When people talk about businesses using the cloud, we often think of companies in the classic sense – some global, private enterprise or even a mid-sized company deciding to re-apply resources and save by switching data storage and apps virtually.

But all kinds of organizations are benefiting by using cloud applications. Take schools and universities, for one.

There are many wonderful and productivity-enhancing applications that academic institutions use on the cloud to manage all facets of administration. For example, there’s Blackboard, which offers software to help schools manage courses, process transactions and e-commerce as well as oversee online communities. Another course management system housed on the cloud is the open-source Moodle program – also used by many schools and universities around the world.

But, as I’ve said many times before in this blog (it’s always worth repeating, though), cloud computing is great – but even better when you can employ cloud-based services, such as monitoring, to ensure security and a solid, safe and satisfying user experience.

There’s a lot that could go wrong, and thus a lot that needs monitoring! Internet business processes such as shopping carts, forms, internal search engines and logins all rely on servers and web applications. If a failure occurs, your customers can’t continue the order process, and they won’t be able to use your application. Those customers, visitors and users will go elsewhere, and as a result, you’ll lose revenue and repeat visits.  And that means a loss of future business, too.

To keep things running smoothly, you need a service to continually monitor your transactions and alert you when any of the various steps in a transaction don’t work correctly. Thus, you increase revenue and enhance your reputation for quality and performance online.

One mark of a good monitoring service is its ability to simulate real customers, visitors and users and monitor from within the browser. So, monitoring is performed from the same perspective as that of the end-user.

Since this is the business I’m in, you might be a bit skeptical at the advice I’m offering. But if you don’t want to take my word for it, listen to Jeff Paul Solomon, systems administrator at Loyola Marymount University, who employed Monitis to monitor its course-management system:

“We had just brought up a highly-visible, web-based application.  We could monitor the servers, but really needed a way to monitor user-experience – not just verifying that the web page was up, or even if the user could log in, but how long it took and what the user could see on subsequent pages.  We found Monitis, which gave us fantastic transaction monitor features, and allowed us to tune our application and be notified before users started to call.  The support we received was unbelievable, great and responsive.  I would definitely recommend Monitis.”

Bottom line: you don’t want frustrated website customers or end-users of your cloud-based app calling to report a problem that you’re unaware of – all the while losing money and prestige. Back up your business or system with monitoring services and avoid potential troubles.

Read other testimonials about how cloud-based monitoring is working for all kinds of organizations!

What would you venture to say is a truly effective way to uncover network, website and server performance problems?

Consider the little ping. The ping is one of the most useful and reliable network debugging tools. It can be used to perform a bunch of Internet network diagnostic tests, for example, to check if a user can reach a public server, to determine how long it takes to bounce a packet off another site, and to probe a domain name or an IP address.

Add to that a remote capability – enabling web administrators to perform instant availability checks from multiple locations worldwide – and you have a very powerful tool.

We’ve recently added a free web-based remote ping tool to our all-in-one solution of cloud-based flexible IT monitoring services – consolidating backend, application, and cloud monitoring.

Check out more news about our new remote ping tool!

San Jose, CA – Oct 29, 2009 – Monitis, the leading provider of 100% Cloud-based network and systems monitoring solutions, today announced a major holiday discount of 60% on Monitis e-Commerce Monitoring, it’s industry-leading suite of website monitoring tools for online shops.

According to Hovhannes Avoyan, Monitis’ Founder and CEO, “On average, online shop sites were down for 7 hours during the 2008 holiday season. That represents millions of online sales lost and countless customer relationships damaged. Monitis e-Commerce Monitoring insures during that the critical holiday sales period, you’ve got the information you need to keep your online shops up as much as possible.”

Monitis e-Commerce Monitoring monitors functionality and site performance for online stores by simulating actual consumer behavior on our client’s online shops every 5 minutes. While home pages often run well, many online retailers are unaware when their customer experience degrades as customers move closer to completing a transaction. Monitis e-Commerce Monitoring alerts retailers to problems as they happen so that corrective action can be taken immediately and the loss of online sales minimized.

The functions monitored by Monitis e-Commerce Monitoring include:

• log-in
  

• product search
  

• shopping carts
  

• check-out
  

• order tracking
  

• order updating
  

• payment processing
  

• product detail pages
  

• and more
  

Want to maximize your uptime this holiday season? Act now, as Monitis’ 60% holiday discount on its Monitis e-Commerce Monitoring suite is good only through Monday, November 9, 2009. Get Monitis e-Commerce Monitoring today and insure you keep every penny shoppers want to spend with you. More at http://Monitis.com/special

About Monitis All-in-One Monitoring Platform

Monitis is a 100% Cloud-based, complete, and flexible IT monitoring solution which consolidates backend monitoring, application monitoring, website monitoring, and cloud monitoring in an all-in-one, central monitoring service. The platform is easily  customizable and may be used for managing all kinds of IT assets such as websites, servers, routers, switches, VoIP devices, DNS, databases, processes and any other IP devices.  Monitis provides users with a comprehensive view of their system’s health and performance. 

