The (unscientific) results are in... ESM = Monitoring

So I'm sure there was a wise person who was quoted as saying something like "If you ask people what is important they will tell you one thing. But observe their behavior and you'll often learn something very different". I had a bit of an experience with this principle at BarCampESM in Austin this weekend.

Ask any of the attendees (and their was decently broad representation from both big vendors, little vendors, and independent consultants) what "Enterprise Systems Management" (ESM) is all about and you get some great answers about topics like business service management, resource optimization, system control, business alignment, etc.

But as I watched the presentations and joined the lively discussions, there was one constant topic from which all other topics flowed... good old monitoring. It quickly became obvious to me that, if you boil things down to its core, the term "ESM" is all about monitoring. Everything else is an add on or an upsell! It makes since on some level since, like the old adage says, "you can't manage what you can't see". But it still came as a but of a surprise how much monitoring was the end point, if not the starting point, of most trains of thought.

For better or for worse, it appears that today's common world view goes something like this: How do you do Business Service Management? Correlation of monitoring events. Control? That's what you do in reaction to monitoring events. Resource optimization? That's when you setup your monitoring to gauge how well you run things. Business alignment? That's when you make sure the output of your monitoring tool is organized according to business concerns.

Monitoring. Monitoring. Monitoring. If you aren't a monitoring tool's "goesinta" (input) or "goesouta" (output) you really aren't ready to fit into today's ESM ecosystem. Hey, I'm not saying that there is anything intrinsically wrong with that. It's simply something about which we have to be honest with ourselves

Now, if you would excuse me, I have to go integrate with some monitoring tools.