The new generation of e-business networks, in which the emphasis has shifted from internal to external users and from LAN to Internet architectures, is placing a premium on efficiency. In an e-business environment, even the most basic of network glitches will result in service delivery implications, user dissatisfaction and significant revenue losses - in a heartbeat.
In facing these new challenges, e-businesses are increasingly looking towards computer systems and infrastructures with the ability to monitor, manage and validate the user experience - and act appropriately on this information.
According to Mike Leeuwen, a director of PM Tech Holdings, the software solutions development, networking and IT consulting group, says an ability to monitor all facets of the corporate database is what will set a business apart from its competitors in future.
"As the IT infrastructures in organisations have evolved from mainframe to distributed environments, so the need for new management systems has grown," he says.
"Centralised database management methodologies, once so successful in delivering quality service, simply no longer apply. As a result, today`s service management functions are fragmented and ineffective. Awareness is divided, control is sacrificed, performance is unpredictable, and users are unsatisfied."
Leeuwen says the enterprise management solutions that organisations are looking for in today`s e-business era need to cover monitoring, management and control of every component of the infrastructure, including Web servers, networks, packaged applications, custom applications, storage and databases across the depth and breadth of the enterprise.
"The question that must be answered is how do we achieve yesterday`s system management success in today`s far more demanding and complex e-business environment?
"A critical success factor in any solution will be the ability to align the system management process with the end-user`s experience. Because most companies are aware of this they spend many thousands of rand purchasing US or European software systems to manage application systems.
"However, the lack of database management skills in SA always makes it impossible for them to realise any significant return on this huge investment."
Leeuwen says the objective should be to use a company`s current skills, empowering them to be able to see into their complex databases and IT systems with the assistance of simple, quick-to-implement monitoring tools that can access the complete infrastructure.
"Careful attention needs to be placed on the complexity of the solution and the speed of the return on investment and the ability to plug-in to the entire infrastructure," he stresses.
Leeuwen lists the following decisions that need to be taken before embarking on a monitoring solution:
* Web-based vs client server: "This should be an easy decision to make, with a Web-based solution, multiple client installs are not necessary, thus an immediate roll-out is possible," he says.
* Proactive vs reactive monitoring: "Everyone knows when the application is down, the users tell us. Companies need to look for a product that will, in some way, predict down-time."
* Agents vs no agents: "Agents need to be installed on every machine being monitored, the benefit would be that checks are being performed every second," says Leeuwen.
"The natural downside to this is the extreme overhead experienced by those machines with the agents as well as the upgrade nightmare experienced with new releases that are not compatible with the older agents.
"Most solutions seem to be leaning towards scanning for answers, where overhead, roll-out and upgrades are almost seamless," he says.
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