Realizing Mature Strategic

Service Monitoring

for

Digitally-Transformed Enterprises

A White Paper by

Trace3

Revision: December 2016

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Digital technology is transforming every industry and most enterprises. Per recent studies by Forester and Harris, 93% of CxOs believe that digital will disrupt their business in the next 12 months - yet 53% find it hard to understand customer behavior and needs.

x 2+ BILLION people have some form of a social media account. x 95% of users are using multiple digital devices (E.g. smartphone, tables, PCs). x 60% of users rate performance/response time as #1 expectation ahead of features and

functionality. x 44% will air their frustration on social media when they experience poor performance

The following key challenges are faced by enterprises that need to monitor performance of products and IT systems and especially the impact of those products and IT systems on end users.

x Proliferation of metrics from modular, dynamic infrastructure, network and application elements is forcing enterprises to be more strategic about their monitoring solutions.

x Proliferation of devices and SaaS applications is making higher level end-to-end and end-user-experience monitoring more critical.

x Hot spots are making monitoring especially challenging for specific IT topics including security, SLA compliance, DevOps, real-time universal communication services, cloud infrastructures, VM-VM traffic patterns, BYOD, and ultra-high bandwidth/low latency 10Gbps communication connections.

Nothing less than a comprehensive end-to-end and top-to-bottom solution approach to Enterprise Service Monitoring (ESM) will drive success in a modern digitally transformed enterprise. However, a “monitor everything” approach is not practical. A preferred approach is to employ strategic monitoring that targets the entire breadth of the enterprise with targeted monitoring points and methods that are most relevant for the specific enterprise. A strategic monitoring solution needs to:

x Balance device and traffic oriented metrics with more qualitative End-User-Experience (EUE) (MOS/R-Factor) metrics.

x Focus on action-oriented performance metrics that can anticipate demand.

Measuring end-user experience requires making sense out of complex enterprise application environments including 3rd party web apps, web and mobile services, SaaS, outsourced and hosted services, home-grown apps, enterprise apps, legacy and back-office systems.

Figure 1 illustrates a comprehensive solution that integrates all layers of the enterprise (infrastructure, virtualization, application and user layers) into a focused monitoring strategy for End-User-Experience. The rationale for EUE solutions is apparent when you understand that mission-critical apps drive a business’ bottom-line. The bottom-line results are therefore determined by user productivity. User productivity is driven by user experience. End user experience is real response time. Real response time is determined by application delivery methods, layers of virtualization, and supporting infrastructure.

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Figure 1: EUE Monitoring Layered Architecture

Since End-user-experience is the goal, how can an enterprise transform itself for EUE excellence? To start with, it is critical for an enterprise to understand where it is now. Figure 2 illustrates a maturity progression for Enterprise Service Monitoring that can be used to characterize the enterprise current state.

Figure 2: ESM Capability Maturity Progression

Analogous to the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), distinct levels of maturity are identified.

At the basic level, there is “Chaos”. Figure 3 illustrates an example of monitoring at the Chaos level. This level is characterized by having no EUE awareness. Event flows from one or more relevant sources (E.g. network, cloud, apps, hosts, etc.) may be missing and those that do exist are not filtered or coordinated between separate users that are monitoring separate event flows.

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Figure 3: Enterprise Service Monitoring - Chaos

The next level of ESM maturity is “Reactive”. At the Reactive level, illustrated in Figure 4, event flows are monitored for all relevant business operations; however, the analysis of the flows is conducted in separate silos and analysis is conducted by separate ESM operators. The result is an absence of correlation or synthesis of flows between silos. The lack of co-ordination results in limited data synthesis and may result in time-consuming or inaccurate analysis. Process and governance procedures are typically implemented for this maturity level but limited to the perspective of individual event flows.

Figure 4: Enterprise Service Monitoring - Reactive

The next level of ESM maturity is “Pro-active”. At the Pro-active level, illustrated in Figure 5, EUE is realized in the form of automated self-healing and corrective and automated predictive actions based on deep insights gleaned from a synthesis of multiple event flows. Middleware tools and aggregated data repositories are employed to connect, filter, and process across multiple event flows. A “single pane of glass” concept is realized because all event flows contribute to a focused analysis of events. Synthesis of results facilitates confidence in conclusions and enables automated actions to be prescribed and implemented through orchestration tools.

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Figure 5: Enterprise Service Monitoring – Pro-Active

The final level of Enterprise Service Monitoring is “Optimizing”. At this highly advanced level, the ESM systems and capability refinements throughout the stack and automated workflows are continuously improved based on collective intelligence. The Optimizing level can never be perfecteddue to the fact that it drives continuous improvement. As improvements are made, each is integrated into the pro-active ESM system; and the improvement cycle continues.

