Today, virtually all businesses run on some aspect of technology, whether that be through customer-facing websites, internal platforms such as ERP or billing systems, or cloud storage. Whether these services are customer facing or internal, if they are not running smoothly (without any interruptions), it affects the operations of those businesses and ultimately if there is a delay of just one hour could result in the depletion of the brand name and significant revenue losses. Proactive IT infrastructure monitoring has become a huge advantage for companies, who are able to forecast issues before they create problems for the company.
In an industry where every moment counts, proactive monitoring helps provide businesses with a level of advantage they cannot obtain from just having a website and/or a hard copy of their site. Not only does proactive monitoring allow a company to monitor its network or application(s) in order to provide on time delivery, but it also provides businesses the means to avoid issues from developing. Below is an example of how proactive monitoring has affected companies of all sizes:
- Reduce downtime using Predictive Intelligence
When a company has a lot of downtime, its operations are hurting. Research conducted by Gartner states that IT downtime costs organizations approximately $5,600 every minute, which is approximately 4,500,000 per hour (Approx.)
- Research also shows that approximately 82% of all businesses have experienced unplanned downtime in the past three years.
- Approximately 70% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have said that unplanned downtime affects their customers’ satisfaction and loyalty over the long term.
- Proactive IT infrastructure monitoring provides companies with:
- Alerts for when servers or applications are about to fail.
- Anomaly detection through artificial intelligence to help identify abnormal activity.
- Predictive maintenance allows businesses to prevent unexpected outages by as much as 55%
- Smart monitoring dashboards that provide complete insights into the business’s servers, networks, applications and cloud instances.
- Companies have the ability to detect vulnerabilities before they become a problem and consequently have the ability to achieve full uptime and uninterrupted service delivery.
- Improve Operations through Automation
Manual monitoring is typically slow, reactive and can be subject to human error when managing networks and applications. Automated and intelligent workflows replace those barriers to proactive monitoring and allow a company to have increased operational efficiency.Among the many automated IT Management solutions available is:
Automated Health Monitoring across the complete IT environment.
- Instant issue resolution via automated response mechanisms.
- Automated load balancing and performance tuning capabilities that eliminate the need for human intervention.
- Automated optimisation of resource utilisation to eliminate excessive spend on Hardware/Cloud.
Statistics show that if you’re using automated monitoring systems to monitor your infrastructure:
- You will reduce the workload of IT by 30 to 40 percent.
- Increase the speed at which you can resolve issues by up to 60 percent.
- Increase the life span of your Infrastructure by up to 25 percent.
By getting your IT team away from “fire fighting” incidents, your organisation will have more freedom to focus on Recycling Innovation & Strategically growing.
Strengthening Cyber Security & Preventing Breaches
Among the biggest threats facing businesses today are Cyber Attacks. The majority of Breaches start with minor irregularities. However, these regularities can include: Unusual/Abnormal Login Attempts, Unauthorized Access to files and Sudden Bandwidth Spikes.
When you actively monitor your IT infrastructure you have a constant defensive presence via:
Intrusion Detection & Identification of Threats.
3.Real Time Log Analysis of log files for immediate detection of Suspicious Activity.
AI-Enhanced Inter-Relatedness of Data Across Your Systems to Identify Patterns That May Not Be Apparent.
Real time Alerts for Potential Security Gaps.
According to IBM’s Cyber Security Report:
Without Active Monitoring, the Average breach is detected after 212 Days!
As an Organization using Active Monatory Systems, the Detection time is reduced to less than 5 minutes!
Your Business saves on average 38 percent of its costs in relation to breaches.
Compressing the Detection time of a Breach minimizes damage incurred, helps protect sensitive Data and allows continued compliance with Global.
4.When organizations utilize proactive monitoring, they do so to:
- Speed up their page load times.
- Reduce service disruptions as much as possible.
- Maintain a consistent level of performance.
- Create a smooth user journey.
Based on research done by different companies, 1 second of delay in response time can cost you 7% of your potential conversions.
As for E-commerce brands, for each 1% of downtime, 9% of revenue is lost.
If 89% of customers leave a business for a website with a poor digital experience, then you can see the importance of maintaining constant, seamless, dependable service for your customers through proactive monitoring.
- Use Data Insights To Make Better Decisions
Many of today’s most valuable monitoring tools come with advanced analytical capabilities that provide business leaders with the ability to make more informed and smarter decisions. With AI-based reporting, you can view the historical performance trend of
your applications,
- your infrastructure’s capacity forecast,
- your network security insights,
- the patterns of usage on your networks,
- and obviously application uptime data.
With this access to analytics, companies now have the information required to:
Plan for new infrastructure upgrades
- Allocate a budget based on current & future needs
- Utilize available resources efficiently
- Develop and implement the ability to scale their operations based on fluctuating customer demand.
Organizations that implement data-driven monitoring can transition IT from a traditional cost center to a strategic asset for their organization.
- Minimal Operational Costs
The use of proactive IT monitoring has been shown to provide financial savings in several areas of business:
- Higher levels of revenue stability due to lower levels of downtime.
- Less cloud spending due to more efficient use of cloud resources.
- Lower labor costs due to reduced time to resolve issues.
- Lower costs associated with replacing defective hardware due to fewer failures.
A study has shown businesses can save 30% to 50% of their IT operational expenses through proactive monitoring.
Preventive maintenance can reduce failure costs by as much as 40%.
Optimizing your cloud resources can decrease your monthly cloud bill by 20% to 35%.
While the focus is on avoiding loss, it’s also about maximizing long-term cost efficiencies.
- Support For Aggregate & Future Growth
As your company grows, your IT demands will continue to grow. The need for proactive IT monitoring will ensure that your IT infrastructure will be able to handle increased levels of traffic without becoming unstable.
With proactive IT monitoring companies can provide:
- The ability to quickly and easily scale their applications
- Stability during peak hours
- Efficiently spread traffic loads evenly across their infrastructure
- The ability to accurately forecast future capacity needs.
If you plan to undergo a digital transformation, cloud migration, or global expansion of your business, proactive IT monitoring should be a standard practice in place. Proactive monitoring of your IT infrastructure is now part of your Business Continuity plan and helps provide a seamless customer experience, maintain security, manage your digital assets, and ensure long-term sustainability by utilizing real-time data and analytics. When it comes to securing, optimizing, and aligning your organization’s IT infrastructure for the future, hiring an expert is the best option available to you and Signatech is here to support you with end-to-end, data-driven IT infrastructure monitoring solutions.