To many tools in the toolbox.

In my experience, IT organisations are good at taking on new tools…….. but not so great at retiring older ones. But how does one know which tools are critical to keep, where there’s overlap, and what’s no longer needed?

Part of the promise of IT operations analytics is to rationalise tools so you end up with a “single-pane-of-glass” view of the IT environment. But, does that “utopia” even exist?

Most IT professionals would argue that you need a number of different tools to manage everything. The challenges, therefore, are to reduce the number of legacy tools and replace them with a platform that does the collective work better. The final tool selection should operate together in a fully integrated manner.

IT infrastructure is typically made up of servers, their related VMs and hypervisors, the network and related switches, and a storage layer. A good starting point is to evaluate what you are using to manage these layers. Then look at the infrastructure from an application point of view – do the legacy tools give you an application view or do they just show their particular silo? You need a view of how the applications using the infrastructure are performing so you can create a baseline and then look to optimise the system.

This new application-centric approach also gives you valuable insight you can share with the business – after all let’s be honest, they are only interested in how the applications are performing and not what technology they are running on. The next stage is to look at the applications themselves and the UX they provide. Many organisations use an Application Performance Monitor (APM) that measures end-user experience, the coding and all IT components outside the data centre.

So, you now have application and infrastructure views, offering an integration interface so analytics can be viewed holistically rather than by platform. This enables you to report to the business how their applications are running and have performed during the time since last reviewed or post an infrastructure upgrade, transforming IT from overhead to delivering business value.