According to Forrester Research, three directions will influence IT management software market: 1) the evolution of IT infrastructure and application technologies; 2) the economic factors; and 3) the evolution of IT management technology. Application performance management is gaining more importance because of 1) the widespread use J2EE application servers; 2) the proliferation of distributed and powerful servers; and 3) business service management (BSM) approach for IT management optimization.

 ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), a set of concepts of managing IT infrastructure, development and operations, will be one of the buzzwords in 2008. Enterprises consider ITIL compliance as a way to reach efficient operations. Although, as Forrester predicts, there is still a deep disconnect between ITIL and BSM.

 IT expenditures are expected to have 8% growth in 2008. Enterprises that will continue investments in 2008 are those who 1) are motivated by cutting the IT operations cost and/or 2) consider quality of service as a competitive advantage.  Enterprises using IT management at the tactical level will have mixed feelings, although a major trend is toward moving IT management tools to the strategic category.  

 The highest growth expected in end user experience management category (72%), followed by change and configuration management (37%) and SLM/BSM (36%).

Monitis Inc., a leading provider of integrated systems monitoring and analytic services, launches Monitis Solutions Providers Network (MSPN), a partner program targeting VARs and IT Solutions Providers. IT Monitoring-as a-service approach is ideal for small and midsize providers to deliver high margin value added services.

IT infrastructure monitoring is an essential utility for service provider companies like Value Added Resellers (VARs), System Integrators (SIs), Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Managed Service Providers (MSPs), Help Desk and Support Providers, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Application Service Providers (ASP). Today’s competitive environment with complex IT setups makes an imperative the complex IT monitoring both from inside and outside of corporate firewalls. Monitis merges external monitoring which measures user experience with internal monitoring which ensures proactive problem fixing and capacity planning.

Delivering Monitoring-as-a-Service has significant advantages over traditional monitoring software, namely rapid (10 to 100 times faster) deployment, ease of use, seamless updates, reduced risk, no maintenance and archiving cost, no dedicated servers, access from anywhere, painless support for distributed infrastructures like regional offices and dispersed data centers. With this approach users pay only for resources they actually consume. Compare this with the significant up-front expenditures traditionally required to obtain software licenses and purchase and maintain hardware, either in-house or hosted. This frees customers from many of the complexities of capacity planning, transforms large capital expenditures into much smaller operating costs, and eliminates the need to over-buy “safety net” capacity to handle periodic traffic spikes. Additionally the notification is reliable because it works even when client’s network is down. Monitoring-as-a-Service means higher customer satisfaction.

Monitis provides instruments for easy but comprehensive monitoring at affordable price for small companies. External monitoring is performed via Monitis global monitoring network, while internal monitoring is performed via Monitis Smart Agents. The installation of these agents is a matter of minutes, and it makes the setup almost instant. Personlisable dashboard displays key performance metrics of servers, network, databases, web applications, processes, email, web services, storage, network devices, VPNs, VoIP, etc. Advanced users may add their own sensors. Users get notified about outages and critical resources via many channels like SMS, email, instant messengers, and RSS feeds. Monitis also sends weekly and monthly reports.

By launching MSPN (Monitis Service Provider Network), Monitis opens its platform to variety of solutions providers to use on on-demand monitoring and provide high margin value added services to small and midsize enterprises. The pricing is more than competitive and is at 99 cent per check per month or lower depending on volumes. Typical 10—30 people company may need around 30-40 checks. On top of monitoring, VARs can provide full services like network/systems administration, IT operations support, office IT management, software applications support, hosting and managed services and gain high revenues and reduce cost of support. MSPN benefits include re-selling authorization, preferential rates, premium support, online training and consultancy, possibilities of joint projects, co-branding, joint PR, API/SDK/source code access for customization, listing on Monitis highly ranked and high traffic website, early access to new features.

“We have had many requests for partnership and reselling of out services, mostly because of unique mixture of internal and external monitoring features traditionally associated with expensive software and complex deployments”, says Hovhannes Avoyan, Monitis CEO and Founder “with the launch of MSPN we are indicating that working through partner is our strategic priority. By opening our platform and resources to the solution providers we enable them to be more competitive and profitable.”

“I’ve been very impressed by the support provided by Monitis. They are open to our suggested feature enhancements and have delivered many of them in a timely manor.” according to Rick Stivers, Director of Network and IT Services from Schoolwires Inc. “We depend on this service to verify SLA for our clients and this is by far one of the best monitoring services out there.”

• For overview of the program click here
• For partner benefits and sign up here 

Couple of months later after introduction of notification rules mechanism for external monitors, Monitis Team is happy to announce similar notifications mechanism for internal monitors. Unlike external monitors, where failure is defined as site availability problem, in case of internal monitoring the failure depends on many different resources of the server, such as CPU, Memory, Drive, Processes, etc. So in case of internal monitoring users should specify limits(thresholds). When any of the specified limits reach the corresponding threshold notification could be sent. Further, after the value is normalized, corresponding recovery notification is sent. Below you can see some examples of thresholds and specification of internal monitoring rules:

You can see the same popups as it is shown above when adding Internal Monitor with the list of parameters(limits) specific to each type of monitored resource. If you don’t specify these parameters during addition, you can do that later from each module’s edit mode. In order to receive notifications in case of any of your setup parameters reached their thresholds, you should setup rules(specify contacts notifications should be sent to and several other options). Rules popup is automatically presented after clicking on “Add” button and has the following view

In the header of the popup you can see the name you specified for this monitor, and below you can specify the contacts and other notification related parameters for this monitor. You can also skip the setup of notifications and do that later by going to edit mode of the corresponding monitor.

