First of all, Merry Christmas from all of us at KedronUK! It’s that time of year where, as a company, we like to reflect on the past year, and share what KedronUK has been working on, our view of what we’ve seen in the market over the last 12 months, and what some of our plans are for the next 12 months.

Welcoming New Faces to the KedronUK Family
This year, our team has expanded more than ever with the addition of five talented individuals who have seamlessly become integral parts of our sales team. Join us in welcoming:

• Maisie Cornwall – Business Development Assistant.
• Umer Khan – Account Executive 
• Joshua Phillipus – Internal Sales Executive.
• Thabo Molibola – Internal Sales Executive. 
• Wendy Mahashe – Business Development Assistant. 

Their expertise and enthusiasm have undoubtedly contributed to the success of our projects and the overall positive vibe within our work environment. 

We’ve also seen a number of role changes in the past year with: 

1. Phil Simms being promoted to Sales Manager.
2. Jeegar Shah being promoted to Technical Support & Delivery Team Leader.
3. Emma Fox changing roles from Sales to Assistant Project Manager. 

Meeting More Customers in Multiple Industries at Events throughout the Year
This year we’ve enjoyed attending and exhibiting at more events than ever before with a particular highlight being exhibiting in partnership with Infosim at Connected Britain at London Excel. This demonstrated our integrated approach to Network Management and CMDB

We also hosted more #NoSalesPitch events at unique venues across the country, where we focussed on hot topics for Cyber Security and IT Operations and create an ideal peer to peer networking environment around fun activities.

Our Key Partners & New Technologies
Last year we saw a number of change in this area, due to changes of ownership of some of our partners, and also because of new questions being asked by our customers.

In 2024 we’ve looked to stabilise that portfolio and really hone down on those technologies, and make sure we continue to keep our focus on the area visibility across NOC and SOC. 

We have made sure that we don’t dilute our skill set and maintain our ability to not only provide disruptive technologies, but also that we are able to deliver and support them to the high standards our customers expect. 

Keys Partnerships remain with: Infosim, Keysight, Rapid7, ExtraHop, BullWall, Opsramp, Logpoint, Thales, SolarWinds, Allegro Packets, and Instana. 

And despite the above emphasis, we did welcome new partnerships with:

FNT Software – Delivers tools to plan, document, and manage network resources across hybrid environments.

 UXM – Digital Experience Monitoring for any application

The Market
We found the market to be cautious this year with greater scrutiny on decisions, even with trusted providers and technology. We believe this to be related to pressure on budgets and economic uncertainty driven by political events. Although that sounds challenging, we actually found the reality and result of this validation that the technology we provide and the way in which we deliver is what our customers need and want. 

Customers tell us that they are short on resource, and the areas in which we work are critical to their organisations success. They need to be able to do more with less and ensure that the projects they commission in these areas are successful and delivered on time. 

All of this plays into Kedron’s strengths, and although some decisions we sometimes delayed due to the scrutiny, we still were successful in wining those key projects and strengthened existing customer relationships. 

We have also commissioned a new Customer Experience initiative where we have automated the process of receiving customer customer feedback in a structured way to make sure we are listening to our customers and acting on suggestion they provide. This has already provided excellent insight. 

Looking Forward to 2025
We have some very exciting projects commencing across all business lines in 2025 and will be growing our team again as a result. 

In the coming weeks and months you will see increased emphasis on our Managed Solution via our own Totuus Brand and Technology, where we look to address our customers challengers via providing the right technology as a service, where they still maintain the control and flexibility that we know large and secure organisations need. 

We will be running and attending even more events and looking to meet in person even more of you. 

And finally, we will look to be winning more projects to support our growth and to continue winning them the right way; by putting forward the best technology forwards delivered by the best people, our team and then standing by the results we promise.

And Finally… 

We’d like to thank our Customers and Partners for their support over the last 12 months, we hope you all have some great time off with your loved ones and we look forward to seeing you all in 2025. 

Merry Christmas, and a very Happy New Year, from all of us at KedronUK!

