A significant trend is taking place in the industry as companies are increasingly taking their IT Operations management to Microsoft’s System Center platform. Microsoft’s System Center platform is made of a set of server products that help organizations comprehensively manage their network of Windows Server and Desktop systems in datacenters, hybrid cloud environments, and throughout the enterprise.

It’s increasingly become the centerpiece of IT Operations management strategy across the land.  Very recently a product hit the scene from BlueStripe Software that augments that management picture by focusing on applications, and thus delivering a full spectrum of monitoring and response capabilities that is rather unique.

BlueStripe’s product is called FactFinder, and it enables companies to have end-to-end monitoring of server, application, and performance across both platforms.  In a briefing with BlueStripe, it was clear how important this is to a service-focused organization.  Applications are the lifeblood of the enterprise and with FactFinder in place, they can now be visualized across data centers, across cloud environments, regardless of what components form the underlying architecture, whether Linux, Windows, Solaris, mainframe, and so on.

FactFinder actually discovers and maps the different components that form the platform for each application, whether physical, virtual or cloud – then it sets forth the monitoring in this concept of a business software service.  That includes a full-on awareness of the underlying components.  So imagine you’ve built up your enterprise applications and everything is swell, you’ve covered your bases and you can sustain an outage because everything was built right.  You’re not homefree however because not every issue results in an outage.  FactFinder is certainly useful in triage, but that scenario is where it really shines because sometimes, maybe most times issues start out as slowdowns and bottlenecks in your application.

Now you can identify that issue based on the application and isolate it before it becomes a widespread problem, across datacenters, out in the cloud, virtual, wherever. Anybody that’s into Service Management that sees that kind of capability is hopefully putting this on their must have list.  Speaking of that, it integrates easily with your Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and System Center Orchestrator to create an across-the-board application monitoring solution.

The following case studies make for some interesting reading as well:

Unum: http://bluestripe.com/unum-view
State Auto: http://bluestripe.com/livecasestudy

With so much focus on applications, it makes quite a bit of sense to utilize a product that builds application mapping for you.  Additionally, it’s built to work on the proven Microsoft System Center platform that is taking the enterprise IT Operations market by storm.  BlueStripe is based out of the technology magnet of Research Triangle Park in North Carolina and this strategic partnership with Microsoft is well-suited for the exact markets that Microsoft is quietly but surely conquering right now.

With a focus on end-user experience in applications, ever-higher standards of service can be achieved on these types of platforms, and BlueStripe is knee-deep in the thick of things.