IT infrastructures and operations can be vast and often confusing for those unfamiliar with their intricacies. Even for those with the proper knowledge and experience, IT infrastructure management can be a daunting task. Fortunately, it’s a task made easier with proper IT monitoring.
IT monitoring helps organizations track how their infrastructure performs and monitor all of its underlying components. It’s essential for efficiency and productivity, not just for the IT department, but also for every aspect of an organization that relies on technology.
With that in mind, let’s look at IT monitoring, why it matters, and how Splashtop can enhance real-time IT monitoring from anywhere.
What is IT Monitoring?
IT monitoring is the tracking and observation of how an organization’s IT infrastructure and its components perform. This helps companies quickly identify IT issues to address potential problems, security vulnerabilities, and other concerns.
Typically, IT monitoring solutions gather data from network nodes, analyze that data, and compile it into reports so that IT administrators can make informed decisions. It can also encompass multiple aspects of a company’s information technology, including IT Operations Management (ITOM), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR), and Operational Intelligence (OI).
What Role Does IT Monitoring Play in Enhancing Security?
IT monitoring is key for identifying and addressing security vulnerabilities in an organization’s infrastructure. It gives IT teams greater visibility into and control over their IT infrastructure, so they can identify vulnerabilities or suspicious behavior and address it immediately, thus stopping potential threats at the source.
Good IT monitoring software provides real-time monitoring, so IT teams are alerted as soon as a potential threat appears. This makes teams swift and responsive, so they can quickly address unusual network activity, stop unauthorized access, or block malware.
How Does IT Monitoring Work?
IT monitoring works by gathering data from across an IT environment, including basic device operations, CPU usage, software application availability, and more. That data is then analyzed to provide an in-depth look at the organization’s IT environment, which IT departments can use to identify weaknesses or vulnerabilities, prevent downtime, and improve IT processes.
IT monitoring typically covers three core elements:
Foundation, including physical and virtual devices such as servers, CPUs, and virtual machines.
Software, which analyzes data from devices such as load, memory, and CPU usage.
Interpretation, which compiles the data into graphs and charts to provide a comprehensive, user-friendly view of the IT environment.
Essential IT Monitoring Types for Optimizing Network, System, and Application Performance
IT environments are large and encompass a wide area. As such, IT monitoring also has a wide variety of types and categories, many of which require different IT monitoring tools and insights. Important IT monitoring types include:
1. IT Infrastructure Monitoring
IT infrastructure monitoring focuses on metrics for the IT environment’s hardware and software. This provides a benchmark for systems operations which serves as a reference for any fluctuations.
2. Server and System Monitoring
Server and system monitoring focuses on the performance of infrastructure components and servers. This analyzes each server individually, including metrics like server uptime and performance, to see how the network performs.
3. Cloud Monitoring
Organizations using cloud technology can use cloud monitoring to gain visibility into metrics like CPU, memory usage, and application performance.
4. Network Monitoring
Network monitoring analyzes the speed and reliability of company networks to identify failing components or security breaches. This tracks metrics like uptime, response time, status request failures, and so on.
5. Security Monitoring
Security monitoring is focused on an IT infrastructure’s cybersecurity, including the detection and prevention of intrusions. It monitors networks, systems, and endpoints for vulnerabilities and analyzes network access and traffic for suspicious behavior, which could indicate a breach.
6. Application Performance Monitoring (APM)
APM tracks software performance metrics, such as load and response times and performance bottleneck data. The goal here is to ensure that all the applications on the IT infrastructure are performing efficiently and not causing any slowdowns or issues.
7. Business Activity Monitoring
Business activity monitoring is focused on business metrics, such as app downloads, web traffic volume, and web sales. This helps track and assess performance across time, although it’s less related to the IT infrastructure itself.
Common Challenges in IT Monitoring
IT monitoring is not without its challenges. There are some common obstacles that companies may encounter when implementing IT monitoring, including:
Managing large volumes of data: IT monitoring involves sorting and analyzing a vast quantity of data, and the larger an organization gets, the more data it has to manage. This can prove challenging, especially as businesses grow.
Ensuring real-time monitoring: It’s not enough for IT monitoring software to gather data - it also needs to analyze it in real-time to provide immediate alerts and information. It’s important to find a tool with proper, real-time monitoring so that IT teams can act quickly when an issue arises.