About Monitis

Monitis believes that the Cloud is the biggest thing to happen in IT management since IT management. Having seen this vision early, Monitis is now the global leader in developing this market.  It is the first affordable network and systems monitoring solution based 100% in the Cloud.

Besides Monitis’ enthusiastic and loyal user base of 50,000 customers from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies to government agencies and educational institutions, Monitis has won rave reviews from the technology analyst community. The 451 Group has recently named Monitis as one of it’s 6 Innovators of 2009, based on how Monitis’ Cloud-based monitoring helps companies reduce system downtime, improve the productivity of their IT staff, and reduce operational expenditures.

Monitis was founded in 2005 by a team of seasoned entrepreneurs and fed-up and worn-out developers who were tired of complaining about the limits of software-based tools, while inspired by the promise of the Cloud.  Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Monitis is lead by a team of IT professionals with deep experience running enterprise-grade IT businesses, as well as starting and selling several IT start-ups.  Using a global workforce, particularly its R&D team based in Yerevan, Armenia, Monitis is poised to move from strength to strength.  At present, it has a loyal and enthusiastic user community of 50,000, and an average month-on-month revenue growth of over 10%.

Contact:

Monitis Inc.

Sales & Marketing Department

info@monitis.com

http://www.monitis.com

US & Canada Toll Free: +1-800-657-7949

UK + International: +44-845-527-3346

France + International: +33-48-607-9035

2880 Zanker Road Suite 203

San Jose, CA-95134

USA

When I go to visit a prospective client, I’m often asked to explain why it’s better to have an integrated web server monitoring service to oversee that company’s websites and other public services externally, as well as its networks and server resources internally? Why a single solution rather than two specialized end-user performance and server utilization monitors? Wouldn’t multiple solutions be better apt to handle the many problems that arise?

Well, for one, your IT department will have a much simpler job. A single solution will literally alter the way that IT operates.

Let’s look at it this way. When you’re driving your car to a new destination, you’re typically required to watch a number of things in order to drive safely – for example, the dashboard to check on speed and remaining fuel plus a map to make sure you don’t’ get lost. In fact, to coordinate it all, you have to pull over every so often to check the map, ask for directions if needed, get gas and make sure your car’s running properly.

But if you have technology like a GPS navigator – you get a single solution that handles multiple tasks: a map that knows your speed and current location, and it eliminates the need for you to stop to coordinate multiple tasks. You always know where you are and, by setting your destination, you’re sure about the route you’re taking and how long it will take you to get there.

Think of it this way, too. A GPS allows you to save time and have more fun and less stress on the road. When you are late, you can focus on driving, but if you’ve got more than enough time, you can find points of interest along the way, without having to worry about getting lost.

So, why not consider a single product for monitoring IT networks, one that combines the understanding of delivered service levels provided by external monitoring systems with the knowledge of resource use you get from internal server and network monitoring. You’d wind up with the detailed picture, combined with an accurate assessment of the end-user experience.

Choosing the right, single solution, you can track:

• The uptime and speed of websites from the end-user point of view
• The performance and load of servers, including those that are virtualized or housed on the cloud
• The uptime and functionality of applications such as email, VoIP, databases, business applications, processes, transactions
• The availability of networks, including switches, routers, VPN, firewall, DNS, VoIP

A single website, network and server monitoring service can handle a multitude of tasks efficiently – leaving IT managers to better focus on more pressing issues.

Today, more companies than ever are offering complex business services over the Internet via cloud computing. For business-critical applications, every minute of downtime means lost sales, customers and opportunities. It is a challenge to keep websites up and running round the clock.

Web monitoring services can help businesses make sure that their sites are functioning. Yet, simply checking if a website is working and online doesn’t mean that users are having a satisfactory experience. It’s like driving a 20-year old car. Is it working? Well, yes. But are you enjoying the bumpy, rattly ride? That’s another story.

Due to many reasons like peak traffic at rush hours, publicity campaigns that drive people to sites, a bug in software, database issues or the failure of third-party services, your online applications can become slow or non functional, disappoint visitors and prod them to leave and visit rival sites.

