Industry: Oil and gas
Location: Netherlands
improvement in overall application performance
saved on downtime in a year
improvement in mean time to repair (MTTR)
As a key component of its global operations, the IT team provides a wide range of IT services to support the company's business needs, including software development, infrastructure management, cybersecurity, data analytics, and digital innovation.
The IT team also manages a complex suite of applications critical to the organization's daily operations. However, with an overwhelming amount of information to sift through, the team faced bottlenecks and delays, making it particularly hard to determine the root cause of issues when incidents arose. The impact of application downtime or delays would sometimes lead to rippling effects and result in financial losses. Additionally, lack of access to real-time information on the performance of key metrics was leading to slow remediation times.
Like most IT teams, they previously relied on multiple tools spread across subteams to monitor various parts of the IT stack, and this disjointed approach led to many downsides. Instead of improving mean time to identify (MTTI) and mean time to repair (MTTR), their existing monitoring solutions hindered visibility by providing restricted views across the hybrid infrastructure. "We deal with highly critical applications and we can't afford to be blindsided," said the IT operations engineer. "We can't improve something if we can't monitor it, and we decided that it was high time we switched to a more unified, robust application observability solution."
"Proactive monitoring has always been a huge challenge for us, but with Applications Manager we are able to easily receive alerts and prohibit any interruptions upfront. Additionally, the product's intuitive dashboard has helped us gain better visibility into our application infrastructure, allowing us to make data-driven decisions and optimize performance across the board." –IT operations engineer
After deciding to retire Riverbed, their previous software provider, the team evaluated a good number of monitoring tools in the market. They came to know about Applications Manager through word of mouth and decided to evaluate the tool.
"Our production operations rely heavily on the timely and accurate flow of data between critical applications. For example, if an application that monitors the health of production equipment experiences downtime, there is a risk of equipment failure, which could lead to costly repairs, production delays, and potential safety hazards. So, we were very particular about deploying a tool that would ensure 24/7 availability of applications, provide in-depth visibility, and alert us of interruptions in time," said the IT operations engineer.
Once the team realized that Applications Manager ticked every requirement on their checklist, there was no turning back.
Formerly, troubleshooting performance issues was an arduous, manual process of sifting through application and infrastructure errors and alerts. With Application Manager's observability capabilities, the team can now view their entire operation on a single pane of glass, capturing every single trace and transaction that flows through the applications. By gaining contextual insights, the organization can make smarter business decisions.
"We were impressed by Applications Manager's ability to support many flavors of applications from a single console. This has truly given us the visibility we needed, and we are extremely happy with the choice we made." –IT operations engineer
Additionally, with real-time analytics, the organization is able to track and publish KPIs, spot trends, and share this data with concerned teams for continuous improvement. "What I love the most about Applications Manager is that it is reliable; it works," said the IT operations engineer. They also praised the team at ManageEngine, adding, "I like the support—they are friendly and always ready to help."
For instance, identifying a database lock that was causing a delay in updating production schedules was a time-consuming process that could take hours, eventually leading to disruptions in operations. Now with Applications Manager's proactive monitoring capabilities, the team is able to receive alerts and fix these issues quickly. "This has significantly reduced our downtime and improved the efficiency of our operations," said the IT operations engineer.
Holistic visibility: With an unified platform, the team is now able to automatically and continuously discover its entire technology stack and process the dependencies across its multiple cloud environments, applications, and services, in real time. This has reduced manual effort across teams and has helped reduce the number of issues in a day.
Timely alerts: With Applications Manager, the team is now able to be more proactive in its approach. The tool enables the team to pinpoint the root cause of issues and resolve them before things go awry. By eliminating false positives, they can focus on alerts that actually require their attention.
Increased productivity: AI-powered insights from Applications Manager has helped the team reduce the time spent in war rooms and focus more on innovations that truly matter.
It allows us to track crucial metrics such as response times, resource utilization, error rates, and transaction performance. The real-time monitoring alerts promptly notify us of any issues or anomalies, enabling us to take immediate action.
Reviewer Role: Research and Development
Tech Support Manager, Lexmark