Monitoring Cloud Applications - Business Transaction Management Meets Essential Need   by Denise Rutledge

in Business / Management    (submitted 2011-01-24)

As far back as April 2002, Forrester Research analyst Jean-Pierre Garbani was predicting that cloud services would have an impact on IT infrastructure management. The four parameters his listed in his article remain the four parameters of primary concern for IT managers today as they consider whether to embrace the cloud or not.

Garbani's list includes availability, performance, quality and security. Availability is a concern because services that aren't functioning properly impact business. Performance is a concern, because when cloud services interact with enterprise applications the performance of neither can degrade without it having a negative impact on the business. Quality is a concern because the value of the content generated by the cloud service or the operation executed by the cloud service must meet service level agreements (SLAs). Security is a concern because contamination of date, unlawful access, etc. can also have a negative impact upon a business.

Every one of these concerns takes place primarily at the application level. This means that long before web services acquired the marketing label "cloud services" a problem existed that need a solution. Transactions needed to be evaluated for availability, performance, quality and security whether they occurred in cloud or main frame.

Three Features Needed by Business Transaction Management Solutions

Garbani identified three features that he envisioned would be needed to provide the necessary insights into availability, performance, quality and security that would make embracing the cloud the wave of the future.

"Instrumenting the application" so that an evaluation of availability and performance could take place at the transaction level. Today, the right application transaction monitoring solution can deliver accurate real-time end-to-end visibility for transactions across cloud, legacy applications and IT infrastructure without any need to change the application.

"Using 'application telemetry.'" Garbani used this term in 2002 to describe the capability a solution would need to detect and visualize potential content errors. Today, the function of determining potential errors or problems is accomplished through the use of complex event processing. The resulting ability to evaluate, monitor and manage the availability, performance, configuration, updating and provisioning of the existing IT business applications as well as applications added through cloud provisioning makes some business transaction monitoring solutions smart enough to auto-detect potential problems and resolved them before they impact business.

Including real-time management security. Garbani envisioned a solution that had capabilities of reporting within the same framework and process that was used in the enterprise. Today, the right business transaction monitoring solution delivers this service as well.

Independent Verification that AutoPilot Provides Competitive Solution for Businesses Considering Cloud Applications

Today, Garbani's vision has become reality. Business transaction monitoring solutions are now available that fulfill all three of these needs and more. In fact, Garbani evaluated Nastel Technologies AutoPilot's business transaction monitoring capabilities in December 2010. While the terms in use have changed over the last eight years, the definitions are still clear.

In his Forrester report, Evaluating Innovative I&O Solutions: Converged Application Performance Management, Garbani identified AutoPilot as one of the best tools so far to build a closed-loop automation solution for application management. AutoPilot includes application dependency discovery, patch management, change and configuration management, operational resource monitoring, business transaction monitoring, business transaction management and application performance monitoring.

This independent evaluation from a recognized expert in the IT industry suggests that AutoPilot should be considered by both mid-sized and large corporate IT departments as their first line of defense before increasing the complexity of their IT enterprise by adding cloud-based applications to the mix.

Nastel embraces existing technology while making it easier to implement complex, hybrid models such as service oriented architecture (SOA) where parts of a service may reside in the datacenter, other parts in cloud and still other services may be managed by trading partners in yet a different cloud. AutoPilot uses
complex event processing to deliver reliable service monitoring, deep-dive transaction tracking, message tracking, application performance management, operational monitoring, and capacity planning across all tiers of the IT infrastructure, whether the components are local or on the cloud.

About the Author

Denise Rutledge enjoys researching and writing about many topics including financial and business topics. Denise also works with clients to develop website content, with a focus on writing materials that develop brand and trust through valuable, easy to read information. Learn more by visiting her website at http://writingasaghost.com.