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IT-AS-A-SERVICE:
A SEA CHANGE IN
IT DELIVERY

The abbreviation aaS has become ubiquitous over

the last decade and a half. It denotes information
technology delivered as a remotely hosted and
managed subscription service rather than a traditional
software licensing or equipment buying or leasing
model.

There is software-as-a-service for application

software; infrastructure-as-a-service for compute,
print and storage; platform-as-a-service for application
development and middleware storage. And dont forget
business process-as-a-service for things like payments,
e-commerce enablement and customer service; IT
operations management, storage management and
security management as-a-service; and even cloud
advertising services.

Add it all up and its a market worth nearly $204bn this

year, expected to grow to a nearly $318bn space by
2019, according to Gartner. The research firm says 58%
of IT organizations use these services today, a number
that should increase to 71% by next year.

On-premises, inside-the-firewall technologies may

never go away but IT organizations large and small are
increasingly looking to source more and more of their IT
to these cloud-based IT-as-a-service offerings. Savings
in capital expenditures and administrative overhead and
gains in flexibility, agility and capabilities will continue
to make IT-as-a-Service a viable alternative to traditional
on-premises IT.

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TRUST: THE
KEY TO THE ITAS-A-SERVICE
BUSINESS

Despite its benefits and cost-savings, adoption of ITas-a-Service isnt an automatic for IT organizations.
These organizations need to know that they are dealing
with a trusted provider who will deliver the service
the organization pays for and that that service will
be available, accessible and secure, and performing
at optimum service levels to support the customers
business. The IT-as-a-Service providers reputation goes
a long way toward cementing that trust. But reputation
alone isnt enough to secure the customers trust. The IT
organization needs a service level agreement (SLA).

The SLA is a contract between a service provider

and its customers that specifies what services the
provider will furnish, the availability and uptime of
those services, application or service response time
and other specific performance benchmarks, and the
number of concurrent users that can be supported.
SLAs often include a provision for notification schedules
in case of maintenance windows or other changes
that could create scheduled service outages as well
as promised help desk response and resolution times.
Ultimately, SLAs need to show that IT-as-a-Service
can be measured and justified with relief provided to
the customer if service levels are not met. This can
include stating how any downtime will be addressed
by the service provider and how customers will be
compensated when service levels are not met.

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IT-AS-A-SERVICE
MONITORING WITH
CATCHPOINT ONPREM AGENT

Catchpoints Synthetic Monitoring and Real User

Measurement technologies are used to monitor web
applications and transactions and the overall customer
experience of those sites. But we can also monitor your
internal network architecture and application service
levels with our OnPrem Agent technology.

Catchpoint OnPrem Agent is software that is deployed

on a physical or virtual appliance. This appliance is
then deployed wherever you most need it, whether
thats in your datacenter, branch offices, call centers,
or brick and mortar stores. In the IT-as-a-Service use
case, the agents are deployed in the service providers
data centers, tapping into local network connectivity
and monitoring both the networks themselves and any
application thats connected to the network.

Like Catchpoint Synthetic Monitoring, OnPrem Agent

scripts interactions with your customer-facing systems
and tests local network and Internet service levels. By
running these tests at constant and regular intervals,
IT-as-a-service providers can ensure that their customerfacing systems remain available and running at peak
performance and are meeting their customers service
level agreements.

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REPORTING AND
ANALYSIS IN THE
CLOUD

All data collected by OnPrem Agent at data center

locations is processed, stored and analyzed, in realtime, in Catchpoints proprietary Orchestra No/SQL inmemory database. IT-as-a-Service providers can access
and run reports on their granular, object-level data,
in addition to aggregate data, from their Catchpoint
portal.

Raw data is kept for up to 3 years, as it is for all

Catchpoint products. Using OnPrem Agent in context
with Catchpoints Synthetic Monitoring helps you to
pinpoint exactly where performance problems are
coming from, whether from internal or external network
and Internet infrastructure. IT-as-a-Service providers
end up with a fairly complete view of the health of their
online systems including availability, performance and
reliability, ensuring that their customers experience
is protected and service level agreements are met.
And they can ultimately see how performance affects
revenue.

