IT departments at most insurance carriers I’ve seen tend to monitor each layer of software, hardware and network infrastructure using different “vertical” monitoring tools. When users experience a problem it is not too difficult to detect the symptoms, like a slow process, server or database, but it is really difficult to figure out the root cause. This often requires a team of several technical experts in different domains to work together for several days or even weeks.
There are new Business Transaction Monitoring (BTM) capabilities out there, which make it easier and – to a large extent – automate the process of tracking the real-time flow of individual business transactions through the different technical layers and identifying what’s causing the problem. This can become an effective “horizontal” complement to the “vertical” tools I’ve mentioned above.
I’d be interested in opinions as to whether or not carriers and agencies are currently looking at such BTM capabilities, and if not – why not? I’m convinced there’s much to be gained there.
