IT & Business Activity Monitoring: Selection and Implementation

Everyone has an understanding of what monitoring is. In everyday life, monitoring systems surround us everywhere and significantly simplify our lives by warning us about events (usually critical ones) that require a timely response. They allow us not to be distracted by constant control of system operating parameters and make it possible to use resources efficiently, primarily time and, ultimately, money.

There is no need to prove the importance of monitoring for modern business, which is tightly integrated with IT infrastructure and requires understanding of service availability and the state of business processes in real time. Indeed, it is almost impossible to find a company that does not use monitoring tools in its operations. But what does the real situation look like? Most companies are not satisfied with their monitoring systems and periodically replace one with another or use several at the same time. Monitoring is often considered to be intended for IT infrastructure and technological systems, but not for business.

Complex project-based implementation and high cost do not add optimism. A business that is not interested limits budgets and considers monitoring an expensive, purely technical tool. As a result, we get a situation where everyone has “some kind” of monitoring—a tool for engineers and administrators that solves separate technical tasks and is not connected to the business in any way. Such a situation cannot satisfy a mature company. Let us consider how to make monitoring an effective business tool.

1. What tasks does monitoring solve?

In the view of most people, monitoring is primarily associated with IT infrastructure and, in this context, must perform the following tasks:

Availability control.

Checks the operability of servers, network devices, operating systems, services, applications, etc. Records down/up states, partial unavailability, and connection errors.

Performance control.

Measures CPU utilization, RAM usage, disk space, network latency, IOPS, application response time, queues, and locks.

Metrics collection and storage.

The system regularly polls resources and stores historical data. This is the basis for identifying problem areas, load forecasting, and trend analysis.

Information display.

Visualizes the received and processed data in the form of charts and dashboards.

Incident detection.

Monitoring compares current indicators with threshold values, detects anomalies, and creates events and alerts. The main goal is to detect a failure before the user notices it.

Notifications and escalations.

Sends alerts (e-mail, SMS), opens tickets, and performs escalation.

Incident management.

The system groups events, determines priorities, and speeds up team response. As a result, there is less manual work and faster recovery.

Problem source localization.

Allows determination of where exactly the failure occurred (server, network, database, application, etc.).

Downtime reduction.

Reduces Mean Time to Respond, Resolve, and Repair; prevents repeated failures; increases the reliability of the IT environment.

IT monitoring can solve a fairly wide range of tasks. However, it has limitations—it sees technology but does not see business. Therefore, business representatives and even technical managers often do not pay enough attention to the choice of monitoring systems. At the same time, there are tools that significantly extend monitoring capabilities, show the mutual influence of IT and business environments, and solve the following tasks:

Data centralization.

Collection and processing in a single system of data from different sources: servers, networks, databases; containers, clouds; applications; business services and business processes. Single Source of Truth.

Correlation and cause-and-effect relationships.

One of the key tasks is to understand what is the cause and what is the effect. Without this, monitoring turns into “alert noise.” It allows determining whether the problem is in IT infrastructure or in the business.

SLA and service quality control.

Measuring service availability and response time, tracking SLA compliance, and seeing how an incident affects business indicators.

Business process and KPI monitoring.

Allows real-time access to Key Performance Indicators and control of the state of the business environment.

Decision support.

Providing information for every management level—from engineers to CxOs and business owners. Links technical metrics with KPIs and shows the impact of IT on business.

As we can see, modern monitoring systems are not limited only to IT infrastructure. They cover a much wider range of tasks and move to a new stage that can be called Business Monitoring.

2. How to choose?

Now that we have an understanding of monitoring capabilities, let us move on to the question of selecting the required tool. There are many products on the market that differ in functionality, technical implementation, delivery models, and, of course, price. Let us consider the factors that determine our choice.

Free and commercial products

Open-source solutions are usually chosen by small companies with limited budgets and requirements for monitoring capabilities. The task of selecting the tool in such cases usually lies with a technical specialist responsible for the operability of resources. Moreover, different specialists often use different systems within the same company. If the infrastructure is not complex and the product’s functionality is sufficient, such solutions may be acceptable at the initial stage.

Advantages: free product; ability to install and operate independently; developed user community.

