Business Transaction Management Blog

Every summer growing up, my family would take a one week vacation by car.  That car was a long, green, wood paneled station wagon.

Before the trip my Dad would consult maps, plan the route and stops.  The worst feature of the wagon was the frequent overheating.  A dubious trait of its operator was, planning be damned, a penchant for getting lost. The “highlight” of these trips was the often hours spent in stopped traffic due to construction or on the side of the road, radiator spewing.  I have very fond memories of these trips.

Today cars have power everything:  A/C, satellite radio, GPS, Bluetooth, DVD players and TV’s!  How different is a similar summer trip today?  Cars are much more reliable.  GPS navigation shouldn’t replace trip planning, but it certainly lessens the stress of remembering every turn (being a route “expert”) and most importantly can put you back on track quickly when a problem occurs (i.e. detour, missed turn).

So where are we now as computer users or professionals in IT?  Many of us still end up “on the side of the road with the hood up” trying to address a computer problem, transaction problem or system wide outage.  We are still at the point where we are not sure exactly what will happen when “Submit” gets hit.

But just like automotive technology, monitoring and management technology has improved over the years. However, many monitoring suites still have the feel of that same old wood paneled station wagon trying to pass as cutting edge by bolting on after-market modules. At some point, upgrading the next generation solution is the best way to go – a solution that was built from the ground up to include all “standard” enhancements as well as the most recent breakthroughs.

Imagine as an IT professional being able to view each user’s transactions – when they started, how long they took (or are taking), where they went or are going, and if there is a problem, being able to quickly localize the problem and get the transaction back on track. This enables a shift from worrying about whether a transaction will complete or have drastic variations in the time it takes, to managing cost, assuring security and delivering superior user experience. One day all of these capabilities will be delivered “standard.”

Business Transaction Management (BTM) is a big step forward in this area.  BTM allows IT to provide users a better trip and to deliver more value to the business – all this without one having to be one part planner and architect and one part master mechanic.  That doesn’t mean we won’t look back and remember the days of “all hands” calls with nostalgia.

When first talking to people about BTM they commonly have the following questions:

1. Who does  BTM compete against?
2. How does BTM compare to [Insert APM/BSM Vendor Name]?
3. Can’t I do the same thing with [Insert Deep Dive Product Name]?

It has been a challenge to answer these questions in a succinct and compelling way, but I feel that I’ve finally come upon the best answers (with a lot of help from prospects, customers and colleagues) that  help crystallize the benefits of BTM compared with traditional monitoring solutions.

Part of the reason people ask these questions is largely due to the fact that “the first five slides of every presentation are the same” and “everyone comes in and says the same thing.”  This leads us to the answer to question #1 – “Who does BTM compete against?” The best answer to this is “the marketing departments of other monitoring companies.”

The second question is particularly challenging.  APM and BSM vendors have broad and feature-rich solutions suites.  They have many capabilities and strengths.  Most often they are an integrated combination of products that additionally can be used standalone.  For example, a typical APM suite is comprised of end user monitors (synthetic and real user),  application deep dive solutions (for J2EE, .NET, databases, etc), system and infrastructure monitors, a CMDB, a dashboard, a rules engine and so on.  Therefore when someone asks:  “How does BTM compare to [Insert APM/BSM Vendor Name],” I give the following descriptive answer.  “Look at what the product was designed to do from version 1.0.”

If you look at what version 1.0 of a product was designed to do, it is a good bet that the “v1″ strengths and differentiators remain the same to this day.   In other words, if something was built to do end user monitoring in version 1.0, it is an end user monitor.  If it was built to be a CMDB, it is a CMDB, even if it got renamed to a PMDB.  If was a deep dive solution, it’s, you guessed it, a deep dive solution.  The point here is that to do BTM, you need a product that was designed and built from the ground up to do BTM.  This means it must be able to track all transactions all the time in production and capture their business context, topology, performance (roundtrip and segmented) and resource usage.  If a solution wasn’t designed to do BTM from day one, it won’t get there – at least not anytime soon.

This brings us to our last question – “Can’t I do the same thing with [Insert Deep Dive Product Name]?” The best answer I heard to this came from a new BTM customer.  In short the answer is a resounding “No” and here’s why.  This (new) BTM customer had at one point asked this very same question. After seeing the transformative effects of BTM on his team and organization, he mentioned he had “finally seen the light” and the difference at a high level was that “BTM is on the wall in the NOC and is used in communication with application owners and the line of business.  Deep dive data is never used that way.”

Three common questions, seemingly simple, highlight the differences between BTM and other types of monitoring.  I now look forward to hearing these questions as it gives me the opportunity to educate about BTM – a class of monitoring that delivers game-changing value to customers.