Happy New Year: Out with the Old and In with the New

Having been in the IT software industry for nearly 20 years, I recently joined Opsview as their VP of Marketing. So, I guess, I shouldn’t have been surprised that IT Monitoring is impacted by legacy tools. But I still find it incredible that after all of these years, organizations do not review their software tools to see if they’re fit for purpose. I know it’s time consuming, there’s more important projects to work on: Digital Transformation, AIOPs and all of the other new buzzwords in the industry, but with monitoring providing that all important visibility into your Business and IT operations, how can you afford to ignore it?

I was amazed in my research prior to joining Opsview that according to Enterprise Management Associates [EMA] some organizations can have up to 10 monitoring tools. Tool sprawl or Shadow IT (the use of multiple software to do the same thing), coupled with silos in IT, increases that lack of visibility. IT Monitoring is often seen as a cost rather than it being used proactively to support the IT and Business functions. It’s not until you read news articles about IT outages that you realize the potential impact that an outage can have on a business. In 2017, BA lost $280m off of their market value after an IT outage caused 75,000 passengers to be stranded. And it’s not just the financial impact, you need to consider the reputational damage too. After this debacle, many BA passengers took to social media channels to express their anger and to say they’d be using another airline. 

As many of us make New Year’s resolutions, maybe we should do the same in the IT world. A suggestion would be “Out with the Old and In with the New.” Reviewing all legacy IT in line with business objectives and ensuring the software and systems are fit for purpose.