The complexities of hybrid cloud environments: As IT and work environments grow more complex, it’s important to find an IT monitoring tool that can keep up and manage on-premises, remote, and hybrid systems. Otherwise, you’ll only be seeing a fraction of the whole picture.
Contextual analysis: While IT monitoring tools are excellent at gathering and managing data, they can’t always connect the dots to find the root cause of problems. This means IT teams often have to act as detectives and trace an issue back to its source themselves.
Legacy systems: As technology advances, older tools and systems can’t always keep up. Organizations relying on legacy systems may struggle to integrate newer IT monitoring software.
Best Practices for Implementing IT Monitoring Strategies
If you want to implement IT monitoring strategies successfully, there are some best practices you can follow. These tips will help provide a smooth rollout and efficient use of your IT monitoring tools:
Choose the right tools: The first and most important step is to find an IT monitoring tool that meets your business needs. Ensure it works with your IT equipment, properly integrates with your systems, and is accessible to employees across your IT department.
Define your objectives: Simply tracking metrics won’t do you much good if you don’t know what to do with your data. It’s important to get stakeholders involved, develop a plan, and set clear objectives for what you want to achieve.
Integrate with other systems: IT management tools need to be connected to the technology your IT teams use. Analyze your technologies, ensure they work with your IT management solution, and make sure they’re properly integrated so you’re receiving accurate data and analytics.
Know your data: It’s important to understand where the data you track comes from and what it indicates. Review your data sources to ensure you track the information you need from the right equipment.
What to Consider When Choosing an IT Monitoring Software?
Buying new IT monitoring software can be a daunting process – there’s so much to research, look for, and balance that it can be hard to know what’s really important. When selecting IT monitoring software, keep these essential factors in mind:
Scalability: You need software that can grow with your company. Make sure you find a solution built for scalability, so it can easily adjust to meet your growing business.
Real-time alerts: Real-time alerts allow IT teams to address potential issues proactively before they become a problem. If your IT monitoring software only provides insights and analytics after the fact, it’s not giving you the full value you need.
Integration: It’s vital to find an IT monitoring tool that works with your existing systems and software. Make sure your solution of choice can integrate with your tech stack. Otherwise, you’ll be missing valuable data.
Ease of use: If your IT monitoring software is overly complex, you’re liable to waste more time figuring it out than you’ll save from using it. It’s important to find a user-friendly tool that’s easy to pick up and use to gain the full benefits.
Enhancing IT Monitoring with Splashtop’s Real-Time Monitoring Capabilities
Real-time tracking and analytics are some of the most important elements of IT monitoring, enabling IT teams to identify and address issues or anomalies the moment they appear. When you need real-time performance tracking, especially across remote or distributed workforces, there’s no better choice than Splashtop.
Splashtop empowers organizations to remotely manage and monitor their IT systems, devices, and networks from a single place. Thanks to Splashtop's remote monitoring and management capabilities, it’s easy to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot endpoints and infrastructure from anywhere, on any device.
Splashtop’s capabilities include proactive issue detection, automated maintenance, and real-time security updates. Should the IT teams receive an alert, they can connect to remote endpoints and manage devices, software, or networks from any device, anywhere.
Strengthen IT Monitoring with Splashtop AEM: Real-Time Endpoint Tracking and Automated Alerts
If you’re looking for a powerful solution to monitor, manage, and support all your endpoints, Splashtop has you covered. Splashtop AEM (autonomous endpoint management) simplifies operations by automating endpoint management, enhancing security, and improving operational efficiency.
Splashtop AEM makes it simple to automate tasks, maintain endpoint security, track assets, and maintain regulatory compliance from a single dashboard. This provides IT teams with robust, real-time monitoring of and control over their entire infrastructure, so they can spot and fix any issues as soon as they appear.
With Splashtop AEM, you can:
Identify and resolve issues in real-time
Monitor endpoints, patches, and compliance from a single dashboard
Push out hotfixes and updates across multiple endpoints
Automate updates and security patches
Customize and enforce security policies across endpoints
Detect and manage threats in real-time
Access detailed reports on system, hardware, and software inventory
Ready to experience Splashtop for yourself? Get started today with a free trial:
