Learn More About Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring Software
What is cloud infrastructure monitoring software?
With the rapid increase in cloud adoption, organizations are constantly looking to move more of their workloads to the cloud to achieve scalability, agility, and cost savings. A question that arises with this move is how organizations monitor their infrastructure performance as the migration creates visibility gaps. Maintaining and monitoring performance across their dynamic and complex cloud environments is challenging for organizations. This has led to the emergence of cloud monitoring solutions, which enable organizations to have end-to-end visibility across their cloud applications and servers.
A typical cloud infrastructure comprises servers, storage devices, cloud management tools, networks, and platform virtualization. Cloud infrastructure monitoring tools enable organizations to monitor and manage the operational workflow of their cloud infrastructure environment. These software tools provide a complete and comprehensive health picture of the cloud infrastructure components in real time. They help users access all their crucial cloud infrastructure metrics associated with network, storage, and resource utilization.
Cloud infrastructure monitoring tools also help track metrics like resource levels, server response times, and storage capacities, which allows organizations to reduce troubleshooting times, predict performance requirements, and reduce overall costs associated with their cloud environments.
What are the benefits of cloud infrastructure monitoring solutions?
Cloud monitoring tools facilitate performance monitoring across servers, networks, applications, and storage devices. They allow administrators to continuously assess resource utilization levels, server response times, speed, and availability. They also enable users to troubleshoot anomalies that can lead to future issues in a timely and efficient manner.
Reduces costs: Cloud infrastructure monitoring platforms help save IT costs by predicting utilization or potential performance issues in cloud infrastructure components.
Efficiency: These solutions help IT teams gain insights into performance metrics across cloud infrastructure environments, troubleshoot detected issues, and bring out the major areas for improvement, increasing efficiency.
End-to-end visibility: These solutions let organizations have complete visibility and control over their cloud infrastructure environment in real time. This helps them analyze and optimize the performance of their cloud infrastructure applications and services.
Increased productivity: These monitoring tools alert or notify cloud administrators about real-time performance issues and allow them to resolve them quickly. These solutions also provide interactive dashboards to visualize anomalies and the related root cause analysis representation that helps organizations troubleshoot cloud infrastructure performance disruptions quickly.
Improved end-user experience: Cloud infrastructure monitoring solutions can optimize the user experience by monitoring the end-to-end performance of applications deployed on the cloud. They can quickly identify application issues and significantly reduce the mean time to repair (MTTR).
Who Uses Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring Software?
Cloud infrastructure monitoring solutions act as a single source of truth to monitor, manage, and optimize the performance of all the components associated with a cloud infrastructure environment. One can gain a real-time view of all the operational data and act upon it instantly. IT administrators are the key users of this software:
IT administrators: Cloud infrastructure monitoring tools are implemented through automated monitoring software that provide centralized access and control over cloud infrastructure environments. Cloud IT administrators can track and assess the operational status and health of cloud applications and services.
Which is the best cloud infrastructure monitoring software for tech startups?
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Coralogix: Offers a modern observability platform with real-time log analytics and metrics. Its affordable pricing and scalability make it ideal for startups seeking comprehensive monitoring solutions.
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SolarWinds Observability: Provides full-stack monitoring with a focus on simplicity and scalability. It's suitable for startups aiming to monitor their infrastructure without extensive setup.
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FusionReactor APM: Combines application performance monitoring with infrastructure insights. Its user-friendly interface and affordable plans cater well to startups needing deep visibility.
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Pandora FMS: An open-source monitoring solution that supports a wide range of infrastructure components. It's a flexible choice for startups looking for customizable monitoring tools.
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OpsRamp: Cloud-based IT operations platform with strong infrastructure monitoring, alert management, and hybrid environment support — a good fit for startups expanding into multi-cloud or hybrid setups.
Challenges with cloud monitoring software
Some of the key challenges which come along with cloud infrastructure monitoring tools are:
Multiple cloud providers: Organizations are extensively adopting multi-cloud strategies for multiple reasons, such as risk mitigation, avoiding vendor lock-ins, and higher security. However, monitoring infrastructure across multiple cloud providers has become a challenge for organizations.
