The Ideal Monitoring System

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.

Response Time And System Availability: Monitoring Your System Health

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.

Understanding the End-User Experience in Application Monitoring

It's a well known fact that application monitoring is an ongoing process. Precisely for this reason, it is worthwhile to gauge the kind of monitoring support your system might need. Depending on the purpose they serve, most systems would need dedicated monitoring for different elements, i.e. internal applications, user interface, user experience, etc. For most client server and web applications though, end-user monitoring may be a necessity.

The Challenge

The challenge lies in recognizing application requirements from an end-user perspective. Many application monitoring systems are put into use with the understanding that these will cover the usual elements of application health monitoring. While this may be the case, several key areas such as actual end-user experience or end-user response time might be overlooked by a tool you may have specifically installed for monitoring purposes.

Real End-user Experience

You have employed the best infrastructure available. Your quality standards are also in keeping with industry best-practices. Your networks and servers are running fine and there are no technical issues. Despite these efforts, you still receive complaints on certain key business applications. If this sounds familiar, you may need to evaluate the end-user experience and employ monitoring your application specifically for this purpose.

The challenge also lies in defining end-user experience. For practical purposes, user experience is negative when your application pace is steadily declining, or the pace is slower than what the users are expecting, or it does not perform the task it is expected to perform. There are also other issues such as the application not reacting to commands, or behaving in an unexpected fashion, sending errors, etc. The application monitoring tool you decide to employ must be able to identify these problems. There are several different kinds of monitoring, specific to end-user experience:

- Agents that test system robustness by emulating end-users.
- Appliances that can help determine network behavior by monitoring web traffic for web-based applications.
- Agents that record end-user experiences from the user's perspective.

However, different kinds of monitoring systems come with diverse challenges; the foremost being the inability to replicate the user experience, and thus defeating the purpose of application monitoring.

Is there a Solution?

Even after you deploy different application monitoring systems, you may still not be able to get rid of end-user complaints. This could be because there are limitations to the monitoring approach of most tools.

Ideally, application health monitoring from end user perspective should include a tool that integrates different applications, their protocols, and their operating environments.

If you have a system that encompasses several different applications and you choose to monitor each one separately, the costs and effort of maintaining such a monitoring system would simply be prohibitive.

Ideally, you should choose a tool that can mimic your user behavior, while also taking into account diverse operating environments. Further, end-user experience of applications is best monitored by unobtrusive agents or those that do not affect other applications or servers.

About the Author:

Tevron develops and delivers powerful and comprehensive Application Monitoring Solutions, Service Level Agreement, End to End Performance, and Performance 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's solutions are scalable, flexible, and easy to maintain; they are also designed to support diverse environments, business processes and applications with a service oriented management.

Real Time Monitoring for Application Performance Management

Real time monitors review systems in an ongoing manner. In simple terms, this process provides a moment-by-moment account of an application's performance. Therefore, results provided by a real time monitoring system include information that can be used for making decisions on the spot, or on an everyday basis. A real time monitor generates results that are different from reports generated weekly, fortnightly, or monthly. Real time monitoring is a necessary practice for many businesses, depending upon the kind of services they offer.

A real time monitor is also needed for systems where services include everyday operations and functions, and where errors can affect business and revenue generation. Areas that come under the purview of a real time monitoring system include the IT set-up and set-ups that utilize active communication programs, such as alerts and reports. Real time monitoring is also used to authenticate service level agreements (SLA). Systems that undertake business service management, or customer-centric duties also benefit greatly from a real time monitoring system.

A real time monitoring system will detect problems long before they turn into potential problems. Early detection is vital to researching and executing corrective measures before things go out of control for the service or business provider. The same logic applies to interfaces such client dashboards which benefit immensely from a real time monitoring system. If errors are detected while monitoring, then corrective measures can be taken immediately before the client suffers loss of any kind.

Real time monitoring solutions are an intrinsic part of application performance mapping and management as well. In situations where service scales have been documented in the form of an SLA, regular real time monitoring can be indispensable to ensure compliance to the agreement. In case of instances of non-compliance, the system can be formatted to raise an alert such that corrective measures can be initiated and executed immediately.

