How Business Transaction Management Can Penetrate the 10% Barrier

Over the last 15 years, IT systems management has successfully developed silo-specific tools that resolve up to 90% of the problems experienced in main frame and distributed systems. Unfortunately, this still leaves a 10% barrier that only a few business transaction management products are addressing effectively. This 10% is the cause of considerable stealth waste.

A system that is managed by separate application monitoring tools can show that each application is 100% available. The first warning that the 10% problem has occurred is the arrival of help tickets at the service desk. So why don't these separate monitors give a true picture of the IT system?

The primary problem with silo monitoring is the failure of the separate applications to communicate with each other. They may be functioning internally as designed but aren't interacting between each other as planned. Or the silo monitoring solutions in place are just looking at infrastructure: network, web servers, application servers, and databases - but, not the applications that traverse them. In addition there is at least one "blind spot" for every transaction where visibility is unavailable.

Business Transaction Management Deep dive discovery across applications, middleware and transactions is the process in application performance management that eliminates the blind spots. BTM tools that include these processes scan for interactions between the "node types" and upload them into a special data center within a complex event processing (CEP) engine. It is the CEP capability of a BTM tool that gives it power to predict problems and administer policy or governance.

Deep-dive monitoring scans each action from end-to-end. From the first click of a user's button, to the completion of the transaction, the business transaction monitoring tool traces the transaction through each tier, whether main frame or distributed. When something stops working, the BTM software provides the necessary visibility to identify where in the IT process things went wrong. And the CEP tool identifies the problem before it impacts users.

How to Evaluate a Business Transaction Monitoring Solution In order to provide optimum value, a BTM tool needs to be customized to the specific business needs. Service level agreements (SLAs), latency requirement and other information critical to efficient and government compliant operations should be easy to enter. A wizard interface is recommended. It is also important the BTM tools is designed to monitor every single transaction, no matter where it originates within the datacenter. You want to know that once the button is clicked, everything will be recorded.

This feature is the first step to visibility. Fortunately, achieving this visibility does not mean that you have to trade existing applications for new one. The key component is finding a BTM tool with the power to monitor the functioning of multiple technology products such as.NET, Java, middleware and CICS, or home-grown applications. It is possible to "raise the IQ of your existing investments".

The complex event processing engine is the second step to visibility, for this is the part that interprets the data collected. The CEP design is key to collecting the information that eliminates that last 10% barrier to consistent predictive rather than reactive application performance management. Look for a CEP that collects data across both internal and external tiers. One that gathers both transactional and operational data will give you not only the "what and when" but the "why" of any problems that arise. Also look for a CEP engine that is capable of scanning high volumes of events and metrics as your business scales. In addition, it should have grid capabilities to provide both fault tolerance and linear scalability.

Also look for business transaction monitoring solution that allows you to program it to distribute warnings when system abnormal conditions are detected. Also look for user-friendly dashboards upon which to view and elicit information. Solid experience within the BTM industry and a reputation for providing superior support are also important considerations when choosing a BTM product.