The answer is transaction monitoring services, which have two goals:

1. ensuring fast application performance and good user experience for visitors from anywhere around the globe
2. guaranteeing complete business functionality of applications 24 hours, seven days per week

Package Delivery, Transportation and Logistics Case Study

Lets consider how a Monitis Inc., customer, the world’s largest package delivery company and a leading global provider of specialized transportation and logistics, uses transaction monitoring to ensure the continuous availability of billing and reporting modules on the company’s website. They’ve used Monitis to monitor the following activities on their site every 5 minute, 24 hours per day:

1. open the website
2. logging in to the system, using a “test” user account
2. go to the payments’ page and search for available invoices
3. find the latest invoice and go to the details’ page and check certain content
4. go and check the history of all invoices
5. go to the report generation page
6. generate report of payments and check the content
7. download the report
8. sign out from the system

Monitis Transaction Monitoring Summary Report

The above Monitis report summarizes the end-user customer experience for the company, reporting peak, mid-point and low activity periods. To investigate low-activity periods, the company studied a Monitis detailed transaction report, shown below, and discovered that its Sign In/Sign Out and Invoice History pages were slow. As a result of studying this information, the company was able to pinpoint operational issues, optimize its database and, in the end, improve the user experience for its visitors and customers.

Continuous transactions monitoring ensures high functional availability for the application. You can read more Monitis blog posts about transactions monitoring best practices! Or Download Application and Transaction Monitoring Users Guide here.

Monitis Launches Public Reporting and Widgets

Monitis customers can demonstrate their site stability and availability to public.

Press Release

San Jose 22 May, 2009 -   Monitis Inc., a leading provider of affordable easy-to-use enterprise-class systems management software as a service, today announced a release of public reporting and widgets.  These features will allow Monitis service users to make their website’s uptime statistics publicly available.

Monitis provides many methods for viewing performance information and now added the ability to “open” performance reports on one or several of customer resources to public. The new features that enable these abilities are “public reports” and “public widgets”. Both of these features exist in Monitis free service and are requested by users and they are also of premium Monitis service. “Public reports” and “public widgets” provide the user with ways to show performance data publicly while lending credibility to a website.  Ideal for customers, these features help to prove how well a website performs.

Users can build their branded public reports. Monitis provides dedicated URLs to view these reports with or without password protection. The users will have the option to select the specific sites to be reported with these options: interval (weekly, daily, monthly), specific month, last month, or the current month. Monitis users are the creators of public reports, which they may choose to make available to all website visitors at their discretion.  Each report will be constantly updated, and will have a permanent URL.  Customers can use these reports to make it clear to visitors that their website is available at any time and to demonstrate how well their website performs. These reports may be used both by site owners and service providers.

Public widgets perform the similar function but right on customer’s website. As the public reports, users may decide which metrics they wish to display and which URLs they want to be tracked.  Monitis allows users to select fonts and text colors that match the rest of their pages for the HTML code which they may embed onto their pages.  Each Widget is updated to display over the past week or month, the performance and uptime. Widgets can objectively demonstrate the stability of the web page that shows how well the site has been doing recently. Stability is a major component of image, therefore, stability of operation and accessibility of your website is a part of your company. Monitis helps to strengthen its image and to do so recognizable to the public.

“With Monitis, our customers can let their web visitors know that the smooth and continuous functioning of their website is important to them.” said Hovhannes Avoyan, CEO of Monitis. “Monitis not only   helps you reach that goal, but also helps you demonstrate it to others.”

About Monitis Performance Monitor

Monitis Performance Monitor is an industry leading comprehensive, affordable, scalable, fault and performance management platform.  Monitis Performance Monitor monitors, collects and analyzes information from websites, servers, routers, switches, VoIP devices, DNS, databases, processes and any other IP devices providing users with a comprehensive view of their system health.  Open sourced Monitis plug-in with powerful API’s allow users to extend Monitis powerful monitoring and management capabilities.  Users can be assured of always on reliable service as Monitis Performance Monitor is deployed across the world providing resilient service.

About Monitis

Monitis is a leading provider of affordable performance monitoring and management solution. More than 50,000 customers spanning small businesses, Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and education institutions have chosen Monitis to reduce system downtime, improve IT administrator productivity, and reduce operational expenditure.  Monitis is radically changing system monitoring and management landscape by providing easy to use, affordable, flexible (deployment configurations include: shared, internal cloud and external cloud), and simple to manage SaaS performance monitoring and management solution. For more information, please visit http://www.monitis.com

Contacts:

Sales & Marketing Department
info@monitis.com
http://www.monitis.com

US & Canada Toll Free: +1-800-657-7949
UK + International: +44-845-527-3346
France + International: +33-48-607-9035

2880 Zanker Road, San Jose, CA-95134, USA

December 18, 2008, San Jose - Monitis introduces a smarter approach to website and IT monitoring. Monitis Inc., a leading provider of end-to-end IT monitoring solutions, today announced the availability of new line of “on-demand” monitoring services that enable organizations to choose only the monitoring services that they need.  Each service, such as the Monitis SNMP monitoring service, is available for free in its basic form, with pay-based premium options.