About Author:

Tevron develops and delivers powerful and comprehensive Application Monitoring Solutions, Service Level Agreement, End to End Performance, 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's solutions are scalable, flexible, and easy to maintain; they are also designed to support diverse environments, business processes, and applications with a service oriented management. Tevron's real time monitoring tool CitraTest APM is a proactive and all-encompassing solution for managing application performance.

Application Monitoring System – Understanding When Does Your Business Need One

Application monitoring system performs by monitoring applications' incoming traffic and tracking illegitimate access and chances of data theft. It usually keeps track of the source and time of traffic for troubleshooting any application. Software of this type is generally facilitated for applications that require greater security like -finance software and databases.

Now, coming to the necessity of implementing application monitoring system, how this is important is necessary to understand. There are multiple natures, this application monitoring system can manifest. How application monitoring system can help you protect your business and IT infrastructure is quite easy to understand once the nature of different application monitoring system is known.

Uptime Monitoring
Uptime monitoring software checks and monitors the availability of each device and alerts the administrator in case any system fails. Uptime monitoring software can be implemented to ascertain where issues may arise in future within a network enabling administrator to balance loads.

Monitoring of Transaction
Transaction based applications are monitored facilitating transaction monitoring system. The transaction completion time can be tracked and compared with desired times. Successful execution of these transactions is the key to the success of any business.

Monitoring of Data Files
In some application environments transactions are conducted offline where the data travels from one point to another. This offline data travel is witnessed were businesses send their daily sales data to their head office each night in the shape of data file. This type of data flow can be tracked and controlled by constantly monitoring the several drop and pick points of the data files. At frequent equal intervals counts are taken at drop and pickup points to ensure the accurate flow of data files.

This can also act as proactively monitoring of the data flow as the problem will be known when files begin to amass at a drop point on its first occurrence and system can be prevented from getting blocked by looking into the reason of the accumulation of files.

Monitoring of Database
To monitor the transactional well being of a database some monitoring transactions, for instance generating records, updating the record etc. can be conducted and the time taken for each transaction is recorded.

In majority of the cases if system is overloaded the transaction time will be longer, which is the indication to look into the problem area in database and debug it before it goes down.

Monitoring of Resource
Constant monitoring of system resources can ward off application and operating system from slowing down and crashing. If disk space is full, the system can crash right away as they cannot write logs etc. on the disk.

These are a few of the natures of implementing application monitoring systems that are mostly utilized and this is why application monitoring systems are implemented by majority of the businesses.

Benefits of APM Monitoring Tool

Application performance management (APM) monitoring system is all about catapulting user's experience with the accessibility of application and quick response time allowing them to deliver good customer service. Today majority of the enterprises realize the significance of the APM and its effect on the productivity and return on investment of their companies.

Application Performance Management (APM) is acknowledged as the monitoring tool for catapulting performance within a network. It retains and monitors transmission quality. It also accentuates application response times by discarding excess and unwanted data transfer.

Based on a survey undertaken by IDG Research, 90 percent of the participants accepted that the adoption of an APM monitoring system are helpful in identifying and troubleshooting performance issues in their network.

Benefits of APM Monitoring System
APM monitoring tool analyzes, organizes, and optimizes the performance and service availability of software applications in a WAN. In addition, it monitors the ongoing application 24x7 and offers a detailed evaluation of response time and its impacts on network, server, application and end user. Its most prominent benefits at different levels include:

Server Level
An Application Performance Management solution stores data process pattern of all crucial transactions. APM also predicts response times when the data centers are consolidated.

Network Level
It diminishes risks to application performance and enhances bandwidth capacity. It offers insight into the WAN application traffic methods of the enterprise. It recognizes the high-end applications based on bandwidth usage, failed TCP connections and packet losses.

Application Level
The APM monitoring tools tracks and manages new application rollouts, ascertains the primary cause of slow response time for a mission critical application and identifies data flow pattern of every important transaction.

