Paessler Adds Business Process Sensor to Monitoring Tool

Considerations for Maintaining Critical Business Continuity

One of the bigger tactical challenges most IT organizations have to regularly contend with is trying to keep track of what elements of an IT environment actually power any given service. To make that simpler, Paessler AG has added a Business Process Sensor capability to its PRTG Network Monitor.

Benjamin Day, senior systems engineer for Paessler, says that at its core, the Business Process Sensor aggregates all the data associated with a particular service in one location. Instead of having to monitor multiple sensors, the Business Process Sensor can be configured in a way that sends alerts when a specific set of processes is affected by an IT event. That approach not only makes it simpler to keep track of what’s occurring within the context of a service, Day says it results in fewer alerts being generated. That contrasts with today’s IT environments in which every device generates alerts every time there is any issue.

Other benefits to this approach, adds Day, are that it makes it simpler to identify single points of failure within the IT environment while also making it easier to train new IT hires on how the entire scope of the IT environment operates. Ultimately, Day says, Paessler envisions the Business Process Sensor as being a central console for tracking events across an entire IT environment.

Of course, setting up Business Process Sensor still requires some effort. There is no automated discovery process. But once that data is collected, Day notes, it becomes a lot simpler for the IT staff to both show and explain what is occurring across an IT environment.

IT is becoming increasingly challenging to manage. The first step to unraveling all that complexity is a more process-centric approach that makes it a lot simpler for IT organizations to not only identify cause but, just as importantly, actual effect.