Figure 6: Enterprise Service Monitoring – Optimizing

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ESM “E3” Solution Approach

So how can an enterprise achieve and maintain a strategic pro-active level of ESM implementation? A logical three phase engineering approach works well avoiding costly false starts and time-consuming rework. The three phases are:

1. Envision - an ESM blueprint and roadmap. 2. Engage - implementation resources. 3. Evolve - the implementation.

In the following paragraphs, we explain each of the phases in greater detail.

Phase I: Envision - an ESM Blueprint and Roadmap

The objective in this phase is to gather a comprehensive understanding of the enterprise environment and develop a clear strategy for the enterprise. The ESM envisioning process has three steps:

1. Data gathering 2. Capability maturity assessment 3. Blueprint architecture and roadmap

Step 1: Gather ESM Data

The first step is to thoroughly understand the current ESM capabilities. This level includes comprehensive discovery and documenting ESM tools and capabilities currently in use. It includes assessing current business processes & workflows that exist for ESM.

In addition to obtaining a list of the key tools, this step is concerned with understanding and documenting answers to big picture ESM questions such as the following examples:

x Does the enterprise monitoring strategy include qualitative measures such as MOS and R-Factor scoring? This question relates to the degree of End-User-Experience visibility.

x Does the monitoring strategy include application performance measures? This question relates to the degree of application performance visibility.

x Does the monitoring strategy include network performance measures such as latency, jitter, 10Gbps interfaces? This question relates to the degree of network performance visibility.

x Does the monitoring strategy include cloud infrastructure performance measures? This question relates to the degree of cloud infrastructure visibility.

x Does the monitoring strategy include BYOD performance measures? This question relates to the degree of BYOD performance visibility.

Step 2: ESM Capability Maturity Assessment

This step of the envisioning process aims to obtain a deep functional ESM level capability assessment by identifying ESM coverage gaps and risks in the ESM capabilities that could materially impact the ability

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of the enterprise. This level includes capability assessments such as the current ability to track assets in a CMDB or CMS model.

The following are examples of questions explored at this level of envisioning:

1. Are event flows consolidated into a single pane of glass? This question relates to the time it takes to cross-correlate event flows from different tools.

2. Are proactive monitoring tools and practices used? This question relates to the time needed to decide what actions to take after events are analyzed.

3. Are tools which capture event flows for infrastructure, network and applications in place? This question relates to uncovering missing information for analysis and diagnostics.

4. Are sufficient rules of governance and training in place? This question relates to procedures- such as ensuring the operational monitoring teams do appropriately use the information that is available.

5. Are there sufficient metrics to monitor and control the CI/CT/CD/CM environment? This question relates to ensuring adequate DevOps process monitoring and controls are in place.

Step 3: ESM Blueprint Architecture and Roadmap

The final step of the envisioning phase is a synthesis of the information and knowledge gathered in the prior steps together with ESM expertise provided by consultants and architects. At this level an ESM blueprint roadmap is produced which will satisfy the strategic monitoring requirements of the enterprise. Figure 7 is an example roadmap.

Figure 7: E2E Monitoring Phased Approach

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Phase II: Engage - Implementation resources

During the engagement process, the ESM blueprint architecture and roadmap output from the envisioning phase is translated into a concrete implementation project. Implementation resources are identified which may be a combination of customer staff and temporary professional services, architects, and engineers. Specific tools and infrastructure components are selected that match the requirements spelled out in the blueprint. The tools and infrastructure are integrated together into an Enterprise solution.

Engagement projects themselves are typically organized into multiple phases. Phase 1 of an ESM engagement for an enterprise at the “ESM Chaos” level will typically be sufficient to take the enterprise to the “ESM Reactive” level. Phase 2 could then build on the phase 1 capabilities to take the enterprise to the “ESM Pro-active” level such as providing more advanced monitoring capabilities. Once an enterprise achieves a Pro-active level a final engagement may be needed to accomplish Pro-active business services management. Figure 8 is an example of an ESM reference architecture that could result from the engagement process.

Figure 8: Example ESM Reference Architecture

Phase III: Evolve - The Implementation

Once the ESM capability has reached the Pro-active level, it is feasible to begin the process of ESM Optimizing. At this level, the collective intelligence of uses and staff are constantly evaluating the ESM capabilities and evolving them to keep in step with changes most relevant to the enterprise. This may be accomplished using processes and governance policies that drive continuous reviews of all levels of the ESM system and procedures.

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Summary

This paper explained that realizing mature strategic service monitoring for digitally-transformed enterprises has become a business essential because the end-user-experience of digital users directly and immediately impact the performance of the entire enterprise. Four levels of ESM maturity are identified. A three-phase E3 approach provides a step-by-step framework for enterprises to successfully envision, engage and evolve strategically relevant ESM solutions.

References

www.trace3.com Envisioning Solutions

Capability Maturity Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model

APM digest website http://apmdigest.com/

Gartner Magic Quadrant: Application Performance Monitoring, December 2015

Gartner Magic Quadrant: Network Performance Monitoring, March 2014