Today’s complex IT infrastructures are dynamic, multi vendor engines made of frequently changing components and technologies. The complexity of the infrastructure and the continual changes caused by business demands often lead to faults within the infrastructure. A fault in a single device can have a ripple effect that causes performance and availability problems for many users. The ripple effect also makes it difficult to pinpoint the root cause of the fault.

To remain relevant and competitive in the marketplace, companies must minimize outages and performance degradations and this requires effective performance and availability management. Unfortunately, many management tools are not adaptive and have not kept pace with the dynamics of real-time, on-demand IT. Other tools often used are niche tools that manage only a portion of the infrastructure, making them largely ineffective in large, interconnected environments.