vendor be able to adapt and provide you comprehensive monitoring cover, accordingly?
> Are the solutions simple to deploy and manage?
About the Author:
Tevron develops and delivers Application Monitoring Solutions, Service Level Agreement, RDS Monitoring, and End to End Performance monitoring solutions available globally. Tevron has also successfully delivered enterprise Application Monitoring Solutions and Testing solutions to support every IT enterprise application to hundreds of customers across the globe. Tevron's solutions designed to support diverse environments, business processes and applications with a service oriented management.
Nashua, NH. USA - Tevron, the leader in IT performance and end to end monitoring & testing solutions, announced today that one of the world's leading enterprises for business process and document management deployed CitraTest APM across their Global locations for the active end to end monitoring of all of their call centers. They have over 140,000 employees.
Tevron was selected based on their powerful & flexible IT monitoring & testing technology that fully supports their very complex applications and environments (Windows 7, Windows XP, Citrix, Web). Being able to measure global call center application performance on an ongoing basis for both native web and web via Citrix is invaluable. Unlike the products from other vendors, Tevron offers a tightly integrated, simplified and scalable solution that meets the needs of their complex business and their ever changing technologies.
About Tevron (http://www.tevron.com)
Tevron is a global software company that develops and delivers the most powerful and comprehensive suite of End To End performance, Application Monitoring Solutions, SLA (Service Level Agreement) and Automated Testing Solutions available in the world today. Tevron has successfully delivered enterprise APM & Testing solutions that support every IT enterprise application to hundreds of customers worldwide.
Tevron, CitraTest APM, and the Tevron logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Tevron, LLC. All other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
© 2013 Tevron, LLC. all rights reserved.
For more information:
North America (HQ)
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +1 866 788 3650
EMEA
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +44 (0) 2033 184 432
Germany
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +49 (0) 698 088 4043
Nashua, NH. USA - Tevron, the leader in IT performance and end to end monitoring & testing solutions, announced today that a Global diversified Health and Wellbeing company, focused on improving people’s lives through timely innovations, deployed CitraTest (http://www.tevron.com/citratest.asp ) for their automated testing requirements. They are a world leader in healthcare, lifestyle and lighting with over 120,000 employees worldwide.
Tevron was selected based on their powerful & flexible testing technology that fully supports every one of their very complex applications and environments (Windows 7, Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenServer, Web, Thick Client). Having one enterprise testing solution that intelligently supports every application, every Windows operating system and every version of Citrix is invaluable and cost effective. Unlike the products from other vendors, Tevron offers a tightly integrated, simplified and scalable solution that proactively meets the testing needs of their ever changing technologies.
About Tevron (http://www.tevron.com )
Tevron® is a global software company that develops and delivers the most powerful and comprehensive suite of End To End performance, Application Monitoring Solutions, SLA (Service Level Agreement) and Automated Testing Solutions available in the world today. Tevron has successfully delivered enterprise APM & Testing solutions that support every IT enterprise application to hundreds of customers worldwide.
Tevron, CitraTest, and the Tevron logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Tevron, LLC. All other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
© 2013 Tevron, LLC. all rights reserved.
For more information:
North America (HQ)
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +1 866.788.3650
EMEA
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +44 (0) 2033 184 432
Germany
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +49 (0) 698 088 4043
Nashua, New Hampshire - Tevron today announced the addition of support for Microsoft Silverlight to its suite of ETE Monitoring & Testing solutions. Silverlight is a powerful development tool for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web and mobile applications. Silverlight is plug-in, powered by the .NET framework and compatible with multiple browsers, devices and operating systems, bringing a new level of interactivity wherever the Web works. With the latest releases of CitraTest, CitraTest APM, and CitraTest VU, Tevron again is taking the lead role in the ETE Monitoring & testing industry in providing support for every development environment including Microsoft Silverlight and every application that is accessible from a Windows machine.
