We previously used Dynatrace and are still using Prometheus and Grafana. We switched from Dynatrace to ITRS, but are still using open-source monitoring solutions for the observability portion which ITRS falls behind on. Dynatrace had a delay in the alerting system because it sampled data every 50 percent which meant the tool had to wait for a certain amount of time before sending an alert. However, ITRS was real-time which helped the app support team take necessary actions. With Dynatrace alerts took around seven minutes and with ITRS Geneos Tool the alerts take two seconds to come in.

The main problem with our previous solutions was that the monitoring itself was not working at all. The other solutions didn't trigger the alerts. We didn't face this issue with ITRS Geneos. The installation of the monitoring tool itself failed or after being installed it didn't work. The product or the monitoring tool died for a few days and we had no monitoring which went unnoticed. We used different in-house tools based on whatever infrastructure was provided such as IBM or CompuCom. These solutions had a lack of application-related monitoring.

You can receive an alert within the tool where it flags the issue on the dashboards. You get real-time alerts in Geneos. You can also receive alerts via email. That is quick unless your email system has some delay latency. Geneos sends alerts within 20 to 30 seconds. It will throw the alert to your inbox and 13 chatbots. You can configure Geneos with chatbots also in real-time.

Our previous solution alerted us through an SMS or email. The alert would go to one person whose job is to monitor and if they were busy with another activity we would be delayed in responding to the situation. With ITRS Geneos, we can see everything on the dashboard. We can see the relationship between the two email alerts. We can also see the whole picture of where the issue is, allowing us to take action quickly. We can detect the actual connections between the two alerts. Suppose my alert comes from one server, and another alert comes from the client, we know there is a potential issue between the two servers and client connectivity. An email or SMS alert will never give us the full picture. So, at that time, I had to go into the system and focus on what the issue actually was. That was quite difficult. But now, with the new system, it's more proactive. We have started to monitor the system more closely because many of the alerts that we didn't have before are now enabled. For example, we have thresholds that warn us when we need to reduce space.

Over the years, the latency between the monitoring tools on the market has closed. A decade ago, BMC took over five minutes to provide an alert. Currently, AppDynamics and BMC claim that their alerts are within 20 seconds. ITRS Geneos provides real-time alerts.