In Part One, we discussed how many organisations are hesitant to disrupt existing technical workflows, even though they may now be extremely inefficient. However, this mindset can be a barrier to progress and innovation, potentially costing time and money.

While certain processes may appear functional on the surface, they may still harbour inefficiencies or limitations that could be addressed through automation. By challenging the status quo and being open to change, organisations can uncover hidden opportunities for improvement and unlock new levels of efficiency and effectiveness.

In this second part of our mini blog post series, we will explore how even seemingly “unbroken” processes can benefit from automation, demonstrating the value of a proactive approach to innovation, as highlighted by a recent automation project with a manufacturing company in an industry dating back to the 19th century.

An open-minded, collaborative approach is essential for successful automation projects, especially in network management. By focusing on objective evaluations of workflows and processes, stakeholders can identify areas for improvement and implement solutions effectively. This approach was exemplified in a recent automation project carried out by KedronUK for a manufacturing company, where a clear focus on process evaluation led to significant improvements.

In the first part of this series, we outlined the project’s focus, highlighting three main elements:

1. Mitigating Ticket Proliferation in IT Service Management
2. Workflow Automation for Manual Tasks
3. Efficient Ticket Generation for the NG Firewall Platform

Let’s dive into the second focus area:

Workflow Automation for Manual Tasks

Many of us perform tasks regularly that we know could be more efficient, but the old saying comes to mind; “I don’t have time to stop to get on my bike,” or in other words, “I’m so busy with the task at hand, that I don’t have time to stop and improve the process.” Double, or even triple entry, is a common example of this inefficiency.

I was talking with a new potential customer today, who manages a network supporting over 30,000 employees. When asked if they find themselves double-entering data between their CMDB and the NMS platform, they responded as expected: “Integration would be great, but we just don’t have that level of automation, and we don’t seem to be able to find the time to implement it.”
Our existing manufacturing company customer faced a similar situation. They used one system for ordering, another for CMDB, another for discovery and management, and another for ITSM, with users manually entering information at each layer. Additionally, vital information often wasn’t migrated between systems due to the manual workload. Such data would be extremely useful in the event of an incident or service assessment.

While this scenario can be politically sensitive, the benefits of a consistent, up-to-date flow of data from source to end-point, without the bottleneck of manual entry, are clear.

The first step was to identify what data was needed, where was it needed, and what was the entry point for that data. The goal was for an alarm produced by the NSM platform to generate a ticket in the ITSM platform, automatically, with all the required details to triage the ticket, such as:

• Hostname
• IP Address
• Serial Number of all FRU components
• Services affected
• Service Status
• Device Criticality
• Asset Value
• End of Life Status
• Site Information
• Rack and U location
• Site access details
• Service Contract Status
• Support Contact Numbers
• SLA information
• Root cause Alert detail (what’s wrong)

As can be deduced from the list, the source of each data point was spread across several different platforms.

The second step was to identify the unique identifier between platforms to link the data sets. For example, the unique identifier between the ordering platform and the CMDB was the device serial number, and between the CMDB and the IPAM system, it was the hostname.

Using TOTUUS®, a data framework solution with capabilities such as CMDB and ETL, we configured several data connector APIs. The customer CMDB was configured to send new or updated device information to TOTUUS®. A listening (PUSH) connector (DCx) was configured in TOTUUS® to receive this data, ensuring secure communication with tokenised URLs.

Upon receiving data from the customer CMDB, the PUSH DCx matched the data internally with a unique identifier, updated the local CMDB, and executed secondary DCx’s to connect to other platforms for additional data augmentation.
StableNet® (NMS platform) by InfoSim, was configured to discover additional asset information regularly against the TOTUUS® CMDB. Another TOTUUS® DCx was configured to extract relevant information from StableNet®, after asset discovery, such as device end-of-life details and configuration policy status.

Finally, a TOTUUS® DB Object was configured, allowing the customer CMDB to pull detailed information of interest back to maintain up to date information.