As developers create applications with richness and interactivity out of reach of traditional web technologies via the use of Microsoft Silverlight®, Tevron’s ETE Monitoring & testing solutions will continue to offer the industry lead for application monitoring, load testing, and general automation. To learn more about Tevron's automated testing solutions or to request additional information, please call +1.866.788.3650 or visit http://www.tevron.com.
ABOUT TEVRON
Tevron is a global leader in Application Monitoring and Automated Testing. Through our all encompassing customer-centric vision and advanced technology, our APM & Testing Solutions allow the unique flexibility of supporting every application across the enterprise with one methodology delivering the ability to test, monitor, enforce SLAs, and optimize performance with confidence and ease. Founded in 2001, Tevron® is a global organization and is privately held. Our vast and diverse range of customers are global leaders and include companies such as Alcon Labs, Alverno, Northrop Grumman, Xerox, Hewlett Packard, Siemens, and USPTO, to name a few.
TRADEMARKS
Tevron, the Tevron logo, and CitraTest are registered trademarks of Tevron, LLC. Microsoft Silverlight, is a registered trademark of Microsoft. All other product references herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
For more information:
North America (HQ)
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +1 866.788.3650
EMEA
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +44 (0) 2033 184 432
Germany
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +49 (0) 698 088 4043
Talk of application monitoring, and all you probably get to know about is niche solutions for niche products. Yet application monitoring needs to be comprehensive enough to cover all business needs and client deliverables.
Scope of Application Monitoring
To determine how much coverage you really need from your application monitoring system, look at the following questions:
> Does your business employ a number of applications and software?
> Are your operations cloud-based? Do you use cloud-based apps for key functions?
> Do you have client interfaces?
Most applications are running continuously because they form the backbone for client deliverables.
Choose the right application monitoring tool
Higher your dependence on applications, higher the need for dependability and monitoring performance. There are a number of factors that influence the need for monitoring.
> To catch problems before they snowball into larger issues
> To shield customers from problems, particularly in the case of active interfaces
> To ensure consistently high uptime
> In case of essential services, such as hospital operations, ensuring optimum performance
Requirements from your application performance monitoring tool
> The right application monitoring tool will provide you comprehensive coverage. This means freedom from needing to choose a different tool for different functions
> Ideally, your application monitoring tool should point out potential issues before they strike at operations
> Carry out real-time monitoring for customer interfaces so that glitches are caught before a customer faces downtime
Remember, these are only a small percentage of issues highlighted. Moreover, these are generic in nature. Choosing the correct tool will finally depend on your individual business needs.
Business Service Management (BSM) is an intrinsic part of IT services, particularly where it is important to measure and gauge the influence of business requirements. BSM helps outline and define the needs from the business development perspective:
> Customer needs
> Expectations from IT services
> Feasibility
> Changes in objectives or requirements
Business Service Management provides a vital link between assessing the scope of technology offerings, and how these technical offerings can impact and influence customers and business strategies and moves. At its core, business service management is an ever-changing, dynamic bridge between the technical capabilities and offerings of a company and its business development goals. Business service management can help IT services monitoring in several ways:
> Tracking whether IT services are actually working around business needs
> Identifying the impact of IT services on the business
> Measuring costs of downtime, if any
> Helping keep IT services customer-centric or business-centric instead of becoming isolated and purely technical
The last point holds immense significance in the way a company or an organization looks at its IT deliverables. Business service management could help the IT services department shift its focus towards customer-centric deliverables that are proactive in nature, rather than kicking into action in the time of crisis. While this is a tightrope at best, the upsides are several:
> Improved understanding of customer needs
> Reduced time in dealing with customer problems
> Value addition to the business deliverables
> Better and improved relations with customers, overall
Regular performance monitoring for EpicCare systems is a necessity if you want the application to work efficiently, without missing out on making an entry. The EpicCare application helps physician's document outpatient records, such as visit details, billing information, and any other notifications.
EpicCare performance monitoring takes up significance because it can help medical care providers to move towards more rapid and efficient management. Systems for ensuring peak performance by Epic take into account the installation, the configuration, and the specific requirements of the medical center it is installed for.
