Why IT environments lack structure
Why more tools don't automatically mean more visibility
IT is built on systems, not on how they fit together
Many organisations grow, and their IT environment grows with them. That growth often happens organically and under pressure. Problems need to be solved, often quickly.
As a result, the functionality of a solution usually takes priority over how well it integrates with the existing IT organisation.
Every vendor provides its own dashboard or 'single pane of glass'. In practice, however, these dashboards often don't work well with products from other vendors.
In an IT environment with multiple vendors, the promise of a 'single pane of glass' can quickly turn into something that looks more like an abstract mosaic.
The information is often already there. What's missing is the connection between it.
During an incident, the search begins
During an incident, teams often have to work out which dashboard actually contains useful information. Administrators spend a lot of time searching for information that helps them understand what is going on.
Once the incident has been resolved, the next step is usually to find a way to prevent the same situation from happening again.
Often, it turns out that the incident could have been prevented if there had been better visibility of the component involved.
So another tool is added to the mosaic.
Another dashboard that needs to be monitored.
Not just during incidents
The lack of cohesion doesn't only become apparent during an incident.
When making changes, teams often first need to determine which systems depend on a component and what the potential impact of that change might be.
The same problem appears during handovers. Knowledge about the environment is often spread across different systems, documentation or the people who know the environment well.
Engineers therefore don't simply need more technical information. They need to understand how components are connected, what the dependencies are and what role a component plays within the organisation.
A different approach
At Retigra, we use a different approach to gain control over this situation.
Your IT environment often already contains much of the data needed to act proactively. With our Canopy platform, we provide a way to turn that abstract mosaic into a connected whole.
First, we document the environment in a Single Source of Truth (SSoT). This makes relationships and dependencies directly visible to operations teams.
We determine which components have an impact on the organisation's most important processes and add that context to the documentation.
Monitoring from the SSoT
We then use this SSoT to feed our monitoring pipelines, so we know which components need to be monitored and why.
We connect the monitoring to the systems of the underlying vendors. This allows us to aggregate data from different dashboards and provide it with the right context within the organisation.
The result is that relevant information becomes visible in one central place. This allows incidents to be resolved sooner and, in some cases, even prevented.
It also becomes immediately clearer which processes are affected by an incident, allowing the right people to be informed earlier.
Sound familiar?
If your team has to figure out which dashboard contains the right information every time an incident occurs, the problem isn't just your monitoring. It's the lack of cohesion between systems and information.
We help you identify where information is fragmented, where context is missing and how to get a better understanding of the relationships and dependencies within your IT environment.
Want to see what that looks like in practice? Schedule a Canopy demo or discuss your current situation with us.