With all required data in one place, an alarm script in StableNet® was configured to augment alarm details and send the necessary information to the ITSM platform, automatically creating an ITSM ticket, with the required level of detail.

This engagement resulted in data being entered once, at its point of origin, and automatically collected and passed to secondary systems, augmented en-route, and collated at its destination. This reduced errors, data bottlenecks, and time spent understanding required information during incidents, significantly reducing MTTR.

In the final segment of this blog series, we’ll continue exploring facets of network management automation, with efficient ticket generation for the NG Firewall Platform.

If you would like to discuss an Automation or Consolidation project, please contact phil.swainson@kedronuk.com.

The age-old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” often serves as a deterrent to embracing automation. Many organisations are hesitant to disrupt existing technical workflows, especially if they’ve proven effective, if not efficient, over time. However, this mindset can also be a barrier to progress and innovation, and in some cases, costing time and therefore money.

While certain processes may appear functional on the surface, they may still harbour inefficiencies or limitations that could be addressed through automation. By challenging the status quo and being open to change, organisations can uncover hidden opportunities for improvement and unlock new levels of efficiency and effectiveness.

This blog post will explore how even seemingly “unbroken” processes can benefit from automation, demonstrating the value of taking a proactive approach to innovation, as highlighted by a recent automation project with a manufacturing company in an industry that dates back to the 19th Century.

“By focusing on objective evaluations of workflows and processes, stakeholders can identify areas for improvement and implement solutions effectively”.

An open-minded, collaborative approach is essential for successful automation projects, especially in network management. By focusing on objective evaluations of workflows and processes, stakeholders can identify areas for improvement and implement solutions effectively. This approach was exemplified in a recent manufacturing company’s successful automation project caried out by KedronUK, where a clear focus on process evaluation led to significant improvements.

Initially, ten workflows were identified for evaluation.

The goal was to:

• Identifying the stakeholders involved in each workflow.
• Thoroughly understand the current workflows.
• Quantify the time and effort involved in each workflow.
• Assess the feasibility of automation of each workflow.

Each of the ten workflows were assessed and categorised for feasibility, efficiency benefit and cost verses benefit. It was found that the initial ten workflows fell into the following three main categories:

1. Mitigating Ticket Proliferation in IT Service Management:
There was a need to address the issue of an excessive number of tickets being generated in the IT Service Management Platform. Streamlining and refining the ticketing process would be pivotal in enhancing overall operational effectiveness.

The Network Operation Centre (NOC) team, where finding it very difficult to stay on top of the 10,000 plus tickets being generated through existing integrations.

2. Worlkflow Automation for manual Tasks:
An automation opportunity was identified within manual workflows to eliminate redundancy associated with repetitive tasks. This included expediting the onboarding of new devices and the cessation process for existing devices. By automating these procedures, the aim was to enhance efficiency, reduce errors, and accelerate the overall pace of operations.

3. Efficient Ticket Generation for the NG Firewall Platform:
Automating the process of ticket generation for the Next Generation Firewall platform, with threat intelligence, to ensure a swift and accurate response to detected threats and assessments. This would involve integrating automation solutions that expedite the identification, logging, and resolution of issues on the platform, ultimately contributing to a more responsive and agile operational environment.

Lets look at these in turn:

Mitigating Ticket Proliferation in IT Service Management
Three tiers, or components were involved in raising ITSM tickets for the organisation, which within themselves already had a degree of automation implemented. The results however had become unmanageable, with approximately 10,000 tickets per month being raised for the 24×7 NOC team to triage and close. This equated to roughly 14 tickets per hour around the clock.

Upon investigation, it was discovered that a significant portion of these tickets were duplicates or repetitions of similar events, leading to a staggering 70% increase in ticket volume. The existing automation had become inadequate, exacerbating the issue rather than resolving it.

The first tier, the Network Management tool, had root cause calculation capabilities but was configured to forward all alarms, without root cause, to the second tier—a Network Management tool with integrations to the third tier, the ITSM platform. While this setup seemed promising in theory, it proved ineffective in practice, as evidenced by the overwhelming volume of tickets inundating the NOC team.