End-user Level
Application accessibility and response time are the basic performance functions that end users are associated to. They should be aptly satisfied with application interactions. APM monitoring tool maintains and handles the basic user response times for the important applications.

As the productivity of any company is heavily dependent on the performance of software applications accessed, it becomes even more important to choose the right APM monitoring system. Even small delays can result in great amounts of wasted time, which leads to customer dissatisfaction. So, let an eminent company take care of all your Application Performance Management (APM) needs because faster response times will allow the end users to get their responses faster which in turn enhances your company's revenue.

How to Choose the Right Monitoring Tool to Run Your Business Smoothly

Networks are very crucial constituents of any current business environment. Failure of networks results in failure of communication between clients and employees that may lead to substantial loss of productivity and revenue. Thus monitoring tools assume great importance.

Now-a-days monitoring of applications and network performance need not be a daunting task any more. To manage the greater degree of complexity and diversity of applications, a business requires robust monitoring system and monitoring tools to monitor all the IT applications of the organization.

Most businesses have a diverse range of applications that require support within the IT infrastructure. Such application may span from legacy applications to client server applications and web based custom applications. Till date, most of the monitoring systems offer support only for particularly popular prominent applications. Given this scenario, an organization needs to rely on many diverse monitoring systems and tools. In spite of leveraging so many products, several internal applications still go haywire.

Single APM Solution Supporting Entire Applications

Tevron's CitraTest APM is a monitoring system of its kind that can support various applications, development environments and protocols. It can help you save the cost of buying and maintaining many different products to support the entire application environment.

Can Easily Integrate With Other Monitoring Tools

Tevron’s CitraTest APM is a single, encompassing application performance management system for application monitoring, performance evaluating, and developing real time alerts for each application across an IT infrastructure. It is easy to integrate with other monitoring systems to offer a quality monitoring system for the complete IT infrastructure.

Exceptionally Consistent and Proactive

This APM system is consistent and proactive. This tool ensures that all sensitive aspects of an application or device are available and functioning within limits and offering an alert in case of any error.

Scalability, price, ease of use and sustainability are the key factors of any monitoring tool to offer the best performance. It is suggested to conduct a complete analysis alert and reporting requirements from the monitoring tool prior to selecting the tool to buy.

Fortune-200 Pharmaceuticals Company Selects Tevron for its Application Monitoring Requirements

Nashua, NH. USA - Tevron, the leader in IT performance and availability monitoring solutions, announced today that one of the world's largest Pharmaceutical companies with over 100,000 employees, deployed CitraTest APM (http://www.tevron.com/citratest-apm.asp) across all of their global locations for the monitoring and testing of all of their mission critical business & pharmaceutical applications.

Tevron was selected based on their powerful & flexible IT monitoring technology that fully supports every one of their very complex business applications (Web, Thick Client, Oracle) and environments (VMWare, Windows 7, Windows XP, Citrix, RDP). These business critical applications cover the various therapeutic areas, including cardiovascular and metabolism, oncology, neuroscience and ophthalmics, respiratory, and immunology and infectious diseases. Having one enterprise monitoring solution that intelligently supports every application 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.

© 2011 Tevron, LLC. all rights reserved.

For more information:
North America (HQ)
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +1 702.518.7435

EMEA
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +44 (0) 2089 066 591

Germany
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +49 (0) 800 664 6695

Fortune-500 Technology Company Selects Tevron for its Application Monitoring Requirements

Nashua, NH. USA - January 12, 2011 - Tevron, the leader in IT performance and availability monitoring solutions, announced today that one of the world’s largest source of intelligent information for businesses with over 60,000 employees, deployed CitraTest APM (http://www.tevron.com/citratest-apm.asp) across all of their global locations for the monitoring and testing of all of their mission critical business applications.

Tevron was selected based on their powerful & flexible IT monitoring technology that fully supports every one of their very complex business applications (Web, Java, Thick Client, Oracle, Mainframe) and environments (VMWare, Windows 7, Windows XP, XenApp, RDP). Having one solution that intelligently supports every application is invaluable. Unlike the products from other vendors, Tevron offers a tightly integrated, simplified and scalable solution that meets the needs of their 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.
© 2011 Tevron, LLC. all rights reserved.