Disadvantages: lack of external support; problems with independent installation and configuration; possibility of incorrect operation due to improper settings; difficulties in troubleshooting during operation; limited functionality; scaling complexity.

Commercial products are chosen by more mature companies where the need for monitoring is recognized at the management level. Usually, at this stage, monitoring requirements are already defined. They are more systematic and cover not only technical but also business components.

Advantages: systematic approach to implementation; vendor support during installation, configuration, and operation; guaranteed implementation results; wide functionality; scalability.

Disadvantages: not free; requires resources for the implementation project.

From a pricing perspective, commercial products offer either packages with predefined functionality and resource limits or pricing based on a set of options required by a particular customer. In the first case, pricing is transparent, but sometimes there is overpayment for unnecessary options and excessive resources. In the second case, pricing is complex, with possible hidden costs and often overly high prices for additional but necessary options. Package and custom prices may differ significantly between vendors, so the specific configuration must be calculated and confirmed with the provider.

On-premise or cloud service (XaaS)?

There is a steady trend toward cloud adoption. Not only small and medium businesses but also large enterprises trust their IT infrastructure to cloud providers, receiving IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services and focusing on their core business. At the same time, many companies prefer to keep their own infrastructure or at least its most critical elements.

On-premise is a deployment model in which the company installs and manages software on its own servers, in its own facilities, or in a controlled data center. This provides full control over the system and data but requires internal IT resources for implementation, maintenance, and security. The payment model usually involves a one-time license purchase or an annual subscription with paid support.

Advantages: full control over data, configurations, and access; ability for deep integration and customization.

Disadvantages: high initial investment in hardware and licenses; need for a qualified internal IT team; difficulty in rapid scaling; almost always requires a project-based implementation with external resources.

Cloud-based services are deployed on the infrastructure of cloud providers and delivered to customers over the Internet. The payment model is typically a monthly subscription that can be flexibly adjusted according to the selected plan or options. Support is usually included.

Advantages: no capital expenditure for hardware and software; fast service start; high availability and data protection; external support; SLA assurance; easy scalability and flexibility.

Disadvantages: dependence on Internet connectivity; security and confidentiality concerns (sensitive data is stored on third-party infrastructure).

Information security requirements are an important factor when choosing the service delivery model. Below is a comparative overview:

Criterion	On-premise	Cloud solution
Data control	Full physical and logical control; data stored within the company	Data stored at the provider; logical but not physical control
Isolation	Maximum: private networks, segmentation, closed perimeters	Logical isolation (multi-tenant)
Regulatory compliance	Easier to comply with GDPR, ISO, and local laws	Jurisdiction and data transfer restrictions may apply
Data breach risk	Depends on internal security policies	Depends on provider and customer configuration
External attacks	Fewer entry points but higher risk due to outdated systems	Constant target of attacks but with strong protection mechanisms
Updates and patches	Fully the company’s responsibility	Mostly automated, rapid deployment
Backup and resilience	Must be built and maintained internally	Built into the platform
Audit and certification	Require internal resources	Providers usually have ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI DSS, etc.
Human factor	Risk of administrator errors	Risk of incorrect cloud configuration
Transparency	Maximum: everything is inside	Limited: part of the infrastructure is hidden

In general, cloud services today are, on average, more secure in terms of baseline protection, while on-premise solutions offer greater control. Therefore, when choosing, it is important to evaluate how information security is implemented by a specific provider and whether you can provide the required level yourself.

Product functionality

Depending on its functionality, a product may cover the entire spectrum of monitoring tasks or only part of it. This significantly affects the system’s cost, implementation complexity, and operation. Therefore, when choosing a tool, it is important to clearly understand your needs and not necessarily select a system that “does everything” from the start. Preference should be given to a product that can be scaled both in resources and functionality.

Infrastructure Monitoring – monitoring the operability of IT infrastructure elements (servers, network devices, storage, operating systems, databases) and their components by collecting metrics via exporters.

Application Performance Monitoring – analysis of performance, availability, and behavior of software, including logging, transaction tracing, code, infrastructure, and user experience monitoring.

Network Monitoring – analysis of network devices, routing, and services; measurement of throughput, utilization, and bandwidth using SNMP and flow analysis.

