SAAS Monitoring
What is SAAS Monitoring?
Finding an IT infrastructure management software with SAAS monitoring functionality is a critical tool that every IT operations team should want to have in its arsenal. SAAS (Service as a software) is at its core a model that mains central located license that are on a subscription basis. Normally accessed by an online browser or within a tool, SAAS is now a common aspect of managing many business applications such as AWS, Nagios and Solarwinds. SAS monitoring lets you gain real, useful information on all users your platform. That includes users that are behind your in-house firewall or outside connections. This information is then displayed to you in real-time, displaying data from interactions with all the SAAS applications in your infrastructure. Ultimately, SAAS monitoring allows you to recognize issues as soon as possible and minimize the effects they will have on your business.
Monitoring AWS Cloudwatch Activities
One of the biggest players in the SAAS platform industry is undoubtedly AWS (Amazon Web Services) Cloudwatch. Finding a tool that has a connector for AWS can be a real game changer in keep your IT operations department running as efficiently as possible. A key component to AWS is their Data Pipeline, which lays out the work required to perform a task. Some of the most common activities you can expect are running Hive queries, moving large chunks of data from one location on your server to another, running custom Linux/Unix commands, running various scripts such as Pig, and one of the most common, running a SQL query against a database. With more and more companies using AWS or like-minded software, finding a SAAS monitoring solution that offers a connector, is something you should strongly consider in your search.
SAAS Monitoring on your dashboard
Having an intuitive and easy to decipher central dashboard is a critical feature for any software that will be displaying some of your IT operations team most important and critical metrics. You should find a tool that offers not only traditional but hybrid IT infrastructure monitoring, that has a dashboard that will display metrics from your SAAS monitoring solution, as well as internal sources (think Solarwinds, Nagios, bandwidth monitoring, SNMP monitoring, etc.). The easier to understand and master your dashboard is, the faster you can train new employees on the intricacies of it and how to interpret the metrics displayed.
SAAS Monitoring on the go
Whether you are looking at network monitoring tools or SAAS monitoring tools, you will want to consider a software that also offers a strong mobile/tablet display feature. Whether it’s its own app or just mobile browser friendly, having your day to day SAAs monitoring capabilities, as an example, can be a key metric that will allow for monitoring while traveling or out of the office. Especially if your IT operations is currently small in size, you’ll want the ability to personally handle any issues that arise, no matter where you are. Having a mobile version of your solution will also help you to respond quicker to alerts that come through when an issue arises. Getting an alert directly to your iPhone or Android can make all the difference in the world when you can quickly react to the issue, limiting downtime.
Demo-ing your SAAS Solution
As is good practice with most software you are considering an investment in, it’s worth checking out if your potential SAAS monitoring solution as a free demo version of the software before making the investment. This will not only allow you to see if it “plays nice” with your other software, but also let your team try it out and get their feedback on it.