In this competitive space, businesses want their services to always be available to the end-users. To improve service reliability and availability, businesses choose synthetic monitoring. Synthetic monitoring is an important technique to find the most common user paths for a business application. It helps businesses in forecasting performance issues for their digital interfaces and resolving them proactively. Read on to know about synthetic monitoring and its implementation.

Synthetic monitoring

Synthetic monitoring (also referred to as directed monitoring) is used for measuring the performance of business applications. A user path is simulated in synthetic monitoring and, then checkpoints are defined to measure the performance of applications. The simulated path is the same as any path taken by an end-user to access the business applications. As the synthetic users pass through each checkpoint, performance metrics are noted for the respective business application.

The traditional real-time user monitoring tools are not used for directed monitoring. Instead, a robust monitoring tool is used that could simulate the paths taken by users at regular intervals. AI for application monitoring has proved to be useful for directed monitoring. If the synthetic user can access business applications without any issues,  it means your application will provide high service availability.

How does it work?

The step-by-step processes involved in synthetic monitoring are as follows:

1. The user path is decided on which the synthetic user will travel. For example, you can choose to monitor the path that a user follows to buy a product via your business application.
2. Once the testing path is decided, IT experts must decide the performance measures that are to be tracked. Checkpoints are also decided between the user paths.
3. A synthetic user (bot) is created to go through the checkpoints.
4. At each checkpoint, the bot will report the responses to the monitoring system.
5. If an error is reported, it is quickly notified to the IT teams via the monitoring system.
6. Checks for the same path are carried out at frequent intervals under synthetic monitoring to discover issues.

Why synthetic monitoring is important in 2021?

Nowadays, businesses must focus on customer demands and preferences and launch business applications accordingly. The performance of business applications is critical for generating revenue and attracting customers. To pre-determine the issues that a user may face while using the business applications, synthetic monitoring is important. Also, the number of applications is increasing and, manual monitoring is not an easy task. To reduce the manual load, businesses require an automated monitoring solution. The best AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations) products and tools in the market focus on providing automated monitoring solutions.

Consider this example – In 2018, Amazon lost more than USD 70 million due to a simple connectivity issue. An ill-performing business application will not only downgrade the revenue but also hamper the service availability. You can avoid unexpected shut down of your critical business applications with synthetic monitoring.

Since you will be identifying threats before the user via synthetic monitoring, you can resolve them proactively. A decrease in MTTR (Mean Time to Repair) means you will boost your service reliability & availability. In this software-driven business space of 2021, you can gain an edge over your competitors via synthetic monitoring.

Why AIOps for synthetic monitoring?

AIOps can aid in automating synthetic monitoring issues. The benefits of using an AIOps based analytics platform for synthetic monitoring are as follows:

1. It can ensure end-to-end synthetic monitoring of your business applications with minimal manual efforts.
2. You can improve the overall observability of your IT infrastructure with AIOps digital transformation solutions.
3. You can quickly discover the source of an incident via an AI automated root cause analysis solution.
4. An AIOps based analytics platform will produce actionable insights for solving incidents within your business applications.
5. You can find and fix incidents within your business applications in real-time with an AIOps platform. An AIOps based analytics platform will let you perform synthetic monitoring proactively.

What are the types of synthetic monitoring?

You can apply synthetic monitoring for various testing paths as decided by your IT team. Some of the popular types of synthetic monitoring used by businesses are as follows:

1. Website monitoring

If you offer products/services to customers via website, you need to make sure it is up and running at all times. Website monitoring can aid in fixing any bugs or loading issues within your business website.

2. API monitoring

APIs are crucial for supporting integration between business applications. With synthetic monitoring, you can identify ill-performing APIs before they hamper the user experience.

3. Transaction monitoring

When the customers purchase via your website, any glitch or delay can make them abandon the website. With synthetic monitoring, you can gain observability into the transaction path a user follows on your business applications.

4. Browser monitoring

With browser monitoring, you can optimize your business applications for different web browsers. When your business application can load on numerous web browsers, you boost your service availability.

5. HTTP monitoring

Users may interact with your business applications from different geographical locations. Checkpoints are created at different locations and, the website is pinged from each location. The availability of the website at different locations is then reported via the monitoring system.

In a nutshell

There are also other types of synthetic monitoring based on business requirements. Many businesses use synthetic monitoring for testing the scalability of their business applications. If the business applications are not scalable, the service availability may decrease during high traffic. You can test new updates and features for your business applications before launching via synthetic monitoring. You can also define a custom path for interacting with your business applications and can perform rigorous monitoring.

The best AIOps products and tools in the market can reduce the incidents regarding your business applications by 40%. Many businesses are implementing an AI strategy to perform round-the-clock monitoring. Perform synthetic monitoring for your business applications now!