The immediate and pressing question arose: Why wasn’t a tool equipped with root cause analysis capabilities being fully leveraged? The answer, though somewhat surprising, revealed that the second-tier solution possessed the capability to filter—not correlate—for alarms tagged with a root cause from the first tier. Furthermore, the business had decided to only address root cause incidents of specific types via the proactive team in the ITSM, with the remainder managed by the Business as Usual (BAU) Team through reports. Consequently, this criterion was also added to the filter.

This setup meant that, regardless of the configurations in tier one, tier two would only forward what it was configured to, resulting in the decision to send everything from tier one to tier two.

We recommended reversing this logic, making the more capable tier one tool the one with the intelligence to determine what to send after calculating root cause. This approach would leave tier two with the straightforward task of merely forwarding what it receives. Additionally, this approach simplifies future configuration changes, as there is only one tool to configure.

This change resulted in a 33% reduction in the number of alarms sent to tier two, all of which matched the proactive team’s criteria. However, the number of ITSM tickets remained roughly the same.

In delving into the root cause of the ticket surge, we examined a month’s worth of ticket data. Our analysis revealed a trend: a substantial number of tickets were being closed by the proactive team, marked as acceptable within business utilisation thresholds. Moreover, we observed a proliferation of seemingly duplicate incidents, where multiple tickets were processed and closed by the team, referring to existing open tickets.

The investigation yielded two significant recommendations. Firstly, we proposed fine-tuning the tier one management platform to trigger alarms based on business utilization thresholds, which notably curtailed the number of utilization related ITSM tickets.

Secondly, we investigated the issue of apparent ticket duplication for identical incidents. We uncovered a limitation within the tier two platform—its ticket-raising process lacked an update mechanism. When a condition resolved to its KPI, an “OK” notification was issued from tier one to tier two. Tier two would then locally close the incident without updating the ITSM. This oversight led to recurrent breaches generating new tickets. The oversight was blamed on the business requirement for all tickets to be closed manually.

A solution was needed to update open tickets with both the “OK” notification and recurrent breaches. However, we hit dead ends with the tier two solutions capabilities and with the ITSM platform team due to a reluctance to alter logic, therefore, we redirected our focus to tier one. Leveraging its capability to directly interface with the ITSM tier bypassing tier two, we achieved the required ticket creation and update process.

Overall, monthly tickets saw a remarkable 77% reduction, plummeting from 10,000 to 2,300. This significant improvement allows the team to allocate more resources to incident resolution rather than ticket deduplication. Furthermore, the business is now evaluating the business case for the tier two solution, with potential cost reductions on the horizon.

As can be seen, the insights gained from our analysis led to recommendations aimed at optimising processes and enhancing productivity. In the upcoming segments of this blog series, we’ll continue our dive into additional facets of network management automation with a look at Workflow Automation for Manual Tasks followed by Efficient Ticket Generation for the NG Firewall Platform.

If you would like to discuss an Automation or Consolidation project, please contact phil.swainson@kedronuk.com.

Kedron UK has reached the grand old age of 21 and will be celebrating this milestone with the team at the Henley Royal Regatta in July! We find it hard to believe we are marking over two decades of success in the ever-evolving IT industry, so we wanted to take a look back and share with our customers where it started, what has changed and where we think we will be going next!

Starting out as a provider of network management tools in 2003, Kedron UK quickly expanded its services to include application performance and end-to-end service visibility.

As the industry continued to shift and evolve, so did we.

On Prem – Cloud – Hybrid
One of the most significant technology trends has been the shift towards cloud computing and virtualisation. As more businesses have moved their data and applications to the cloud, traditional IT management and monitoring tools faced challenges. However, we found it was important not jump into cloud monitoring specific tools only, as users still accessed services within their own networks and as we deal with predominately large and secure customers, often critical / sensitive applications and data would remain on premise. We needed to ensure we provided the best possible solutions for Hybrid environments using as few monitoring tools as possible.

