Business Goals
Why did we start Tap In Systems? After all, the last thing the world needs is another IT monitoring tool. There are hundreds of them out there in all sizes and shapes - network monitoring, server monitoring, application specific, technology specific, open source, vendor proprietary, etc. etc. etc.
The compelling reason for us was to address a couple of unanswered customer needs:
- Provide value that is equal to your cost.
- Allow flexibility - in your technology choices and your financial plan.
Let me expand on this. I once had the job as head of network planning for a large company's IT shop. Whenever we needed to deploy new management software, our typical process was develop our requirements, find the market choices, evaluate the options, bring in a couple of vendors for evaluation, create a trial/pilot project, choose a vendor, negotiate the license, create an implementation project plan involving all affected departments, then execute the implementation plan. Typically this process would take a year. At any point in the process, our requirements could change which would restart the entire process. On major reason for this inefficient process was software license costs were extremely high, so you didn't want to make a mistake that would affect your company for years.
But what if you had the flexibility to easily implement and try a solution without the long term commitment? You could then provide a solution quicker and get immediate value. And if your requirements changed and required a different plan, you can change and not incur the penalty amortizing a large software investment.
The “new” change that enables us to deliver this type of solution now is of course Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud computing. This is a new concept to the systems management space. Why would your current software vendors want to offer this since they are making so much money with the current software license model? Since we have no legacy to protect, Tap In Systems can provide this capability by offering a fee system based on usage.
From a technology perspective, Tap In integrates with existing management systems as well as providing lower level agents. I'll save this topic for a future blog.