After you have done correctly all the above mentioned steps, you will start receiving notifications every time your server has any internal problems.

Monitis Inc., a leading provider of web applications, systems and network monitoring and analytics service, announces upgrade of its systems monitoring service. The new launch is in line with Monitis strategy to serve as one-stop monitoring destination for IT and business users.

Network, systems and application monitoring are essential utilities to insure high website ROI. While external monitoring measures web user experience, internal monitoring ensures proactive problem fixing for better end-user experience. Poor web availability may significantly impact web generated profit, company reputation and its operations. Monitoring as a Service offers significant advantages over in-house monitoring software, such as no installations, no license fees, no support personnel, no dedicated servers, access from anywhere, support for distributed infrastructure like regional offices and dispersed data centers.

Internal or systems monitoring is one of Monitis monitoring products for visualizing Windows and Linux (Sun support will be available soon) servers resource utilization and performance metrics, such as CPU and processes. Beside other improvements, the latest release of the Windows agent can run as a Windows service (one of the most demanded feature). Linux agent was also enhanced to collect additional server metrics such as caches and buffered memory metrics. Combined with external performance metrics, systems monitoring captures systems performance bottlenecks, for example how low memory or high CPU utilization affect web site response time. The upgrade of the feature will be done automatically for existing users.

“Monitis personal dashboard provides performance metrics important both for IT and businesses users”, says Hovhannes Avoyan, Monitis CEO and Founder “Different user roles within enterprise will find critical information for better decisions making and improving operations efficiency. It appears to be a unique service mix at the market”

Monitis will have series of new announcements next weeks.

Monitis Team is happy to introduce new “Testimonials” page. You can find there your testimonials(of course those of you who had already sent it). The page will be updated constantly as we will receive new testimonials. Special thanks to users who already provided us testimonials, we appreciate your time spent on this and encouraging others to provide their testimonials(feedbacks), which will help us to provide you constantly with more and more new features and exceptional customer support. You can visit the page by following the link http://monitis.com/testimonials.html.

Monitis Team presents a possibility to see the reports by different external monitoring locations. Before when creating reports the numbers shown were an average values from all external monitoring locations combined. This was inconvenient in some cases when you were caring of results only from one monitoring location, cause your target market was from that location. No this is not a problem anymore cause after creating reports you can see separately the results from each external monitoring location separately as well as combined one as before. To do that you just need to open the report module in an edit mode and select the corresponding location from Location drop down list.

In previous news release we mentioned enhancements to reporting. Now again some new additions to reporting mechanism. Before we have possibility to select Tag or Test Name and create reports based on that, but very often it is also necessary to have and overall report by all tags or all tests. So starting from now you can do that also, just select All Tags in Tag drop down list or All Tests in Test Name drop down list. Corresponding report will be created in a table format. Again you can export it as PDF or CSV file. In case of All Tests you will be presented also with number of OKs and NOKs corresponding to each test.

Until recently users were limited to creating reports only for current or previous months. At the same time the reports were limited only to daily data. Cause reporting is an essential part of any monitoring system and provides an insight into long-term results, Monitis Team decided to introduce an advanced reporting mechanism. Below we will go briefly through the stuff that were added to reporting mechanism. Period option is extended and now includes the following list of periods:

As you can see Yearly, Monthly, Weekly periods are added, which means that reports interval is now extended for the whole year. Yearly report can be split by months or by weeks, which you can select as you can see below.

The other available reporting periods are Monthly-Daily(you can specify any month), Weekly-Daily(you can specify any week), Previous month, Current month.

Monitis Team announces activation of new monitoring location in Sydney, Australia. This new enhancement will provide companies better geographic performance insight at their websites.

Monitis servers located around the globe in several geographic locations observe customers’ Web servers from different networks worldwide. The more locations the better picture on website availability and better geographic performance insight at a specific location across the world. Monitis Team who continuously improves professional website monitoring service for better monitoring experience, now provides external monitoring from Australian location in addition to US, UK, Panama and Germany already available locations.

In the scope of our navigation enhancements, Monitis Team is introducing DropDown list of Tabs(Pages) feature. It was proposed by one of our devoted customers and here it is - we already have it in place. The list allows you to select any Tab without scrolling through the whole list of Tabs, so in case of several dozens of Tabs it will be of great help to everyone. The button which opens the drop down list is located at the right upper corner, below “Sign out” link (you can see it on the screenshot below)

When clicking on it you can see the drop down list with all of your Tabs. In case you have too many of them the drop down list will have a scroll bar. After choosing any of the Tabs you will see the modules of the selected Tab on your dashboard. That’s it. More new enhancements are on the way.