We Entered the Cyber Security Market
Finally, the growing importance of cybersecurity has also impacted IT operation management and monitoring. With the increasing number of cyber threats and attacks, businesses need to be able to monitor their networks and systems for potential breaches and respond quickly when a threat is detected.

This has led to the development of new security-focused tools and platforms that are integrated with IT management and monitoring systems to provide end-to-end visibility and protection.

This is why, in 2017, KedronUK expanded its services to include cybersecurity. This move reflected the growing focus on cybersecurity threats in the industry and the need for businesses to protect their networks and data from malicious actors. We also ensured we stayed close to what we are we good at which is fundamentally getting our customers the right kind of visibility from the complex environments. By providing technologies like Network Detection and Response, Threat intelligence, SIEM, and SOAR we have been able to broaden on product portfolio, whilst ensuring we stay true to our quality design and delivery process.

Machine Learning and AI
Currently topical with our customer base is obviously the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

With the increasing amount of data generated by IT infrastructure, AI and ML have become useful tools for analysing and interpreting data to identify potential issues and optimise performance.

In many ways this is only just begun, but we have found again the importance of a pragmatic and balanced approach. From our works so far reviewing capabilities and their implications for the system we provide that as important as this technology is, it should not be seen as the magic answer to all challenges. In fact, the best outcomes seem to come when it this tech is layered on top of already functional and mature monitoring platforms.

Whats Next?
Here we have a look at a couple of areas where we think will be busy next, Phil Swainson our Head of technology plans to review each of these areas in more detail in a series of future posts celebrating our big birthday. Each edition will come with a special offer so keep your eye out!

• Unification of SOC and NOC – Maybe because of our background and development we have seen within our own portfolio, or because of the increased expectation of shared data via APIs and open standards we see that there will an increased awareness that multiple technology teams have very similar technologies running in parallels. More and more there are vendor solutions that cover multiple domains offering opportunity for cost saving and technical efficiencies. An example here would perhaps be Network Detection and Response and Network Performance Management, both solutions collecting network traffic from Taps, Packet brokers or SPAN ports for analysis.

• CMDB Comeback – Sometimes CMDB is a dirty word, many have tried to build and maintain an accurate solution that meets individual business operational, and compliance needs but many organisations we speak to are still left frustrated. For this reason, we have seen vendors move away from the term and start using other terms to describe similar functionality or narrow their focus into security and other niche’s, you could argue AIOPs is one of those to some extent. We think the concept is still correct and we just need better tools and process to achieve a reliable way of getting to the end goal that stakeholders can then learnt to trust. We think this is one area where AI and ML is extremely interesting and can complement but also assure best practice and process. However again we think AI on its own won’t solve the total problem. We’ve got some interesting ideas about what will so watch out for Phil’s upcoming blog post.

• IoT/OT and IT Convergence – Like or hate it these worlds are coming together and end to end views of performance and security are critical, bridging the gap between these two technology areas and cultures is surely a challenge that needs addressing with a unified approach.

We’d love to know what you think, both about how things have changes in the areas of performance and security visibility and what you think will be next!

As the holiday season fast approaches, we at KedronUK are thrilled to reflect on the incredible journey we’ve had throughout the year. It’s been a year of growth, new partnerships, and exciting milestones that have shaped our company’s narrative. Throughout this blog, we reminisce on the past year, and share some key highlights from our 2023.

Welcoming New Faces to the KedronUK Family
This year, our team has expanded with the addition of three talented individuals who have seamlessly become integral parts of our sales and technical teams. Join us in welcoming:

• Max Raine – Business Development Assistant.
• Sean Thompson – Systems Support Engineer.
• Peter Costello – Account Executive.

Their expertise and enthusiasm have undoubtedly contributed to the success of our projects and the overall positive vibe within our work environment. We’re also looking forward to welcoming 3 new starters in the new year!

