Monitoring-as-a-Service is a cloud offering provided by VMware Cloud Service Providers (VCSP) that enables organizations to use a service that proactively monitors their cloud IT infrastructure, applications and services without having to manage the underlying monitoring tools themselves. This VCSP solution enables enterprises to gain insight into the performance, availability and health of their systems while leveraging the scope and expertise of VCSP.
Challenges customers face
For organizations that do not use Monitoring-as-a-Service, the consequences can be wide-ranging, from operational inefficiencies and increased costs to reputational damage and reduced customer satisfaction. Gaining insight is essential to maintain and optimize resources for better application performance. Adopting monitoring solutions can be a critical step towards a more resilient and efficient IT environment. If this is not the case, organizations may find themselves vulnerable to unexpected failures and security breaches that could be mitigated by proactive monitoring. According to Flexera’s State of the Cloud 2024 report, the top cloud challenges facing organizations are cloud spending management, security and a lack of expertise. Monitoring solutions help minimize downtime costs by preventing bottlenecks, proactively monitoring logs for security events or policy violations, and reducing the need for manual updates and compensating for inevitable skill gaps.
Companies often use various tools to monitor the health of their infrastructure. In addition, the ever-increasing volume of data generated can overwhelm traditional monitoring tools. Without capacity planning capabilities, organizations often spend on hardware purchases based on inaccurate historical estimates. Lack of visibility makes it difficult for teams to identify performance issues and their root causes because services touch many parts of the infrastructure. According to the VMware Cloud Foundation Operations 2024 Forrester Total Economic Impact™ report, organizations can reduce relative downtime by up to 5x and improve operational efficiency by more than 75% (3-year benefits).
The critical importance of monitoring as a service
By adopting end-to-end monitoring solutions from VCSP, businesses can leverage predictive analytics for continuous traffic management, compliance and intent-driven placement that helps optimize performance and costs. Without these safeguards, organizations could be vulnerable to unexpected failures and security breaches—problems that proactive monitoring could easily help mitigate.
The IDC Spotlight on Modernizing IT Ops 2024 states that superior AI applications, ease of use, and customization are the top factors driving customers’ decisions when choosing a monitoring tool. VMware Cloud Foundation’s cloud monitoring capabilities offer a single-pane-of-glass view for monitoring across multiple ecosystems along with AI-powered anomaly detection and include the ability to create custom alerts relevant to an organization’s service. According to the VMware Cloud Foundation Operations 2024 Forrester Total Economic Impact™ report, this can lead to a 75% improvement in operational efficiency, a 20% reduction in problem resolution time, and a 50% increase in team coordination efficiency.
Why is Monitoring-as-a-Service a Game Changer?
It enables organizations to gain critical insight into the performance, availability and overall health of their systems, enabling proactive management and rapid response to any emerging issues.
- Real-time stats at your fingertips: Monitoring-as-a-Service provides continuous monitoring and immediate visibility into an organization’s cloud and IT environment, enabling them to detect and address potential issues before they escalate into major breaches. They can receive custom notifications to manage the health of their resources and services.
- Scalable expertise: By partnering with you, VCSP, businesses can access a wealth of expertise and cutting-edge technology without the overhead costs of maintaining these resources themselves. This not only saves them time, but also allows their team to focus on strategic initiatives that drive business growth.
- A cost-effective monitoring solution: Monitoring-as-a-Service can operate on a flexible, pay-as-you-go pricing model that aligns with business needs and budget, and many VCSPs will include this option as default for customer cloud services. This allows customers to avoid large upfront investments in monitoring infrastructure and can scale effortlessly as their business evolves.
- Higher performance and reliability: With powerful analytics and monitoring capabilities, organizations can ensure their applications run smoothly and efficiently. They can visualize ongoing status and trends using ready-made dashboards, reports, heatmaps and graphs. Improved performance translates directly into better customer experience and satisfaction.
- Seamless integration: Monitoring-as-a-Service integrates effortlessly with existing workflows and tools, offering a cohesive technology ecosystem that increases productivity and operational efficiency.
How can VMware cloud service providers use monitoring as a service?
As part of VMware Cloud Foundation, VCSPs gain access to our end-to-end monitoring solutions, which include VMware Cloud Foundation Operations, which offers visibility across compute, storage and network. Components of this service include VMware Cloud Foundation Operations (formerly Aria Operations), VMware Cloud Foundation Operations for Logs (formerly Aria Operations for Logs), VMware Cloud Foundation Operations for Networks (formerly Aria Operations for Networks). As a VCSP, you can offer Monitoring as a self-service or managed service.
VMware Cloud Foundation Operations
VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Operations helps businesses achieve more efficient and cost-effective IT operations by maximizing the effectiveness of VCF resources and proactively addressing potential issues:
- Proactive performance management: Artificial intelligence-based anomaly detection and predictive analytics prevent problems and reduce downtime and firefighting.
- Intelligent resource optimization: Recommendations for right sizing, reclamation and placement optimize resource use and reduce costs.
- Automatic correction: Policy-based automation simplifies troubleshooting and repairs, saving time and effort.
- Manage cost visibility: Track costs across the environment for better budget control and as a cloud service provider, help customers manage their cloud spend, the biggest challenge facing every end customer today.
Learn more here.
VMware Cloud Foundation Operations for logs
Allows management and analysis of logs. By collecting logs from across the VCF infrastructure, including servers, virtual machines, network devices, applications, and operating systems, this solution helps turn vast amounts of unstructured log data into actionable monitoring insights. Solve problems using predictive analytics, machine learning and root cause analysis tools across physical and virtual environments to solve your service problems faster. This makes it easier to search, store and analyze logs and identify compliance incidents, anomalies and security delays. It can proactively monitor logs for security events or policy violations. Learn more here.
VMware Cloud Foundation Operations for Networks
Networks are the backbone of any cloud and an essential tool for monitoring VCF-based clouds. Network Operations helps detect, optimize, verify, and resolve application security and network connectivity issues. It provides network visibility, analytics for acceleration, policy-driven network segmentation security (preventing human error), minimizes application migration risk, troubleshoots and optimizes network performance, and manages and scales environments with confidence. Learn more here.
Access the Go-To-Market Kit:
To support your efforts to raise awareness of your offerings as a VCSP, Broadcom has created a Monitoring-as-a-Service go-to-market suite that provides you with a set of assets that you can customize with your own messaging, branding, and details about your solution offering. This suite helps you refine your outbound messages and tailor them to specific audiences to support your marketing efforts with ready-made campaign assets relevant to each stage of your customer journey. With these ready-to-use resources, you can launch your services quickly and efficiently.
These assets include a messaging document, customer e-book, inside sales education whiteboard, one pager, infographic, complete digital and social suite, email support sequence and video solutions. They describe the value proposition that will resonate with your customers, explain the value of the offer, what’s included, why customers need it, as well as a guide to the initial sales conversation and an overview video. As a Pinnacle or Premier Partner in the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program, you can request access to our go-to-market monitoring suite to differentiate and monetize your solution.