Hybrid cloud environment: Monitoring infrastructure across public and private cloud deployment is highly challenging. Gaining end-to-end visibility across hybrid cloud environments is complex as applications are deployed in a distributed manner, and identifying issues across different environments becomes cumbersome.
How to choose the best cloud infrastructure monitoring software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring Software
Whether a company is looking for its first cloud and IT infrastructure monitoring software or wants to replace an existing one, g2.com can help find the best tool.
When searching for cloud infrastructure monitoring software, the company's needs often relate to specifically desired data and metrics. For example, the user may be most interested in monitoring and improving transaction performance within their applications. Buyers should make a ranked list of the cloud infrastructure monitoring features that most directly address the problems they’re trying to solve, then reference G2 reviews to find the right fit.
Prioritizing the desired feature set can help narrow down the potential pool of cloud infrastructure monitoring solutions, allowing teams to apply further considerations for budget, ease of integration with other systems, security requirements, and more. This holistic approach empowers buyers to move forward with a focused checklist, which can be used with G2 scoring to select the business's best cloud infrastructure monitoring product.
Compare Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring Software Products
Create a long list
Buyers should start with a large pool of cloud infrastructure monitoring software vendors. Keeping the desired must-have features in mind, it is important that buyers perform consistent inquiries during demos by which they can effectively compare the pros and cons of each software solution.
Create a short list
It helps to cross-reference the results of initial vendor evaluations with G2 reviews from other buyers. The combination of these will help narrow down a short three- to five-product list. From there, buyers can compare pricing and features to determine the best fit.
Conduct demos
As a rule of thumb, companies should demo all of the products that end up on their short list. During demos, buyers should ask specific questions about the functionalities they care about most; for example, one might ask to be walked through a typical performance issue, from alerting to remediation within the cloud infrastructure monitoring tool.
Selection of Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring Software
Choose a selection team
Regardless of a company’s size, it’s important to involve the most relevant personas during the cloud infrastructure monitoring software selection process. Larger companies may include individual team members to fill roles such as project manager, decision maker, system owner, and IT professionals and developers who will be working closely with the software. Smaller companies with fewer employees might overlap roles.
Negotiation
Cloud infrastructure monitoring tools are on the expensive side when it comes to pricing. While some companies will not budge on the configurations of their packages, buyers looking to trim costs should try to negotiate down to the specific functions that matter to them in order to get the best price.
Final decision
After this stage, it is important to perform a trial run if possible with a small selection of IT professionals or developers. This will help to ensure that the cloud infrastructure monitoring software of choice integrates well with an IT administrator’s systems setup or a developer’s day-to-day work. If the cloud infrastructure monitoring tool is well liked and well utilized, the buyer can take that as a sign that their selection is the right one. If not, reevaluation of the options may be necessary.
How much does cloud infrastructure monitoring software cost?
Cloud infrastructure monitoring tools have several pricing options, such as perpetual license and subscription-based models. Some vendors also offer a free trial version, starting with the software being free for 14 days.
Which cloud infrastructure monitoring service is the most affordable?
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Site24x7: Highly rated for affordability and ease of use. It monitors servers, cloud services, and networks, starting at $9/month — ideal for small to mid-sized teams.
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Datadog: Offers broad monitoring capabilities including cloud infrastructure, APM, and log management. Starts at $15/user/month with a free trial. Great for growing teams needing integrations.
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New Relic: Provides full-stack observability with a generous free tier (up to 100 GB/month of data ingest). Flexible pricing makes it accessible for startups and SMBs.
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Checkmk: Open-source monitoring with commercial editions available. Supports cloud, on-prem, and hybrid infrastructures with a focus on performance and flexibility.
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LogicMonitor: Cloud-based platform with automated discovery and customizable dashboards. Offers strong infrastructure and hybrid environment support. Pricing is usage-based, with plans suited for mid-market companies.