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5 REASONS YOUR
SAAS BUSINESS
SHOULD MONITOR
BEHIND THE
FIREWALL

Now that weve looked at how IT is moving to the cloud

and the opportunity that presents for IT-as-a-Service
providers and how Catchpoint OnPrem Agent can be
used in these environments, lets explore five ways
OnPrem Agent can save service providers businesses.

SLA Adherence
Your customers are monitoring their service level
agreements with you. We knowwe help them
do this. But if you leave it up to your customers to
point out that you didnt meet the requirements
of your service level agreement, youve essentially
failed at the most important part of your business:
keeping customers happy and satisfied. It will cost
you money in the short run and could cost you your
customer in the long run.
Catchpoint OnPrem Agent can help you to
proactively monitor the service levels youre
providing to your customers, alert you before your
SLA is breached and provide you with analytics on
whats causing potential service drop-offs so you
can remediate the problem before your customers
are impacted.

Monitoring at and from remote locations

All business is global today and IT-as-a-Service
providers can serve a global audience. But you
need instances of your service close to your
customers and then you have to be able to

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monitor those services from those locations. You

5 REASONS YOUR
SAAS BUSINESS
SHOULD MONITOR
BEHIND THE
FIREWALL

cant monitor an instance in London or Bangalore

from New York for example, or vice-versa.
Fortunately, Catchpoint OnPrem Agent goes
wherever you need it. You can benchmark your
service instances against each other, monitor
for local Internet connectivity and latency
and ultimately deliver a consistent end user
experience from any location.

Making sure new releases dont kill performance

The nature of the IT-as-a-Service business is
that new builds, features and service updates
are constantly being put into production. Yet
any update to a service can inadvertently
cause unexpected performance degradations,
sometimes even outages. With Catchpoint
OnPrem Agent, you can test your services
running on the latest builds before putting them
into production. You can compare performance
metrics between the old and new versions, giving
near real-time feedback to your development
teams. Any performance issues can be triaged
and remediated before new services are put
into production, preserving the integrity of your
customers experience.

Demonstrating your services capabilities and

winning customers trust
A sometimes overlooked benefit of using
Catchpoint OnPrem Agent is its value as a sales
enablement tool. Service providers can use the
technology to monitor their own services, then
use that performance data to demonstrate

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the integrity of their services to prospects. If a

5 REASONS YOUR
SAAS BUSINESS
SHOULD MONITOR
BEHIND THE
FIREWALL

prospective customer can see how much your

service can speed up their web applications,
theyre far more likely to sign on the dotted
line. And of course, its not just about speed but
availability and reliability as well. The monitoring
data generated by Catchpoint OnPrem Agent
can tell a story that your customers and
prospective customers are going to want to hear.

Monitoring at and from remote locations

Are you ready for HTTP/2? How about IPv6?
The Internet will eventually use both as a data
communications and transfer protocol and
traffic-routing protocol respectively. With
Catchpoint OnPrem Agent, you can test your
services against both protocols and compare
them to the existing HTTP/1.1 and IPv4 protocols.
Migration to HTTP/2 and IPv6 can bring new
performance improvements and efficiencies
to both you and your customers. Testing your
services against these protocols can help
ensure a smooth transition and support future
innovations that help you win new business and
retain your existing customers.

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ABOUT
CATCHPOINT

Catchpoint is a leading Digital Performance Analytics

company that provides unparalleled insight into your
customer-critical services to help you consistently
deliver an amazing customer experience.

Designed for digital business, Catchpoint is the only

end-user experience monitoring (EUM) platform that
can simultaneously capture, index and analyze object
level performance data inline across the most extensive
monitor types and node coverage, enabling a smarter,
faster way to preempt issues and optimize service
delivery.

More than 350 customers in over 30 countries trust

Catchpoint to strengthen their brand and grow their
business. To request a free trial, visit www.catchpoint.
com/freetrial.

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