5 Tips on Building a Business Case for Nagios XI

Growing companies need their IT infrastructure monitoring solution to scale with them. Scaling an open-source solution, like Nagios Core, can be challenging because of the time and expertise required to add new devices and troubleshoot issues. When companies reach a growth point where their open-source solution can’t keep pace, they benefit from implementing an enterprise-level IT infrastructure monitoring solution, like Nagios XI.

To get the budget approval needed to upgrade to Nagios XI, system administrators often need to build a case for why they need it. Systems administrators should keep these tips in mind when selling Nagios XI to their teams.

1. Focus on Factors That Impact the Business

Nagios XI makes sense for growing companies because it increases productivity and prevents system downtime that could hurt the business. Systems administrators, who are expensive resources, can delegate common tasks to less technical users thanks to Nagios XI’s easy-to-use interface and point-and-click features. Companies are more productive when fewer technical users take over common tasks that free up the systems administrator’s time to focus on more business-critical issues that require their level of expertise.

Nagios XI’s sophisticated monitoring and alerting also allows system administrators to set up alerts to notify users of potential issues before a device, server, or network goes down. Proactive alerting with Nagios XI helps IT teams address problems before they result in downtime that can impact the organization’s ability to serve its customers. Focus on business factors like productivity, resource allocation, and the implications of downtime when selling Nagios XI to your team.

2. Explain Why the Ability to Monitor Any Device Matters

Companies can’t predict every device, tool, or app they will need to monitor in the future. For this reason, companies need to use an infrastructure monitoring solution that doesn’t restrict devices. Nagios XI can monitor just about anything using its built-in wizards and plugins, thousands of free plugins on the Nagios Exchange community site, or custom plugins written by users. Nagios XI also supports a wide variety of agent-based and agentless methods and accommodates several architectural approaches.

Another benefit of using Nagios XI, an enterprise solution with open-source roots, is that users have already done the work to figure out how to monitor thousands of different devices. Nagios took the most commonly monitored of these devices and created 70+ point-and-click wizards in Nagios XI that allow companies to get a new device added and monitored within a matter of minutes.

The flexibility of Nagios XI and its ability to quickly monitor commonly used devices are key factors to highlight when selling Nagios XI to your team.

3. Show the Benefits of Sophisticated Reporting

When selling Nagios XI to executives, demonstrate how executive-level reporting elevates the IT function, equipping them with information to fuel critical business discussions.

Nagios XI gives executives quick access to consumable data through reports that demonstrate the IT environment’s performance and availability. These reports give executives the information needed to guide conversations about the IT roadmap and future investments.

For example, capacity planning reports help system administrators predict when devices will reach their operating capacity, informing companies when they need to purchase new IT hardware (or else risk IT equipment failures). The IT team can also schedule reports to be delivered straight to an executive’s email, so they’re kept up-to-date on what’s performing well and what isn’t.

4. Discuss Security Implications

Security is a crucial implication to consider when selling Nagios XI to your team. The more data a company has, the more critical it is to invest in strong cybersecurity practices. Systems administrators should guide internal discussions about cybersecurity and communicate how important it is to use a tool that identifies vulnerabilities efficiently.

Nagios XI helps teams improve their cybersecurity by proactively checking for abnormalities and security issues and quickly notifying the right IT team members. The solution’s customizable thresholds and comprehensive monitoring capabilities allow system administrators to define what types of events to alert on. For example, some companies might choose to receive alerts if webpage content is modified or if there is abnormal file or directory behavior based on defined criteria. Pairing Nagios XI with additional tools like Nagios Log Server further strengthens security monitoring by enabling checks for log events such as failed logins and code injection attempts.

Nagios XI’s sophisticated user management and permissions add an extra layer of security because they help system administrators manage the visibility and capabilities of each employee. When a new employee starts, the systems administrator can copy the user permission level they’d like the new employee to have and grant those permissions. Learn more about that here. These multi-tenant views prevent companies from assigning unnecessary administrator access to employees that don’t need it.

5. Demonstrate the Impact of a Central View

Nagios XI integrates seamlessly with other Nagios products, like Nagios Log Server and Nagios Network Analyzer. Nagios XI functions as a central monitoring hub, bringing together data from multiple products. Alerts from other Nagios products get pushed into Nagios XI, providing centralized visibility of network, device, and website status data collected by the entire Nagios suite.

Operating out of a single view saves IT teams valuable time toggling between tools and enables the connection of data across products for more effective monitoring, alerting, and reporting.

Systems administrators selling Nagios XI to their teams should focus on how the solution will strengthen their IT monitoring capabilities, ultimately leading to quantifiable impacts on the business.

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