You can use an APM tool - it can monitor transactions to the enduser. Or you can use a tool like riverbed and monitor with NetFlow the complete network and devices like user machines.
Managing Director at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
Jan 10, 2022
Well, I suppose it really depends on the reason you ask the question.
Is it because you've been bitten by issues in the past? Is it because you have business users complaining or management wondering about user productivity? Is it because of teleworking and the recent workplace changes?
I'm not sure the answers would be the same in every case you see or at least the tools and methods could differ depending on your priorities.
If your role is measured on not having issues at all then you should ensure you have a BAM solution that's supported by several aspects of monitoring such as APM, BSM and ITSM.
APM constantly captures the user experience and measures specific metrics such as round trip time, connectivity time, response time, transaction rates, queue lengths so you have a good idea of what they're experiencing and what may cause that to degrade. Set up properly with synthetic probes it can provide early warning of issues or degradation that will lead to them well before anyone raises a call BSM should consume APM measures to correlate down the food chain and help identify the root cause. Dependency mapping is worthwhile for that, but if you consume SP services then you won't always easily get access to information that of what's gone or is going wrong. When other entities' services can degrade yours, then I'd recommend providing them with a Business value dashboard that shows that issues are coming from them and their impact on your business. It will help to find responsible providers and also negotiate penalties. But penalties aren't going to help you in your service delivery. Your business users will still bicker at you no matter how much you penalise the SPs you contract with. So you may need to monitor several SP's services and have the means to quickly switch i.e. you act as a broker finding and switching between services sometimes automatically. Thus monitoring those SPs and cloud services is going to be a must if your business depends on them.
It's not always easy. One of our customers queried us to see if we could improve the visibility of issues concerning virtual services his IT was responsible for. Issues with Microsoft Teams, Sharepoint and other vendors' services weren't easy to diagnose. We were able to research that and find ways to query Microsoft Azure services and correlate service reports with his own IT resources to see if issues were his, Microsoft's network SPs or something or the user's device.
Yes, these users were complaining that their devices dropped calls, were slow, had dropouts, couldn't access data and had slow synchronization. Does it sound familiar?
You "could" decide that you want to collect the user machine logs files. Be careful, if you've seen Microsoft event logs - you'll know that those OS's generate tons of data.
You'll never have the time to search them all. Yes, Splunk or Elastic Search and similar tools can search but you'll need to know what you're looking for. Best practice-based search algorithms and templates usually come at a fair price. Don't be lulled into a false sense of security, if you consider those solutions ask for detailed references and try to speak to the people concerned.
In most cases, we've seen they'll tell you that it soon becomes very expensive both in terms of storage and other resources to make it work, but also in expertise and time taken to set up the searches properly. If you can leverage others' experience quickly and inexpensively then do so, otherwise be on your guard
Even in this day and age with high speed and most reliable networks, don't let some people say monitoring isn't useful anymore. And don't be fooled into thinking there's a miracle solution to monitor users' machines.
Choose wisely, and seriously consider open source solutions, they're well proven, secure, reliable, scalable, not expensive, yes they can be time-consuming to implement choose a partner wisely to assist.
Your original question asks for software solution recommendations. I've made some above but I won't elaborate more as I have never seen two customers with the same environment, priorities and legacy. There's really no silver bullet no ideal tool but there are some which when composed properly can approach that.
So, my final word of advice is to spend a little time specifying a set of use cases which if satisfied would approach that perfection. Then shortlist tools and consultants that can show how a tool stack and associated processes can approach it. Don't believe anyone who tells you EVERYTHING is possible.
One of the interesting systems is NexThink. One of the nice parts is the ability to verify that the end user's system is OK or not. Many times their issues are related to other apps running on their PC that they are not telling support about.
The better solution that I could see to monitor the end-user system is a Riverbed product: Aternity. I knew Aternity gives visibility of laptop or desktop usage, apps opened and time spent, etc.
It also provides Remote Workforce Management, IT Asset Cost reduction, Shift left in the service desk incidents and resolutions, etc.,
In addition, it provides extended support to AI IT Operations.
Basically, it's a good tool to have for user experience management as I have seen in the past.
Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) provides real-time tracking and analysis of business processes to ensure efficient operations and quick decision-making.
Business Activity Monitoring tools enable organizations to monitor their workflows, transactions, and other process-related activities in real time. These solutions offer insight into operational performance, making it easier to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies. BAM is essential for organizations aiming for improved...
- pure-SNMP (multi-platform, free-costs and facility to distribute/manage).
- Microsoft O365 build-in modules (if you have a contract, now with good features for Linux and mobile too).
- Wazuh (price and versatility).
- Manage Engine, IBM Tivoli (may have been rebranded), or ServiceNow (if costs aren't a problem for you).
It depends on what you like to monitor.
You can use an APM tool - it can monitor transactions to the enduser. Or you can use a tool like riverbed and monitor with NetFlow the complete network and devices like user machines.
