The importance of IT monitoring software has risen significantly as many companies nowadays operate in a hybrid cloud environment. Enterprise monitoring software allows companies to monitor both on-premises and cloud infrastructures, whereas legacy IT infrastructure monitoring software can only monitor on-premises environments. However, making the transition from legacy systems to cloud isn’t easy.

This article will explore some common problems that IT managers face and the type of enterprise monitoring solutions best at solving them.

Modern-day IT operations demand cloud monitoring capability

IT monitoring has changed significantly over the last decade. 

Traditional infrastructure monitoring software operates by installing monitoring agents on on-premise servers and hosts. The software works well for static host counts that change very little over time. However, it doesn’t work well in cloud environments. This is because containers, serverless applications, and other cloud computing components change very fast in a short period of time to scale up and down in response to demand changes. Therefore, companies now have to use monitoring solutions that have cloud infrastructure monitoring capabilities.

According to the Centreon State of IT Monitoring Survey, nearly 60% of IT managers are unsatisfied with their current monitoring tools. But why?

• Poor integration with other IT operation tools
• Lack of unified visibility
• Too expensive to maintain
• Too many tools
• Too difficult to maintain

Let us explore these difficulties and how G2 data can help software buyers find the right software to address these concerns.

Poor integration with other IT operation tools

Almost a third of the respondents mentioned poor integration with other IT operation tools as the reason why they are unsatisfied with their IT monitoring tools. Most traditional tools do not integrate with cloud services because they don’t have built-in API authentication access to cloud-based metrics and logs. But even with cloud monitoring software, integration is still a challenge since not all cloud services and applications are integrated with the cloud monitoring software. 

To address this, G2 asks reviewers to rank enterprise monitoring software based on “Diverse Systems Monitoring." This is where users monitor usage and activity on a diverse array of IT systems, e.g., servers, databases, and networks. Below is the ranking for the top five enterprise monitoring software ranked by “Diverse Systems Monitoring.”With a category average of 92% Satisfaction rating, PRTG Network Monitor ranks the highest at 97%, followed by LogicMonitor, AppDynamics, Nagios XI, and Splunk Enterprise. IT managers troubled with integration should check out these five products.

Lack of unified visibility

Almost a third of the respondents also mentioned a lack of unified visibility with other IT operation tools. This is a common problem, especially when different teams use different monitoring solutions. If the DevOps and testing teams use different tools, they will receive different reports about which performance issues to fix and how to fix them. For example, one tool may signal that RAM is running out due to an application. In contrast, the other tool suggests that the third-party integration with the said application is lowering the memory. If both teams use the same tool, everyone is aligned on what to do next.

IT admins need to monitor applications, networks, servers, and other stack components to have comprehensive content into the root cause of the issue. That is why enterprise monitoring software or observability solutions that can monitor multiple IT systems win in the long run. Unified visibility also requires the monitoring solution to have a single pane of glass to showcase this information in a concise and clear manner. 

To address this issue, G2 asks reviewers to rank enterprise monitoring software based on “Single Pane of Glass." Users can consolidate IT systems monitoring overviews into a single pane for quick insights. Below is the ranking for the top five enterprise monitoring software ranked by “Single Pane of Glass."

With a category average of 88% Satisfaction rating, FusionReactor APM ranks the highest at 98%, followed by Nagios XI, PRTG Network Monitor, Netreo, LogicMonitor, and AppDynamics. For IT managers who require unified visibility, they can take a look at these five products.

Too expensive and difficult to maintain, and too many tools

These three unsatisfactory areas compound each other because if an IT department doesn’t utilize a unified monitoring platform, the department would need to purchase separate tools to monitor everything. So even though one unified monitoring platform is more expensive than a point solution, multiple point solutions together will be more expensive. The team also needs to hire different talents that know how to use different tools or provide lengthy training for all the tools. This process is time-consuming and requires more resources compared to buying one unified monitoring platform that can integrate everything. It is also difficult to maintain because if the company is stuck with legacy monitoring software, the IT admin would have to manually install SSH into cloud servers to retrieve infrastructure logs and metrics. A unified system not only automatically integrates with most software and hardware but also correlates all the infrastructure metrics with related logs, events, traces, and processes. This lowers maintenance difficulties and allows IT admin to quickly diagnose the root cause for fixes. 

To address maintenance difficulties, G2 asks reviewers to rank enterprise monitoring software based on “Ease of Admin.” Below is the ranking for the top five enterprise monitoring software ranked by this rating.

With a category average of 85% Satisfaction rating, Mezmo ranks the highest at 95%, followed by FusionReactor APM, Coralogix, LogicMonitor, and AppDynamics. IT managers looking for a  monitoring solution that is easy to administer can check out these five products.

Observability solutions are still in the early to middle stage of adoption

To address the common dissatisfaction with monitoring tools, vendors are pushing for observability as the next step for monitoring and diagnostics. 

In practice, observability covers everything that monitoring software does but adds new features such as machine learning and AIOps to automate the whole process from performance issue discovery to self-healing execution. This is attractive to software buyers as they are in the process of replacing their legacy software with new IT monitoring tools (shown in the Google Trend search interest graph below).

Until IT admins and managers find one or two fitting monitoring platforms that solve the five fundamental issues mentioned earlier, they should not prioritize these advanced features. Most modern IT monitoring software are a combination between traditional monitoring software and observability, regardless of what the marketing material says. Therefore, companies should take their time to find the right monitoring platform for their tech stack as the first step.

Edited by Jigmee Bhutia