The application system provides a database that serves as a storehouse of clinical and medical data for research purposes or for the creating reports. EpicCare systems need to be monitored for several elements of performance:
> Access to clinical records
> Submission of requests for technical help
> Remote accessibility
Why does Epic performance need monitoring?
Because of its applications in the medical industry, performance monitoring of the Epic system becomes mandatory. The EpicCare system helps make physicians' time more productive by simplifying the different elements of clinical care. This is especially significant in the case of providing ambulatory care where medical care is delivered on an outpatient basis. Elements of care can include advanced medical techniques and procedures, such as minor surgeries, non-invasive biopsies, or diagnostics like X-rays and blood tests.
Performance monitoring for Epic systems will need to take into account the diversity involved in medical and clinical care and documentation. This can include:
> Specialties
> Affiliates in medicine
> Ancillary services for diagnostics, therapy, nursing care, etc.
> Interoperability
In the case of providing ambulatory care alone, the amount of variables can be staggering. A patient may need several diagnostics to be performed in a given span of time, with supporting communication being carried out to ensure that the physicians and nurses involved are provided with timely updates.
Application monitoring and application performance management is relevant to most businesses today, and with good reason.
Profitability is the watchword for every business, regardless of industry. For businesses engaged in service-focused work, efficiency of applications, their monitoring and performance is of special importance. Regular application monitoring and maintenance for ensuring sound performance is a necessary ingredient for maintaining smooth operations.
As of now, there are many diverse kinds of enterprise applications globally; there are an equally large number of updates taking place for all these applications. If adequate application monitoring and resulting repairs are not undertaken for these, it can have a direct bearing on performance of these applications too.
When conducted well application monitoring can provide pointers to the application's health and boost its performance; thus helping services perform better, overall. Regardless of the industry, an application that performs well leads to better end-user experience and ultimately results in optimal utilization of time and resources.
What kinds of applications need monitoring for performance?
Any business that needs to have its applications performing consistently well needs sound monitoring and regular maintenance checks for optimal performance. Such businesses will need to ensure that their servers regularly clock high uptimes with reduced interruptions or problems. Further, an interruption for some applications can often mean starting at the beginning. This leads to loss of time; and users can lose interest in the application, especially in the case of commercial applications.
To prevent such losses in productivity, applications should be studied and regular monitoring carried out for the servers, the database, web and cloud services, if applicable, and virtual monitoring, ideally to ensure high performance.
Consistent application monitoring ensures troubleshooting and maintenance of operations while also highlighting trouble areas or inconsistencies in performance. This in turn, allows application managers and the technical workforce to run repairs and conduct maintenance checks in a more systematic and informed manner. For applications that are used commercially, this also helps keep a check on the end user experience and its improvement.
Thankfully, good application monitoring and application performance monitoring systems are available easily. These can be of several types, depending on the requirements of the business. The ideal enterprise application monitoring systems are those that can test and check performance end to end. A good monitoring system will test performances for IT enterprise applications, including end to end performance and compliance with the service level agreement.
Application monitoring can extend to transaction monitoring, real-time alerts, application availability, and more; all functions related to testing the performance.
Further, for applications supporting a large user base, a single-point monitor works better at monitoring it and mapping application performance. Such solutions are better because they do not disrupt user sessions. Repairs as indicated by performance reports, can also be conducted without interruptions in user interface or without impacting user-friendliness.
About the Author:
Tevron develops and delivers powerful and comprehensive Application Monitoring Solutions, Service Level Agreement, Application Performance, IT Services Management and Automated Testing Solutions available globally. Tevron has also successfully delivered enterprise Application Monitoring Solutions and Testing solutions to support every IT enterprise application to hundreds of customers across the globe. Tevron focuses on solutions that are scalable, flexible, and easy to maintain; they are also designed to support diverse environments, business processes and applications with a service oriented management.