For more information:

North America (HQ)
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +1 702.518.7435

EMEA
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +44 (0) 2089 066 591

Germany
Tevron, LLC
Phone: +49 (0) 800 664 6695

Ensure that your monitoring system has these components

A strong monitoring system is required for all the businesses which deliver their products and services through applications. Constant and consistent monitoring of all applications in your organization will ensure that service level agreement conditions are upheld. If you are looking for a monitoring system for your business applications, you need to ensure that all your business requirements are met with. Some important components of a good monitoring system are as follows:

• Monitoring from the end users’ perspective
  
  A good monitoring system considers all the factors which affect the end users’ experience from not only within the firewalls but from outside them as well. The IT team can not only ensure that end users have a smooth experience by eliminating all problems in applications, they can also meet service level agreement conditions through such a monitoring system.
  
• Monitoring from end to end
  
  Your monitoring system needs to not only point out that there is an error in applications, it also needs to guide the IT team to where the problem lies exactly. Look for an appropriate monitoring system which monitors all processes from end to end. This will make the process easy for your IT department and help you with fulfilling the service level agreement terms. You should also support your monitoring system with a good performance testing tool, which will help you improve the performance of your applications.
  
• Ease of use
  
  Ensure that your monitoring system is easy to use, so that it doesn’t take up a lot of time of your staff in deployment and analysis. If the tool you deploy is too complicate or time consuming, it will fail to serve its purpose as an independent tool.
  
• Reliable
  
  If you want a monitoring system for the long run, look for an experienced service provider, which provides customized solutions. Getting a reliable tool from the beginning will ensure that you are able to meet end user expectations and are well equipped for future performance problems as well. The combination of a strong monitoring system with regular performance testing will ensure that you meet all service level agreement terms with ease.

There are a lot of service providers in the market today which provide reliable monitoring systems for small and mid-sized businesses. Search for a reputed service provider who will become your long term partner in solving application performance issues.

Looking for a monitoring tool? Some questions to ask

While the need for a strong monitoring tool for your business is justified, you need to ask a lot of questions in order to determine that it is the right one for you. After all, your IT budget needs to be judiciously spent, and the monitoring system that you bring in should justify the spending. The number of APM solution providers in the market has increased exponentially, so you need to tread carefully while looking for one. So in addition to keeping your requirements in mind, ask the right questions before signing an agreement for a monitoring tool. Following are some of the questions you should ask:

1. How detailed is the monitoring tool? Many products out there only pinpoint the problem, but will not identify the root of the problem. A good monitoring system should not only identify the problem, but also its cause so that the IT team can take appropriate steps to solve the issue. Only if the problem is identified quickly will the bottlenecks be solved and service level agreements met.
2. Does it cover all applications? There are a lot of elements in the business infrastructure which can affect the performance of applications. If your monitoring tool cannot monitor all such infrastructure, it at least needs to be able to pull in data so that the IT team can get the true picture of all the applications. An effective monitoring system hence has to become the eyes of the IT team, so it can spot and prevent problems in applications.
3. Is the monitoring system easily manageable? Some monitoring tool available today are very efficient, but require constant tracking. Also check whether the tool requires any element to be installed on your production environment. Vendors now offer totally non-intrusive monitoring systems, which will help ensure that there is a reduction in down time. This also ensures that he promises made in the service level agreements are delivered.
4. Does the vendor offer support with the monitoring tool? An elaborate monitoring system may be very complex and you will require proper support to unravel it and put to use. Be sure to match find a monitoring tool which fits your requirements best. If there is no support provided with the system, go for one which provides less features but comes with full support. A simple monitoring system would be much more helpful than one which is complicated and requires expensive assistance.

Due to the popularity of monitoring tools and their importance in maintaining service level agreements, many APM solution providers have come forward with innovative solutions. Look for a monitoring system which matches your requirements closely, so that it can help you reduce downtime of all applications within your business.