Adrem Software product called NetCrunch.
It is very powerful, does not need sensors, and easily configurable.
Hi @BaijuShah ,
Basically, you can decide the tool based on the below criteria.
-Process monitoring
-Compliance monitoring
-Context monitoring
-Beneficiary monitoring
-Financial monitoring
-Organizational monitoring
-Results monitoring
Some of the best end-user experience Monitoring Tools:
-Dynatrace RUM
-AppDynamics Browser RUM
-New Relic Browser
-Pingdom
-Akamai mPulse
-Raygun Real User Monitoring
-Monitis
-Sematext Experience
Well, I suppose it really depends on the reason you ask the question.
Is it because you've been bitten by issues in the past?
Is it because you have business users complaining or management wondering about user productivity?
Is it because of teleworking and the recent workplace changes?
I'm not sure the answers would be the same in every case you see or at least the tools and methods could differ depending on your priorities.
If your role is measured on not having issues at all then you should ensure you have a BAM solution that's supported by several aspects of monitoring such as APM, BSM and ITSM.
APM constantly captures the user experience and measures specific metrics such as round trip time, connectivity time, response time, transaction rates, queue lengths so you have a good idea of what they're experiencing and what may cause that to degrade. Set up properly with synthetic probes it can provide early warning of issues or degradation that will lead to them well before anyone raises a call
BSM should consume APM measures to correlate down the food chain and help identify the root cause. Dependency mapping is worthwhile for that, but if you consume SP services then you won't always easily get access to information that of what's gone or is going wrong. When other entities' services can degrade yours, then I'd recommend providing them with a Business value dashboard that shows that issues are coming from them and their impact on your business. It will help to find responsible providers and also negotiate penalties.
But penalties aren't going to help you in your service delivery. Your business users will still bicker at you no matter how much you penalise the SPs you contract with.
So you may need to monitor several SP's services and have the means to quickly switch i.e. you act as a broker finding and switching between services sometimes automatically. Thus monitoring those SPs and cloud services is going to be a must if your business depends on them.
It's not always easy. One of our customers queried us to see if we could improve the visibility of issues concerning virtual services his IT was responsible for. Issues with Microsoft Teams, Sharepoint and other vendors' services weren't easy to diagnose. We were able to research that and find ways to query Microsoft Azure services and correlate service reports with his own IT resources to see if issues were his, Microsoft's network SPs or something or the user's device.
Yes, these users were complaining that their devices dropped calls, were slow, had dropouts, couldn't access data and had slow synchronization. Does it sound familiar?
You "could" decide that you want to collect the user machine logs files. Be careful, if you've seen Microsoft event logs - you'll know that those OS's generate tons of data.
You'll never have the time to search them all. Yes, Splunk or Elastic Search and similar tools can search but you'll need to know what you're looking for. Best practice-based search algorithms and templates usually come at a fair price. Don't be lulled into a false sense of security, if you consider those solutions ask for detailed references and try to speak to the people concerned.
In most cases, we've seen they'll tell you that it soon becomes very expensive both in terms of storage and other resources to make it work, but also in expertise and time taken to set up the searches properly. If you can leverage others' experience quickly and inexpensively then do so, otherwise be on your guard
Even in this day and age with high speed and most reliable networks, don't let some people say monitoring isn't useful anymore. And don't be fooled into thinking there's a miracle solution to monitor users' machines.
Choose wisely, and seriously consider open source solutions, they're well proven, secure, reliable, scalable, not expensive, yes they can be time-consuming to implement choose a partner wisely to assist.
Your original question asks for software solution recommendations. I've made some above but I won't elaborate more as I have never seen two customers with the same environment, priorities and legacy. There's really no silver bullet no ideal tool but there are some which when composed properly can approach that.
So, my final word of advice is to spend a little time specifying a set of use cases which if satisfied would approach that perfection. Then shortlist tools and consultants that can show how a tool stack and associated processes can approach it. Don't believe anyone who tells you EVERYTHING is possible.
One of the interesting systems is NexThink. One of the nice parts is the ability to verify that the end user's system is OK or not. Many times their issues are related to other apps running on their PC that they are not telling support about.
Hi @BaijuShah, thanks for reaching me.
The better solution that I could see to monitor the end-user system is a Riverbed product: Aternity. I knew Aternity gives visibility of laptop or desktop usage, apps opened and time spent, etc.
It also provides Remote Workforce Management, IT Asset Cost reduction, Shift left in the service desk incidents and resolutions, etc.,
In addition, it provides extended support to AI IT Operations.
Basically, it's a good tool to have for user experience management as I have seen in the past.
I hope some of your questions are addressed.
Thanks,
Bharath Babu. K
@Bharath Babu Kasimsetty thanks for the suggestion we will review and see if we can adapt.
https://logsystem.pl/en/
Ask this guy https://www.linkedin.com/in/to...
@it_user297231 why do you recommend this specific solution? Any technical explanation?