Real User Monitoring (RUM) – collection and analysis of user interaction data with applications (page load time, backend response time, JavaScript errors, rendering metrics).

Synthetic Monitoring – proactive monitoring of websites, applications, and APIs by simulating user actions through automated scripts.

Business Activity Monitoring – shows the state of business processes and KPIs in real time, reflecting the interdependence of IT infrastructure and business environment.

Proactive Monitoring (Predictive Analysis) – identifies trends and potential problems before they occur.

Root Cause Analysis – identifies the root cause of failures.

Integration – ability to use existing monitoring systems, alerting tools, and third-party products.

The above list is illustrative and does not limit the full range of capabilities of modern monitoring systems. Each function should be evaluated in terms of implementation quality, usability, documentation, and visualization tools. Pilot projects are strongly recommended.

3. Organizational Issues

Before moving on to technical implementation, it is necessary to focus on the most important aspect — the organizational one. Practice shows that it is this factor that determines the correctness of the choice and the success of implementing a monitoring system in a company. Let us consider the key aspects that influence this process.

Management and Business Involvement

The level of the manager supervising the project indicates the seriousness of the approach to solving the task. The higher this level is, the higher the probability of successful implementation and effective use.

If the choice of a monitoring system is handled by an engineer for his or her technical needs, it means that the company considers IT infrastructure only as a support tool, a cost center, and pays attention to it only when problems or failures occur. If business representatives do not participate in the selection of a monitoring system, then the company does not yet perceive IT infrastructure as an integral part of the business, its most important element.

In this case, the business does not feel how the state of IT affects business processes and, conversely, how changes in business processes affect the IT environment. In most mature companies, the project involves technical management at the CIO/CTO level, but business representatives often do not even know about the possibility of monitoring business processes and obtaining key indicators in real time.

The task of technical managers is to demonstrate the possibility of a unified monitoring tool for both IT and business. This will make it possible to visualize the interconnection between IT and business environments, simplify mutual understanding, and improve cooperation for joint efficiency growth.

Definition of System Requirements

Before selecting a monitoring tool, it is necessary to collect requirements and wishes from all future users of the system. What indicators are required for each level (CxO, Managers, Service/Process Owners, Administrators, Engineers)? In what form and volume should they be presented? What relationships should be taken into account? Which functions are mandatory and which are desirable?

A structured list of requirements makes it easier to search for and interact with potential vendors. Since different vendors implement functionality in different ways, clarification often takes place during presentations and pilot projects.

During the selection process, the requirements of all stakeholders must be taken into account, and the final decision must be communicated to all participants with an explanation of why this particular system is being implemented. Approval and acceptance of the result by all participants significantly increase the chances of successful implementation.

Areas of Responsibility and Roles

An important point is the distribution of areas of responsibility among technical specialists and the definition of user roles already at the stage of choosing a monitoring system, because system requirements must be formulated not only based on current needs, but also on future role responsibilities.

In addition to the emergence of new roles in the form of users of the visualization part of the monitoring system (CxO, Managers, Service/Process Owners), there will most likely be a redistribution of roles within the technical team as well. After all, the need for a new system usually arises because of dissatisfaction with the existing one or even several systems running in parallel.

In this situation, it is important to define those responsible for individual areas, their intersections, as well as responsibility for implementation, configuration, and provision of access and data required for monitoring to function.

4. Implementation Specifics

Finally, the monitoring system has been selected, a project team has been formed, and the company is ready to proceed with implementation. All monitoring systems have three main functional components: data collection, processing, and visualization, which must be installed and configured. Let us consider some important points that affect the success of the project.

Phased Implementation

Even if you are satisfied with the results of the pilot project and know all stages of installation and configuration, do not try to connect all functionality and all company users at once.

Typically, implementation starts with connecting resources by categories (servers, storage, operating systems, databases, etc.). Resources are grouped by levels for easier monitoring. This may also include engineering subsystems such as air conditioning, fire suppression, and alarm systems.

Then applications are connected to monitoring. After that, resources are grouped by services. Then business units are connected according to the business process structure, and KPI collection is configured, linking them to the state of the IT infrastructure and service availability.

