Monitoring Via The Cloud: Monitis Versus Open-source Monitoring Software

By Author: monitis
Total Articles: 3
Comment this article

Ensuring Service Levels Are Met, Getting Robust Warnings
If your company is using a complex IT infrastructure and you are responsible for delivering mission critical applications, and every time the system is down you get complaints from end-users or your supervisor, then consider hosted monitoring. It's safe and gives you greater control of your systems uptime.
Cloud-based technology like Monitis will provide the surest, most reliable coverage and warn you of emerging problems that need immediate attention (Even when your network is down!). The cloud is also best equipped to keep tabs on your service agreement with cloud platforms.
What makes Monitis a truly killer technology is its robust notification system. While you are using open-source, there is a good chance you will miss an alert notification particularly when:
Your local network is down because of connection or switch problems
Your monitoring server is down itself
Your mail server is down; so it cannot deliver alert email
Your SMS provider is down
Your firewall or router is down
Your ISP is experiencing ...
... issues
What makes hosting monitoring solutions like Monitis special is the independent alerting and notifications. Even if your network is completely down, you will get a notification. To ensure robust notification Monitis:
Checks externally whether your internal monitoring agents are up and
responding;
Checks remotely if web services are available;
Double checks from multiple locations across the globe or from a location your company establishes;
Provides multiple ways to notify, for example, via SMS, Voice, IM, Email and Twitter.
The bottom line is that Monitis wants to make sure you will get an alert when something is wrong or going wrong in your network - regardless of your network status.
Ease of Deployment, Ease of use
Another advantage that cloud-based tools hold over open-source monitoring software is rapid, instant deployment. It takes a mere 10 minutes to sign up for and use Monitis monitoring (including instant availability of SMS and Live-Voice alerting), while installing open-source monitoring requires setting up a dedicated server, database and, of course, the actual monitoring software. In addition, open-source tools require IT administrators to regularly patch and update the software, configure, plus integrate third-party plug-ins.
Open-source monitoring tools also require IT pros to:
Set distributed monitoring agents, opening firewalls
Set web servers
Open external access
Integrate third-party visualization tools
All these means time and money for companies. Monitis, on the other hand, via its cloud technology, is constantly updated automatically, which means companies always use the latest version.
End-user Experience Monitoring
Another important feature of any monitoring tool is the ability to monitor servers and networks from outside your company. Here again, cloud technology holds many advantages over open-source and internal software. Monitis has multiple monitoring locations around the world, from which it can perform basic availability, advanced real-browser monitoring, and script-based synthetic monitoring (allowing companies to test capacity and chart out strategies for heavy user loads)indeed an entire end-to-end monitoring flow.
Meanwhile, open-source monitoring can only monitor within a company's firewall (which means the software can theoretically measure a false positive, although the network may be down). Plus, open-source doesn't measure user experience on an end-to-end basis.
Scalability
Open source products like Nagios usually don't scale well for companies with large IT infrastructures. It's a common complaint from enterprises that, when using more than 100 devices, the open-source products fail. As recently posted at Google Marketplace by Danny O, a Monitis customer:
Before finding Monitis, I was using a couple of open source tools including Nagios and grew frustrated with two things: 1 - It wasn't scalable enough to monitor our 300+ websites and 2 - It required hours of configuration. With Monitis, within a half hour of signing up, we were able to monitor all our websites, as well as 15 servers and a web-based application. It's a one-of-a-kind service, and I highly recommend it to anyone.
The Monitis platform does hundreds of millions of checks per day - well below the technology's capacity limits.
Ownership Costs and Productivity
Why should you pay for computing power and capacity that you don't need now - but might down the road?
With Monitis, companies enjoy the ability to add scalability as needed, and they pay only for what they use. If they need more monitoring down the line, they pay for more. It's a different story for open-source monitoring, though. Open-source does not provide scalability beyond 100 servers, plus your company is required to provide good hardware (servers) and storage space.
The total cost of ownership (TCO) of monitoring tools must also be considered. Because companies pay only for what they use with cloud-based monitoring, typical costs start at just a few dollars per month. Plus, factoring in labor costs, firms save enormous sums because IT folks spend just minutes on daily routine and upkeep - instead of hours.
For open-source tools, however, the tab for monitoring is high. Consider these costs:
$2,000 + for a server
$2,000 + for a backup server and storage
$1,000 yearly for electricity
Setup and maintenance labor cost (usually a dedicated or a part time resource - at least $30,000 per year) to do such things as:
o Add plug-ins
o Backup data
o Fix issues, patching
o Update software
o Setup monitoring and alerting
o Controlling third-party notification services
o Customize
o Add reports
o Consolidate SLA and performance data from multiple monitoring
In comparison, Monitis operates much more efficiently and you are more productive, as there is little to no maintenance for IT administrators; the technology is constantly updated; there is only one version for all customers; response support is substantial at no additional cost; and there is no need to use multiple tools.
And there is an excellent customer support - our top priority. Our customers' satisfaction levels really make Monitis a huge differentiator.

