Business Process Monitoring describes the allocation of IT services to individual business processes. It gives IT officers and managers a holistic view of their IT infrastructure

The theGuard! ServiceCenter Business Views allow for the visualization of mission-critical processes in business maps. Comprehensive graphical representation functions are used to display any complex interrelations in a structured and appealing manner. The correlated status of the processes is determined in real-time; any effects can be immediately identified.

Continuous business process monitoring offers manifold advantages and possibilities: the dependency of individual work processes on the IT landscape can be transparently displayed. Possible effects of a system failure can be precisely determined.
 
The utilization of IT resources by a department or by individual users can be traced. By monitoring the mission-critical system groups, it can be determined whether the required response times were met from a user's point of view. What's more, the root cause analysis that is performed if errors occur is significantly accelerated: the fast recognition of infrastructure problems reduces average downtimes. 

In order to receive current status information, the business performance has to be actively monitored and assessed. This is done on the basis of business and IT-oriented criteria and their real-time monitoring. By verifying the compliance with defined KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), the level of effect on individual business processes or of interdependencies can be determined.  
Corrections and changes can be quickly and efficiently introduced thanks to automated processes. The close cooperation between IT departments and specialized departments forms the basis for

• the compliance with specific requirements
• the strategic and targeted use of resources
• the optimization of resources
• the achievement of business objectives

It is the comprehensive monitoring of IT components and their utilization that enables companies to meet the most challenging task in system management: the monitoring of entire business processes.
 
Status and performance of the applications and the IT infrastructure

• Network structures and components
• Connected systems
• Applications and uses

 
Monitoring of important function parameters

• Status of individual function components (managed objects)
• Status, availability
• Performance data

 
Visualization of business processes

• Graphical representation
• Correlated status information
• Recognition of effects on individual business processes

 
Targeted alerting

• Upon detection of failure of individual components or of affected areas
• Upon detection of performance bottlenecks (e.g. high latency times)
• Automated or specific coordinated alert responses

Comprehensive reporting

• Status, availability and performance data
• Compliance with established SLAs
• Long-term archiving with functions for the comparison with current data

 
Maximization of business process performance

• Targeted allocation of IT resources and IT investment
• Right-sizing, cost reduction

The status of the individual components of an IT landscape is determined using the monitoring functions of theGuard! NetworkManager or theGuard! ApplicationManager. This status information that was initially assessed individually is brought together using integrated correlation functions and then visualized with the help of the Business Views.

The Business Maps can be displayed using a standard Web browser. It is, for example, possible to communicate the availability of a business process for internal company objectives as well through integration with the Intranet.

External data can be transparently integrated regardless of the data source or type. Using a standard XML interface, external data is imported periodically, normalized and then processed like the company's own data. Furthermore, the SOAP protocol (Simple Object Access Protocol) is supported for the integration of external applications. SOAP is a protocol for the exchange of XML-based messages and provides rules for design of messages. These define how data in the message is to be displayed and interpreted and establish conventions for remote procedure calls using SOPA messages. The HTTP protocol is supported for the dispatch of messages.
The spectrum of data that can influence the status of business processes is thus not limited. It is possible to visualize and assess technical as well as, for example, commercial business processes (invoicing, etc.).

System administration and support employees can access detailed information on the Business Vies according to their respective roles or authorizations. The can take advantage of all theGuard! NetworkManager functions for further analysis.
 
The access to business process data facilitates the targeted response to support requests and error recovery for the support staff.

Optionally, it is also possible to integrate third party products into this concept.