Monitoring and managing IT Infrastructure doesn’t have to be as stressful as Kip thinks. We often see IT administrators in a firefighting mode, trying to resolve performance and availability issues. Typically this happens as an IT organization is stuck in a “reactive” mode.

Every time an issue is identified by an end user, the team hustles to find the root cause of the issue across various IT Infrastructure elements such as servers, networks and cloud services with multiple monitoring tools and siloed views. While this reactive troubleshooting is occurring, there is tremendous pressure on IT to resolve the issue quickly, as in the application economy customers can switch to a competitor in a heartbeat.

IT cannot afford to be stuck in this reactive mode, they need to switch to being more proactive and resolve issues before end user experience suffers. Here are three key steps to do so:

Get rid of point monitoring tools and siloed views

Having multiple tools and views creates confusion and slows down issue resolution. IT needs to adopt a unified approach to IT infrastructure management. Having end to end visibility across all infrastructure elements and disciplines such as systems, networks, power and capacity is critical to finding and fixing issues fast.

In addition, having a unified solution would ensure IT staff spends less time managing management tools and more time focusing on more value creating activities like new application deploying and optimizing end user experience.

Put your users at the center of your IT monitoring strategy

Traditionally IT teams tend to focus on managing the availability of individual infrastructure pieces versus end user experience. IT needs to put customers at the center of their monitoring strategy.

They need to proactively identify and resolve any infrastructure related performance issues from a user’s experience prospective. Their monitoring approach needs to provide a holistic and end to end view of the infrastructure so that they can base performance metrics upon user metrics rather than IT one’s.

Leverage actionable and predictive insights

Once all IT systems and services are unified and are being managed from a user’s experience prospective, IT teams need to implement actionable and predictive analytics. Actionable reports or alarms ensure your team is not spinning in circles chasing false alarms and predictive analytics provide early warnings of problems so that they can be corrected before end users are impacted. Customers of ours have even reported a reduction of services desk tickets after implementing a proactive approach.

How proactive are you in your IT monitoring approach? Is your IT team in a reactive mode? Or are they leading the charge in the application economy?

Have a look at this comic series in which Kip & Gary highlight even more everyday challenges IT teams face in an entertaining comic series. Which one’s your favorite? Have they convinced you to redefine your infrastructure management approach?

Find your zen with proactive IT monitoring

The post Find your zen with proactive IT monitoring appeared first on Highlight.