The Cool Factor
And then there's the cool factor. What's not cool is the need to install, upgrade and maintain software, which is part of open-source. What is cool is Monitis monitoring because it is built upon modern architecture like:

The Cloud and a Web 2.0 approach
Multi-tenant, on-demand software as a service (which lowers users costs)
An all-in-one solution (monitoring everything from servers to networks to Java apps and cloud providers)
Service Oriented Architecture and web services (We offer web API for 3rd party integration, web widgets to embed in 3rd party applications and websites.)
Scalability to suit your changing computing needs
What makes Monitis' cloud-based solution truly different is how we listen to our customers. As we host the product, we know - at all times - how companies use it, and that lets us know how we can improve it to suit their needs.
Control Dashboard as a Service Tool
The ability to communicate fast and thoroughly is critical for a monitoring tool, and Monitis makes it easy and more efficient via a hosted dashboard, that is:
Customizable and also available from anywhere, from any device
Offers multiple notification channels as a service out-of the box
A means of communication cross-silos - which allows customers to share the same data between network, system, application and database administrators
Any data can feed into it via open API, allowing easy integration with other enterprise systems
Helpful in aligning business and technical goals, making it suitable for both IT and business users
Typically, a good dashboard is missing from an open-source monitoring products. Or, if one is included, it requires multiple modules or integrations. In addition, often dashboards are limited to each product and lack flexibility of integration with other products. They're not very high-priority to the average user, as they're usually designed for techies.
All in all, when considering monitoring systems, it's wise to think hard about the benefits of one type technology versus another - in this case the clear efficiencies and savings provided by cloud-based monitoring, such as Monitis, versus open-source tools.
10-point Summary

Here's a quick 10-point summary of Monitis' advantages over Open-Source Monitoring software. Monitis offers:
1. Robust Notification
2. Ease of setup
3. Ease of use
4. Low TCO
5. Scalability
6. Reach UI and Control Dashboard
7. Green technology
8. End-to-end monitoring
9. An innovative, leading edge system
10. A proven way to boost productivity and save time
About Monitis All-in-One Monitoring Platform
Monitis is a 100% Cloud-based, complete, and flexible IT monitoring solution which consolidates backend monitoring, application monitoring, website monitoring, and cloud monitoring in an all-in-one, central monitoring service. The platform is easily customizable and may be used for managing of all kinds of IT assets such as websites, servers, routers, switches, VoIP devices, DNS, databases, processes and any other IP devices. Monitis provides users with a comprehensive view of their system's health and performance.
About Monitis
Monitis believes that the Cloud is the biggest thing to happen in IT management since IT management. Having seen this vision early, Monitis is now the global leader in developing this market. It is the first affordable network and systems monitoring solution based 100% in the Cloud.
Monitis has an enthusiastic and loyal user base of 50,000 customers from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies to government agencies and educational institutions, and it has won rave reviews from the technology analyst community. Recently, because its Cloud-based monitoring helps companies reduce system downtime, improve the productivity of their IT staff, and reduce operational expenditures, Monitis was named the Most Innovative Start-up for 2009 by The 451 Group at their annual Client Conference. In addition, Monitis was ranked among the 2010 OnDemand 100 in April 2010. The OnDemand 100 is a ranking by Morgan Stanley, KPMG, and AlwaysOn of the world's top 100 private companies.
Monitis was founded in 2005 by a team of seasoned entrepreneurs and fed-up and worn-out developers who were tired of complaining about the limits of software-based tools, while inspired by the promise of the Cloud. Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Monitis is lead by a team of IT professionals with deep experience running enterprise-grade IT businesses, as well as starting and selling several IT start-ups. Using a global workforce, particularly its R&D team based in Yerevan, Armenia, Monitis is poised to move from strength to strength. At present, Monitis is averaging average month-on-month revenue growth of over 10%.