Monitoring a Service-Oriented Architecture:

Gain Visibility and Improve System Health

The distributed nature of today’s business environment requires applications to interact with remote systems and services. Often, these systems and services may run on disparate operating systems and frameworks. In addition, as application design practices continue to evolve, the scenario that provides the most benefits is one that allows distinct separation of functions into discrete and re-usable components that can interact remotely with each other and with other systems and services.

Web Services and SOA
Web Services has evolved as a platform-, operating system-, and language-independent technology that allows application components to communicate over any network, including the Internet, using standard ports and protocols such as HTTP and HTTPS. The Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach uses Web Services to communicate across all sections of the application, including those that run within the same domain.

SOA helps architects and developers to disconnect the tiers of an application, while adding flexibility and promoting interoperability. This makes it easier to integrate processes with remote services and external business partners. However, SOA also introduces challenges that the architect and developer must overcome. These challenges include the location, segregation, and orchestration of services, as well as the implementation of a suitable system for monitoring performance in order to meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and operational requirements.

Intercept Studio: Delivering Visibility into SOA
Organizations worldwide are realizing the efficiencies of Web Services and SOA – creating flexible, re-usable components that save time and allow information to be shared faster than ever before. And, this information enables fast decision making. However, without the ability to gain insight into performance and utilization, organizations are unable to ensure the health (reliability and availability) of the SOA application.

Intercept Studio proactively monitors Web Services architectures, enabling IT and Support teams to detect, diagnose, and triage problems before end users are impacted. Because Intercept Studio has minimal impact on system resources, it is uniquely suited to monitor in-production applications for both code failures and performance bottlenecks, 24/7. This always-on approach is essential to ensuring mission-critical SOA applications are delivering the information end users need when they need it.

When a problem occurs, Intercept Studio automatically detects the event, categorizes it, provides a definitive root-cause diagnosis, and delivers a real-time alert with this information. Intercept Studio collects all the data related to the event to provide a complete picture of the end user’s experience, including relevant call stack, parameters, and variables. In addition, Intercept Studio groups related events by root cause and time for easy analysis, while also collecting and correlating key system performance indicators to provide a complete view of application and system health.

By providing visibility into Web Services and application health, Intercept Studio improves the manageability and support of SOA applications. Organizations gain real-time insight via a convenient graphical dashboard into availability and performance, allowing for effective monitoring and management of Service Level Agreements. In addition, comprehensive and customizable reporting allows for detailed trend analysis of application behavior.

By monitoring a SOA environment with Intercept Studio, organizations:

• Gain detailed knowledge of application availability and reliability
• Can proactively address problems before end users are affected
• Better understand how the components of an application interact
• Isolate, diagnose, and resolve application problems faster.

To test drive Intercept Studio for yourself, and see how you can enable greater visibility into your service-oriented architecture while improving overall system health, click here.