It’s never just one thing

The challenge for any operations team is deciding which problem to fix first. Seldom do problems develop in isolation, nor is it likely the root cause is located where the problem was first noticed. Take latency for example. Noticing a trend toward higher latency at an endpoint is often a sign that the network is becoming congested somewhere—quite possibly an issue with over-utilization of an Ethernet port or a protection switch elsewhere. Without the ability to scan millions of KPIs, detect the ones that are trending in the wrong direction and then correlating them to find a common potential source, your teams may spend days chasing the wrong problem.

Seeing the ‘big picture’ and being able to correlate and prioritize all the known issues is what data-driven operations is all about. Fixing the right problem first can often mean solving many problems at the same time.