After each stage, a stabilization period is required to verify the correctness of the configuration and system operation. For complex infrastructures, implementation may take many months. When IT or business environments change, individual monitoring elements must be reconfigured and then validated. This is a continuous operational process.

Installation

If the XaaS model is chosen, installation is greatly simplified. The service provider allocates infrastructure and software resources in its data center and provides remote administrative access.

In the case of an on-premise solution, the vendor provides system requirements for deploying the solution in the customer’s IT environment. The customer’s specialists must prepare the infrastructure and deploy the monitoring system core. Data processing and storage take place on the customer side.

Data Collection

To monitor IT infrastructure, high-quality quantitative and qualitative data about the state of each element is required. For this purpose, exporters are installed on resources by company specialists. Each exporter collects dozens or hundreds of metrics about devices, operating systems, databases, and applications.

Vendors usually provide a wide range of exporters for common resources. If necessary, exporters can be created independently or with vendor assistance. Exporters from open libraries can also be used if supported by the platform.

Data from existing monitoring systems can also be collected via exporters or APIs. If the new platform supports this, implementation time is significantly reduced, and the system becomes an umbrella monitoring system.

Business process and KPI data is collected from databases and business applications and transmitted to the monitoring core for processing.

Configuration

At the configuration stage, templates are created that define how exporter data is analyzed. These are rules that define threshold values at which incidents and alarms are generated for IT and business parameters, as well as predictive analysis where supported.

There are many templates, each with many parameters. Manual configuration is time-consuming and error-prone, so vendors provide libraries of best-practice templates. Administrators can modify predefined templates or create their own.

Services, KPIs, business processes and it’s relationships are also configured according to the company’s organizational structure.

Visualization

Next comes the configuration of visualization for all user roles (CxO, Managers, Service/Process Owners, Administrators, Engineers). Dashboards and charts are used, either predefined or customized.

Different roles may have access to different dashboards or navigation through logical relationships to drill down into details. Technical users can also access tables with detailed resource and service parameters.

Some vendors provide automatic generation of monitoring maps that graphically show relationships between resources, layers, services, and business indicators with their statuses.

Alerting and Response

When incidents occur, the monitoring system displays visual signals on user dashboards. Most products are integrated with notification systems that send alerts based on predefined rules.

During configuration, responsible persons are assigned, and incident tickets with problem descriptions are sent to them. If problems are not resolved in time, escalation rules apply.

Monitoring can and should become an indispensable tool for improving the reliability and efficiency of both IT infrastructure and business as a whole. It is important to approach selection and implementation systematically and treat it not only as a technical task but as a business initiative.

5. Example of a General Evaluation When Choosing a Monitoring System

Below is a general evaluation of selection parameters using I&B Monitoring Platform as an example.

Parameter	Value
Product name	I&B Monitoring Platform (www.inbmonitoring.com)
Purpose	Business Monitoring (IT Infrastructure & Business Activity Monitoring)
Functionality	Infrastructure Monitoring; Business Activity Monitoring; Services Monitoring; Application Performance Monitoring; Network Monitoring; Real User Monitoring; Synthetic Monitoring; Proactive Monitoring (Predictive Analysis); Root Cause Analysis; Integration with Issue Management Systems; Events Grouping; Layers Grouping
Installation	Cloud (XaaS) / On-premise
Data collection	Exporters installed on resources; built-in exporter library; third-party exporters
Configuration	Predefined templates with customization
Visualization	Predefined dashboards and charts with customization for CXO, Managers, Service/Process Owners, Administrators, Engineers; automatic graphical monitoring maps with resource status
Alerting	Out-of-the-box connectivity with Jira, Zoho, and email systems; single alert with all relevant data
Pricing	XaaS: subscription plans based on number of Business, Business Units, Subunits, Services, Layers, Resources. On-premise: calculated based on customer needs
Features	Unlimited databases, runtime environments, applications per resource; unlimited users; ready-to-use best-practice templates; unlimited event creation; event grouping and reduction; unlimited incidents; predefined dashboards; Single Sign-On with Identity Providers

A business monitoring system is an indispensable tool for modern digital and technology-driven businesses. It enables real-time visibility into the state of IT and business KPIs based on the organization’s structure. A unified monitoring system becomes a Single Source of Truth.