Does your monitoring tool have these 4 features?

A good monitoring tool is very useful for businesses which conduct their business-critical activities with the help of various applications. It helps in knowing whether their application’s performance is up to the mark or not. However, many business owners and IT heads struggle to find a monitoring system which is suitable to their business and meets all their requirements. Ideally, any monitoring tool which helps in preventing bottlenecks in the applications and prevents losses should be enough for monitoring applications within the organization. However, there are some features which your monitoring tool should have, which will make it a strong one. The following are some of them:

1. It should support all applications within the business

Until some time ago, application monitoring tools were created specifically for only a few popular applications. This required businesses to deploy multiple monitoring systems for them to be able to monitor all applications that were in use. This was an expensive and tedious task. There was a demand for a single monitoring tool, which would cover all applications across the organization. As a result, APM vendors have now come up with a single tool, which would reduce costs as well as efforts. Such a monitoring tool will help in ensuring that service level agreements are met and the business is managed efficiently.

2. The monitoring tool should be able to give real time alerts

Does the monitoring system you are considering provide real time alerts related to the availability and performance of your applications? If the answer to that question is no, then you should consider some other monitoring tool. In case of business-critical applications, you require real-time alerts if the application has a problem or if the response time is high. A good monitoring system will not only help IT managers in establishing a threshold, it will also provide real-time alerts in case those thresholds are crossed. This will also help in IT service management of your business.

3. It should provide proactive and consistent application monitoring

Monitoring of business-critical applications should be a proactive and consistent activity. A monitoring tool which helps in proactively monitoring applications can help in spotting as well as overcoming bottlenecks before they start affecting end users. Such a monitoring system will help in ensuring that all applications are available 24/7, so that the bottom line is not affected by application downtimes. Businesses can also avoid breaches in service level agreement conditions with such a monitoring tool.

4. The monitoring tool should not intrude on the business environment

The best monitoring system for an organization is one which is non-intrusive to the production environment. When you are looking for a good tool, inquire about one which excludes installation of any element on the database servers. Not only will such an independent monitoring tool help in reducing down time and improving application performance, it will also make IT service management easier for the system managers.

4 Features of a Good Application Monitoring Tool

Businesses which rely in their IT infrastructure for business-critical activities need a strong monitoring system or monitoring tool for determining whether their applications are functioning properly or not. However, business owners and IT managers usually struggle to find an ideal monitoring tool for its IT infrastructure, which suits all its business requirements and helps prevent bottlenecks which affect the bottom line. In this post, we discuss some critical features your application monitoring tool should have, in order to become a strong tool for system monitoring.

A strong application monitoring tool should have the following four features:

1. Support For All Applications

Until a few years ago, monitoring tools offered support for specific popular applications only. This meant that businesses needed to deploy different monitoring tools to monitor various applications used by them. However, with the increasing requirement of a single monitoring system which can monitor all applications throughout the organization, new vendors have now come up with a single monitoring tool. Such an all-encompassing monitoring system eliminates the requirements of different tools as well as reduces costs.

2. Real Time Alerts

A strong monitoring tool is one which can provide real time alerts on application availability and their response times, which helps IT managers in knowing the performance of all applications. Such a monitoring system helps IT managers establish a threshold, and generate real time alerts in case those established thresholds are crossed. IT managers can then take the appropriate steps to overcome those bottlenecks before they start affecting end users.

3. Proactive And Consistent Monitoring

Application monitoring needs to be undertaken proactively and consistently by the monitoring system so that application health issues can be addressed as soon as possible. With such proactive application monitoring, bottlenecks can be prevented before they become bigger problems. Such a monitoring tool can help IT teams ensure application availability, so that all the business-critical applications function 24/7 without a hitch.

4. Non-intrusive

An ideal monitoring system should also be non-intrusive to the production environment. Find a monitoring tool which does not install any element on the database servers. Such a non-intrusive and independent monitoring tool will ensure that, all applications across an organization are monitored constantly and any bottlenecks can be avoided before they start affecting end users.