How to convince your boss you need server monitoring

You've seen what Redgate Monitor can do for you. You've seen how it can help you keep track of your server estate. You've seen how it can help you troubleshoot performance problems, save you time each day and help you add value to the business elsewhere.

But one potential barrier is your boss. After all, they have an obligation to make sure new software is purchased responsibly and budget is spent effectively. You need to convince them why Redgate Monitor is right for your company, not just for you.

There are two things your boss will want to know:

1. How much will it cost?
2. How will this benefit our bottom line?

Let's see how to answer these questions.

Preparing the costs

There'll be two costs to your business:

1. Redgate Monitor subscriptions
2. Any additional infrastructure for installation

The Redgate Monitor sales team can help you with the initial costs and, importantly, ongoing support and maintenance (make sure you ask other suppliers about this, too). They can give you a bespoke quote based on your needs and your server environment.

For the infrastructure costs, take a look at the Hardware and performance guidelines for Redgate Monitor so you know what you need to get the most out of it. You might already have everything in place, but it's worth checking.

What are the benefits to the business?

This is the part your boss will be most interested in. What are the benefits and how can you quantify them?

The alternative: a manual approach

Whether you use a server monitoring tool or not, you need to monitor your servers. Otherwise, it's easy to miss critical performance problems.

Without a tool, you'll have to run a number of scripts and checks on each server every day. It can easily take 10 minutes per server to run these checks, even if you don't have to deal with any problems.

If you're looking after a larger number of servers, this time quickly adds up. How much is your time worth? This is a good way to demonstrate the time a monitoring tool will save you and your team each day.

Let's take Anna as an example

Anna has 20 servers. It takes her 10 minutes a day to check each server. That's 200 minutes (just over three hours) per day just to run basic checks.

Anna is paid $59 per hour, which means checking the servers costs $196 each day. That's $49,196 for 251 working days in a year. Over a three year period, the figure jumps to $147,588.

If Anna buys Redgate Monitor for all 20 of her servers it'll cost her $50,400 for the subscriptions and the support and upgrades over three years (she doesn't need to purchase any new hardware).

Using Redgate Monitor cuts her daily checks from three hours to 10 minutes. Over three years, checking servers with Redgate Monitor will cost the company just $7,404 in Anna's time.

What's the difference in cost?

Anna can now add more value to the business elsewhere

Anna's company could save over $85,000 across three years in Anna's time alone, but that's not the end of the story. Her company gains an extra 836 hours of Anna's time each year. Instead of being tied up with repetitive monitoring tasks, she can get on with other important projects that will really help her business succeed. The net value of using a monitoring tool could be far over the $85,000 mark.

Plus, when you monitor your company's servers effectively, you gain further benefits: better performance, less risk of unplanned outages, and a simpler audit process.

Summary

You've done your homework and calculated the current cost of manually monitoring your servers. You've got a quote for Redgate Monitor and worked out how much money your company will save by using it. You have seen how much more productive you can be, realized the value you can add to your company, and shown how Redgate Monitor can help you keep your systems working and make sure your company is as efficient as possible.

Now's the time to go and have that conversation with your boss and let them know why Redgate Monitor is not just going to benefit you, but your whole company.