The criticality of IT monitoring in organizations should not be underestimated, and it is not. Its role is crucial in ensuring availability, reliability and compliance of IT equipment and data. It goes far beyond merely supporting IT teams, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown yet again (if it still needed to be shown) how essential IT monitoring is to ensure business continuity. This is all the more true in times when we are compelled, through social distancing, to fully embrace the era of telework and the contactless economy. Let’s take a look at the major 2021 monitoring trends that will help you develop a sustainable, high value-added monitoring strategy.
2021 IT monitoring panorama: a recognized, but not fully utilized, added value
No IT means no business. In fact, according to Centreon’s State of IT Monitoring, the criticality of IT monitoring is recognized by most organizations as being a high or top priority in their IT strategy. 72% of the I&Os/ITOps surveyed expect it will become even more significant by 2023.
On this topic, a difference can be noted between North America and Europe, which may be due to a different level of maturity regarding IT monitoring and telework.
North Americans have been more inclined than Europeans to prioritize IT monitoring in their budgets (all the more so since the start of the health crisis). Even inside Europe, there is a noticeable difference between France and the UK, probably due to France having to catch-up on the implementation of telework.
So, the importance of monitoring has been identified, but what about putting it into practice? Has it really been put into practice?
As the State of IT Monitoring reveals, only 27% of the I&Os/ITOps surveyed rate the visibility they have on their IT performance levels as excellent and on average, only 61% of an organization’s IT system is actually monitored.
As a consequence of IT monitoring’s lack of coverage, ITOps lack information and visibility on their IT infrastructure, and there can be some delay when it comes to anticipating (or sometimes simply detecting) anomalies.
Which has a direct impact on the efficiency and overall performance of the business…
2021: the year for upgrading IT infrastructures
There will continue to be a relentless migration towards Cloud and Edge, with North America going faster than Europe.
IT infrastructure deployment evolution over the next three years
For ITOps to effectively monitor their entire infrastructures, they must ensure they have full visibility over their entire IT equipment, especially those in the Cloud, Edge and IoT.
That is why the migration of organizations towards these environments will undeniably impact the way we monitor IT in the coming years, most notably IoT according to 54% of respondents and Edge according to 44%.
We could say organizations prioritizing the extension of monitoring to Cloud (47%) and Edge (44%) between now and 2023 have had a wake-up call, or we could say those who will not be doing so, run the risk of having their visibility further reduced.
Another lasting trend is the importance of business-oriented KPIs
IT teams are completely willing to work with the Lines of business and to improve communication with them. The figures from the State of IT Monitoring speak for themselves: 98% of ITOPs believe providing and sharing business-oriented KPIs will be important.
By producing business-oriented indicators, ITOps and business teams can not only share reports on IT performance and service level agreements (SLAs), but also dashboards in order to monitor the organization’s business performance in the broadest sense.
The good news? 49% report they already share business-oriented key performance indicators and 44% plan to do so within the next 2 years, although this trend seems stronger in North America (45% compared with 40% in Europe).
More than ever before, business performance depends on I&O’s ability to implement business-oriented monitoring and share business-oriented KPIs. Gaining visibility for IT teams means immediate, significant competitive advantages for the digital business!
In 2021, unleash the full potential of your IT monitoring system!
This year’s new-year resolution: avoiding the pitfalls of current IT monitoring by identifying the reasons for these malfunctions. 59% of IT professionals are actually not satisfied with their monitoring tool, the top dissatisfaction criteria being: #1: the lack of interoperability (for 32%) and #2: the lack of unified visibility (for 30%). These two elements are essential to deploy high-performance, modern IT monitoring, and to be proactive in developing the tools to keep pace with the emerging trends in IT monitoring that we mentioned in the last paragraph. It has to be said that the high number of tools does not make it any easier (14 tools per organization, on average).
It may be time to move up a gear and take full advantage of every benefit of implementing a modern, connected monitoring system, namely:
The 5 main benefits of IT monitoring:
It may also be time to select your monitoring tools better, using criteria that will help you meet the new challenges of tomorrow’s IT safely:
As we have been able to find out, IT monitoring is now recognized as highly important, but in actual facts there is still a lot to be done (visibility on performance, satisfaction, rationalizing the number of tools and so on). 2020 was a very unsettling year from all points of view and particularly for IT, with an increased demand for availability and telework due to social distancing.
IT was at the forefront and will continue to be in 2021. Now is the time, therefore, to move up a gear on your IT monitoring strategy to increase visibility with an increasingly “smart”, connected approach.
For more information, download the State of IT Monitoring now, as well as our Ebook “Preparing for the Future of IT Monitoring – How to Ensure your IT is Growing Sustainably“.
These data are based on an international survey commissioned by Centreon to Vanson Bourne among 600 IT professionals in organizations with over 500 employees, in the following countries: the United States, Canada, France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain.
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