The war in Ukraine and the global rise of inflation have compounding effects on the global economy, which was just starting to recover from the pandemic. In that context, the topic of cost reduction becomes more pressing every day. Most private and public organizations are deploying measures to protect their business, maintain profitability, and prepare for further inflation increases, reinforcing their capacity to deliver the best service to stakeholders. While IT often drives value creation and cost savings, it is also a major expenditure which can always be optimized, starting with our domain of choice, IT monitoring.
Here are three ways to reduce IT monitoring costs and optimize your TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).
Optimizing rather than cost cutting
High inflation rates, high energy costs, uncertainty about a possible global economic slowdown… Private and public organizations are facing increased uncertainties and, without being alarmist, are starting to ask themselves where to cut down on costs. But doing so, they must balance cost reduction with capacity optimization.
IT remains a focal point in business strategies, and new technology investments are still prioritized in many organizations, sometimes supported by government grants and incentives.
In a slowing economy, businesses may want to look twice before committing to new IT investments. However, investing in IT can be part of a robust cost saving strategy. IT investments can be made with the objective to maintain competitiveness or enhance the cost effectiveness of IT operations. The following are small but effective steps to get started on a cost optimization venture.
- Cutting down the number of tools used, eliminating overlap.
- Replacing obsolete solutions.
- Adopting more modern, efficient architectures.
- Taking a closer look at the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) when sourcing new solutions.
The same approach can be applied to optimizing IT monitoring costs: Investing in optimization. And it turns out that Centreon can help you reduce IT monitoring costs. Read further for three ways to start on your cost reduction journey.
#1. Consider the cost/performance ratio of legacy monitoring solutions
Ten years ago, a handful of vendors (now called “incumbents”) were owning the IT monitoring market, selling large, powerful (and often complex) platforms that had no equivalent. Some of these platforms are still in use today. The problem with those legacy tools is that they’re quite expensive to maintain. And they don’t age well—as time goes by, they will only require more investments to keep them up to date. Considering the speed at which new architectures to monitor emerge, updating the tool often ends up more expensive than simply replacing it with a more cost-effective solution.
The State of IT Monitoring report highlights several reasons organizations are dissatisfied with their monitoring tools. Twenty-eight percent cite high maintenance costs and one out of five mentions tools are difficult to maintain.
Sustainability is therefore a key aspect to look at when considering current and future costs balanced with expected performance and scalability.
The world has changed. Modern technologies allow a platform such as Centreon to offer complete visibility on IT at a much lower cost and with a much friendlier user experience. Adopting Centreon instantly helps reduce IT monitoring costs.
#2. Replace multiple tools with just one that will perform just as well or even better
You may tolerate tool sprawl thinking that the solutions you’ve implemented are “not that expensive.” But how many do you need exactly just to monitor your IT environment?
Centreon’s State of IT Monitoring report revealed that on average, organizations use 14 monitoring tools.
Over the years, IT operations teams have accumulated tools, adding a specialized monitoring solution whenever a new need arose: capacity planning, bandwidth management, database monitoring, cloud monitoring, etc.
Taken individually, these tools are not necessarily expensive (some are open source, others are so old that no maintenance contracts are available anymore) but even modest subscription or ownership fees can add up, and you pay too much for rather limited monitoring capabilities. And this is before factoring in the often-invisible costs of lacking integration, restrained visibility, and efficiency losses caused by tool sprawl, and the security risks associated with using tools that are no longer supported.
Replacing multiple tools with a unified Centreon platform not only saves on licenses, subscriptions, and maintenance fees, but also significantly improves the productivity of IT operations teams.
#3 Leverage SaaS with Centreon Cloud
Reducing IT monitoring costs also means looking beyond traditional software ownership options. The cloud, through SaaS offerings, is opening new possibilities to gain both in terms of TCO and operational simplicity. The total cost of ownership of a solution offered as a SaaS option is almost always lower than that of an equivalent self-hosted solution. In addition, cloud-based monitoring solutions monitor cloud and non-cloud assets with the same agility as if they were on-premise.
Centreon Cloud allows you to reduce IT monitoring costs while benefiting from complete visibility into your IT, true alignment between IT and business through an agile, scalable and easy to integrate platform.
Want to know more about Centreon? Contact us.
To go further
- Visit our resource center: ebooks, guides, reports, customer stories, tutorials, and more to help you in your IT monitoring journey
- You do not know Centreon Yet? Try a permanent free trial for our commercial platform, Centreon IT Edition for holistic monitoring including unlimited access to 700 zero-config connectors and auto-discovery engine to monitor up to 100 IT assets today. Try Centreon for Free now
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