Unlike traditional monitoring services, which usually require customers to purchase packages that monitor multiple systems, whether or not they are implemented, Monitis’ on-demand monitoring services enable customers to fully customize which services they need.  Customers can incrementally add new monitoring services as they bring new systems online.

“With our on-demand approach, customer chooses just what he needs and nothing more,” explained Hovhannes Avoyan, CEO of Monitis.  “For example, a customer might need website traffic and email monitoring for now, but as they grow, they will need server and desktop monitoring to make sure their operations remain reliable and on-line.  This approach grows as our customers grow, so we provide instant pain relief for immediate issues.”

The free services will provide unlimited number of monitors although the monitoring interval options will be limited while premium services can provide up to 1 min. monitoring intervals. The free version features will be enough for basic usage by individuals and small businesses, while premium option will be available for professional usage.

Current monitoring services available include newly launched SNMP monitoring at www.monitorsnmp.com, and almost 3 years old free web monitoring http://mon.itor.us, and 2 years old premium web monitoring www.monitis.com.

Monitis, a leading provider of end-to-end IT monitoring services, announces holiday season promotional campaign. The offer includes up to 30% yearly subscription discounts and free domain names.

Monday, December 15 - San Jose – Today Monitis starts its traditional holiday promotional campaign. From Dec. 15 to Jan 15 for each purchase over $120 via recently launched Custom Plan Builder, the customer will receive a 50% discount. In addition, these customers as well as current and new subscribers to Basic and Plus yearly plans will receive one top level domain name for free (.com, .net, .org, or .info). Domains acquisition and management will be done via Monitis-owned AptDomain.

With recently launched Customer Plan Builder each of potential Monitis user groups, such as web masters, system and network administrators, help desk and IT service providers, IT managers, Value Added Resellers (VARs), Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can build their own on-demand based monitoring plan. Monitis provides tailor made plans for system health monitoring, external uptime and availability monitoring, performance and problem root case analysis tools, helping to reduce downtime and cost of operations.

Monitis had a similar successful campaign one year ago. Many companies in 2007 subscribed for yearly monitoring plans and stated the New Year with more confidence and peace of mind.

About Monitis
Monitis, Inc. is a one-stop shop for IT monitoring.  As a leading provider of server, network, and web application monitoring services helps to monitor business services end-to-end and enables problem quick root cause detection.  Monitis serves more than 25,000 service subscribers, monitors more than 130,000 hosts and performs over 20 million checks per day.

12 Dec, 2008, San Jose - Monitis, a leading provider of end-to-end IT monitoring services, launched a new Custom Plan Builder, enabling customers to identify and subscribe only for the monitoring services they need.

Monitis provides end-to-end monitoring Software as a Service (SaaS), connecting together the end-user experience and system health views.  In contrast to common “silo” monitoring, this holistic approach focuses on business services management and enables quick discovering and tracing of end-user problem up to its root cause. Till now Monitis services were “wrapped” into standard plans, and specific customer requirements were handled through direct communication with the support team. Monitis changed that today by releasing the Custom Plan Builder, which helps the users to define the type and the quantity of monitors, number of SMS alerts and number of sub-accounts they need. The Builder calculates monthly and yearly prices and customer can instantly subscribe using Paypal or credit card.    

Monitis Custom Plan Builder allows differentiating the needs per each user group like webmasters, system and network administrators, enterprise IT specialists and  managers, helpdesks, ISPs, MSPs and VARs. Customers can now make their own customized plan by defining amount of monitors per each of 4 types of monitors such as 1) external end-user view monitors, 2) internal network/system health monitors, 3) multi-step applications or transaction monitors, and 4) traffic monitors/web analytics. Customizable dashboards bring “silo” monitors into comprehensive business views.

“Our goal is to make Monitis truly on-demand and highly customizable service” says Hovhannes Avoyan, CEO and Founder, “We enabled our users to control their views, alerting rules, set 3^rd party access and flexibly configure the  monitors. And now users can build their own customized plans and pay only for the services they really use.” Users may sign up to 15 days free trial to test the service before subscribing.

About Monitis

Monitis, Inc. is a one-stop shop for IT monitoring.  As a leading provider of server, network, and web application monitoring services helps to monitor business services end-to-end and enables problem quick root cause detection.  Monitis serves more than 25,000 service subscribers, monitors more than 130,000 hosts and performs over 20 million checks per day.