Forging Stronger Partnerships
In our commitment to delivering top-notch solutions, we are proud to announce new and exciting partnerships formed over the past year. Over the course of 2023, we have partnered with some valued vendors, such as, Forescout Technologies, Wib, Allegro Packets, Heimdal and BullWall. These collaborations with cutting-edge vendors have allowed us to enhance our service offerings and better address the evolving needs of our clients. 

Unforgettable Events Around the Globe
In 2023, we went beyond borders, hosting two company events in the heart of London and attending exciting partner events in Dubai and Germany. These experiences provided us with valuable insights, fostered new connections, and reinforced our commitment to being a global player in the IT industry. 

Celebrating 20 Years of Innovation
March marked a significant milestone for KedronUK as we celebrated our 20th anniversary. Two decades of innovation, dedication, and client satisfaction have shaped us into the company we are today. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to our clients, partners, and the incredible team that has been instrumental in our success. 

Looking Forward to the Future
As we bid farewell to 2023, we are excited about the possibilities that lie ahead. The coming year promises more innovation, continued growth, and the opportunity to strengthen existing relationships while forging new ones. We remain committed to delivering excellence in IT operations, security operations and service management. 

From all of us at KedronUK, we extend warm wishes for a joyful holiday season and a prosperous New Year. Thank you for being part of our journey, and we look forward to creating more success stories together in 2024. 

Merry Christmas!

Why is it that most large enterprises have invested so much into monitoring technologies, who typically have so many vendor technologies in place, still can’t see what they need, when they need to see it?

This problem isn’t new, and on the face of it, it’s probably not the most interesting topic to pick to write about, but it’s so prevalent and has such a large impact on running a successful Enterprise IT function, I think it’s worth exploring.

Top 5 Reasons Tool Overload Happens

A health warning; this is not a scientifically generated list, or even one of those annoying LinkedIn polls. It’s just a list of what we, as an independent consultancy, advising in the areas of IT Operation and Security analytics, see, all the time. 

Below are the top reasons we come across for monitoring tool overload:

1. Equipment vendors shiny new monitoring toy

This is when organisations purchase new infrastructure, and with that investment there is the option to buy the vendor’s new management software offering. And this time it really is brilliant, honest. 

Customers are interested as usually vendors will offer some impressive visibility features for their own equipment. The problem is, typically the feature set is not as rich for other vendors which the customer also has in their environment.

Or, the new shiny software doesn’t cover particular functionality that might not be required for the vendors’ equipment, but is for the other technology.

The upshot of this is creating a new silo to integrate. Of course, this integration is possible and sometimes a good idea, but keeping things simple is best and minimising integration requirements to the most essential is best practice.

Also, a “gotcha” warning here, where this software often seems like a good year 1 commercial decision as its bundled into the initial purchase, check out costs for year 2 and extending the coverage of the monitoring to an increased scale.

2. Not Addressing Bad Configuration of Existing Tools 

When things go wrong, such as missing a critical event which results in outage, or even something less dramatic like not being able to quickly generate the reports that the business request from IT, its very easy to blame your existing monitoring tool – the tool is &^^%$!

In reality, there are some very competent monitoring technologies out there that might get bad internal press, when the problem is actually the management of the tool itself.

No monitoring platform is going to work properly if the Operational Teams do not adhere to basic governance and best practice.

Issues such as bad new device onboarding practice, not integrating with your change process and not fixing issues such as SNMP not being enabled all have a major impact on the reliability of your monitoring technologies ability to accurately reflect the environment you are monitoring.

When something major goes wrong and the tool gets blamed, often a business case for a new platform is easy to justify. What is then common is that the new tool is bought in haste and then discovered post purchase that it doesn’t deliver everything the incumbent technology did. So, both technologies remain and the initial problem gets forgotten. Until next time.

3. New Personnel Bringing in What They Know

One of the biggest hurdles we face as a consultancy making technical recommendations is resistance to change from operators.

It’s understandable, these people have a lot of responsibilities and learning a new monitoring technology, when they have built up a competency in another solution is not appealing.

