Evaluate 3 IT ops use cases for the Aternity monitoring tool

Track the user experience

The Aternity monitoring tool offers different data points, such as application usage time, to help IT teams assess the user experience and identify potential app performance issues. In addition, the tool enables IT administrators to view the specific interactions a user has with particular application. Aternity assesses overall application health and performance, using metrics such as wait time and page load time.

One of the most important metrics for IT to track is how a change to a specific application or system affects a user. To help IT teams validate a change, such as an OS upgrade, Aternity measures key metrics, such as user activity and overall hardware health before and after the specific change occurs. This is particularly helpful in Windows shops, given the cadence of Windows 10 updates; IT admins must validate changes regularly.

Editor's note: Aternity was acquired by Riverbed Technology in 2016. In 2019, Aternity became its own independent division within Riverbed.

Monitor app performance

What separates Aternity from competitors, such as Systrack, is its ability to monitor the app performance of SaaS products, such as Office365. This is a much-needed feature for enterprises, as they look to hold SaaS providers accountable for service-level agreements.

To provide insight into how these applications perform, Aternity tracks metrics at the network layer of SaaS apps, such as response time and the time it takes the client device to perform SaaS app activities. For instance, for a web request, Aternity can determine whether the network, or an issue with the client, is the underlying reason for the request taking a long time to complete.

Aternity automatically discovers all SaaS applications in an environment before it tracks them.

Find root causes and troubleshoot

With AIOps, artificial intelligence correlates issues across devices and applications. In Aternity, machine learning algorithms drive root-cause analysis -- a task that demands a considerable amount of IT professionals' time, without the use of AI. The Aternity monitoring tool also supports data analysis through a built-in Tableau dashboard interface that supports a wide variety of charts. That said, the data that Aternity collects from devices isn't always as granular as it is in some competing tools.

Aternity users have access to remediation scripts via Github. These automated scripts can execute tasks ranging from uninstalling Zoom to installing a Windows patch from a network share.

Remediation scripts can also streamline common IT troubleshooting tasks. For example, let's say a device is deemed to have low disk space -- a fairly common circumstance that requires the removal of data from a disk to ensure the operating system continues to function. Aternity automatically detects this issue, prompts the user to clean the disk space, and executes a script to perform that task. This enables a user to continue to be productive and eliminates the need for an IT service desk call.

The Aternity monitoring tool also enables service desk personnel to reduce the mean time to resolution by detecting issues that occur on a particular device, and then providing the remediation steps to execute.