Creating a view to the cloud

Computerworld - One millisecond might not seem like a lot of time. But when you're a software-as-a-service provider with thousands of databases running 2 billion SQL queries and pushing out 10 terabytes of SQL data each day, every millisecond adds up. Performance and visibility are crucial -- especially when your systems are tied to those of other vendors that also operate in the cloud.

That's the case at Concur Technologies, which each year processes more than $50 billion in travel and expense reports in the cloud. About four years ago, the Redmond, Wash.-based company started experiencing database call hiccups between its middle tier and the database tier.

"It's a problem that comes in once every million calls, and it could come from any one of 30 servers in one tier to 30 in another tier," explains John Tharp, lead software configuration engineer at Concur. "Getting visibility into that required three different layers of people -- network DBAs, network engineers, application engineers -- working together" is a time-consuming process. Luckily, the company found a performance management tool with a monitoring focus that now helps the IT team identify these issues quickly, and that's critical to keeping Concur competitive.

Computerworld - One millisecond might not seem like a lot of time. But when you're a software-as-a-service provider with thousands of databases running 2 billion SQL queries and pushing out 10 terabytes of SQL data each day, every millisecond adds up. Performance and visibility are crucial -- especially when your systems are tied to those of other vendors that also operate in the cloud.

That's the case at Concur Technologies, which each year processes more than $50 billion in travel and expense reports in the cloud. About four years ago, the Redmond, Wash.-based company started experiencing database call hiccups between its middle tier and the database tier.

"It's a problem that comes in once every million calls, and it could come from any one of 30 servers in one tier to 30 in another tier," explains John Tharp, lead software configuration engineer at Concur. "Getting visibility into that required three different layers of people -- network DBAs, network engineers, application engineers -- working together" is a time-consuming process. Luckily, the company found a performance management tool with a monitoring focus that now helps the IT team identify these issues quickly, and that's critical to keeping Concur competitive.

"Speed of rollout, deployment and the innovation that's required these days to compete require tools that will keep watch in real time, spin up volume as needed and [diagnose problems] right off the bat," Tharp says.

Performance and visibility in the cloud have become major concerns among users. Large enterprises have been moving well-understood workloads to the cloud for years. But as more mission-critical systems get sent to the cloud, and as the number of cloud applications run by a single company multiplies, it will become more important for visibility and performance management tools to follow your applications to the cloud.

Spending on public and private cloud services, and on building those services, will reach $60 billion this year, according to IDC, and the strategic focus in the cloud will shift from infrastructure to application platforms.

So it makes sense that demand for tools that improve visibility in the cloud is growing. Spending on cloud management software will increase 62% this year, according to IDC.

"The more visibility you have into what you can see, the better you can optimize your decision to use the cloud," says Dennis Drogseth, a vice president at IT consultancy Enterprise Management Associates.

Deciding the best environment in which to run an application at peak performance is one of the biggest pain points facing cloud-adopting enterprises today, says Dennis Callaghan, an analyst at 451 Research. "They don't really have good visibility into what the impact is going to be on their business if they move a particular application to the cloud," he adds. "There's no go-to set of objective criteria on how to pick a performance management tool in a hybrid cloud environment."

Here are some guidelines for choosing tools that will improve your ability to see and manage systems in the cloud.

• 12 iPhones Apps That Will Make You a Networking Star
• 10 Careers Robots Are Taking From You
• Big Data Gold Isn't Always Where You Would Expect It
• 6 Tips to Build Your Social Media Strategy
• A walking tour: 33 questions to ask about your company's security
• 15 social media scams
• The 7 elements of a successful security awareness program