It’s the main reason why we don’t change what’s working and when it’s not necessary, and as far as possible, look to duplicate the current experience of the key system users when it is.

The same logic applies when new employees start within an organisation when their new role involves management and monitoring of infrastructure, applications or services. 

Naturally, the recruit wants to start strong and make an impact, especially if visibility has been flagged as an issue. This often results in bringing in the tools they’ve used in previous roles to tackle high pressure issues now. The result is new tooling being added to the environment.

4. New Technology or Projects Including Monitoring Technologies

When planning new projects involving the introduction of something new, for example, a new unified communications solution, new business critical app or Software Sefined Networking, a Programme Manager with their finger on the pulse will consider visibility.

Often, this is tackled by speaking to the provider of the new technology. They will recommend an incumbent technology (see point 1) or a technology they partner with for monitoring. No doubt these tools will do the job perfectly, but did anyone check the capabilities of what’s already in place?

The issue occurs because maybe a monitoring technology has been in place for some time and it’s been pigeon holed into doing a particular thing. However, it very common that organisations are using a lot less of their current solutions total capability. So, it’s worth picking up the phone and speaking with your supplier to see what they can do with the new tech you’re looking to deploy.

5. Application Stack Change

Applications run business, so it’s no surprise that Enterprises spend a lot of money monitoring them.

Application Development is fast moving, but we also find legacy applications often remain largely unchanged. It’s not unusual for Customers we work with to have a mixture of mainframe applications, Service Orientated Architectures and containerised environments within their total application landscapes, with mixtures of coding languages back-end database on Prem and Cloud.

These applications get so much focus because they are the window into IT performance that users benchmark IT against, and often they are revenue generating for the business.

When issues occur, it is justifiable to apply the best possible monitoring technology/ies for that environment and application. This results in multiple monitoring solutions used by multiple teams.

Totally understandable, as tools that are monitoring main frames often are not the one’s to use for monitoring Kubernetes.

However, it also does make sense to pause and review what you have before making that next purchase.

When we are working with a new customer for improving or consolidating APM capabilities, one thing we look for is the best common denominators. Rarely is this a single technology, but I can’t think of one recent project where we’ve not been able to significantly reduce the number individual tools, which invariably saves money, but also offers better knowledge sharing between teams because of shared experience of technology.

6. The Consistant Quest for Single Pane of Glass

I left this one to the end in case the mentioning again of maybe the most over utilised cliché in IT monitoring put you off. The Single Pane of Glass. It makes so much sense, doesn’t it? But at the same time so many projects have failed. 

Firstly, let me say we believe that by selecting the correct AIOPs solution, it is possible to integrate with underlying monitoring technologies and business systems and extract meaningful unified insight. But, we also think there isn’t one right technology for every single customer circumstance. I can say this because we are a consultancy with multiple options to offer, not a vendor with one.

And this is what we think happens, the story of end-to-end integrated visibility is easy to sell and everyone like a nice dashboard don’t they? 

However, sometimes these solutions are sold and don’t deliver what they promised in presentation slides. Sometimes, they deliver on day 1 and then don’t keep up to date with a rapidly changing environment.

The result is the systems provide some value, but not what everyone hoped for in the beginning. So they remain another layer of tooling in an already complex environment. 

So What Can You Do About it?

I’ve listed the why it happens above, which I guess is interesting (hopefully) but not necessarily helpful if you find yourself in this situation already.

So, what can you do about it? You can look to carry out a Tools Consolidation Assessment. This is something you can do internally or invite a consultancy like KedronUK in to help with. 

How that works and our proven processes, I’m saving for my next blog post, so sign up below or follow me on LinkedIn and you’ll be notified when its released.

What I will say now is that our initial review is free of charge and a recent project showed a major UK enterprise how we could save them 1.5 million over 3 years. I’ll cover that as a Case Study in the third and final post on this topic.

If you’d like to talk more in the interim, do feel free to get in touch.

P.S. If you think I’ve missed any key reasons above, do feel free to comment and I’ll add the good ones!