Top 5 Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring Platforms for Growing SMBs

If your small or medium business relies on cloud platforms to deliver customer-facing services, store sensitive data or run business operations, monitoring the availability, security and performance of your stack is now a business-critical priority.

Without real-time visibility and alerts, SMBs face profound risks – from revenue losses during outages to data breaches going undetected far too long. Legacy on-premises monitoring tools fail to provide the holistic insights needed across dynamic cloud environments. And attempting to manually monitor infrastructure typically proves ineffective for resource-constrained teams.

The good news is a new breed of cloud-native monitoring platforms now cater specifically to growing SMBs embracing public cloud and SaaS technologies. These tools deliver essential visibility while providing alerts, troubleshooting assistance, insights and reporting tailored for lean teams managing expansive and complex infrastructures.

This guide explores five leading solutions purpose-built to monitor hybrid and multi-cloud environments. We’ll cover:

• Key capabilities and benefits of adopting cloud monitoring
• Must-have features for SMB IT teams
• How these tools differ in terms of approach, strengths and ideal use cases
• Best practices for selecting and implementing the right platform
• And the top 5 contenders for SMB cloud monitoring

Let’s examine why advanced monitoring in the cloud is now mandatory for any successful high-growth online business.

Why Cloud Monitoring is Now Essential for Growing SMBs

According to RightScale‘s 2022 State of the Cloud Report, 87% of enterprises now have a multi-cloud strategy encompassing Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and other Infrastructure-, Platform- and Software-as-a Service offerings. The flexibility, scalability and potential cost efficiencies make adopting these technologies irresistible.

But the cloud also introduces daunting new complexity and risks compared to managing static on-premises gear. Bugs, misconfigurations, overloaded resources and other issues now have significantly greater impact on business operations. And the ephemeral nature of cloud infrastructure hinders troubleshooting using legacy processes and tools.

For SMBs, minutes of downtime can have serious consequences extending beyond mere revenue losses:

• Lost customers – Today‘s consumers have endless options and zero patience for poor digital experiences. 72% will churn after just one bad experience according to Harris Interactive research.

• Partner confidence – The health of partner relationships often depends directly on the reliability and security of interconnected systems.

• Reputational damage – Social channels dramatically amplify complaints when popular websites and apps fail users. Rebuilding trust is enormously difficult.

• Regulatory non-compliance – Dynamic infrastructure with poor controls frequently fail to adhere to privacy, financial or industry-specific regulations. Audits can inflict heavy fines.

Indeed, inadequate visibility itself poses severe risks. Lack of monitoring opens the door for security breaches to occur and persist for long periods before detection. Limited insights also leads to periods of overspending on unused cloud resources.

For these reasons and more, cloud monitoring platforms deliver immense value and extremely high ROI, especially for SMBs with infrastructure delivering revenue-critical services.

Capabilities like real-time dashboards, alerts, network tracing, log analysis and anomaly detection are now fundamental requirements for successfully navigating the cloud era.

Must-Have Cloud Monitoring Features for Lean SMB Teams

While needs vary between organizations, robust monitoring platforms generally provide:

Infrastructure discovery and mapping – Auto-detect relationships between cloud components to understand dependencies and interactions.

Resource tracking & cost optimization – Meter EC2 instances, Lambdas and other consumption-based services to right-size and minimize waste.

Availability & uptime monitoring – Verify critical systems and user applications are responsive and error-free.

APM and transaction tracing – Monitor application and API performance by tracing individual user requests across services.

Alerting & notifications – Custom rules allow flexible notifications so teams are instantly alerted to priority issues.

Log analysis – Collect, parse and analyze logs across cloud systems for debugging issues and monitoring for suspicious activity.

Incident management – Robust tools provide context and guidance facilitating rapid incident response.

Custom reporting & dashboards – Visualize and share metrics tailored to various stakeholder‘s needs.

Cloud compliance & security – Assess configurations against CIS benchmarks and monitor activity against best practices.

Let‘s now examine five leading solutions helping SMBs reap the benefits of the cloud without undue risk. We‘ll cover key capabilities, strengths and best fits to help determine the right choice for your expanding tech stack.

1. Datadog

Datadog needs little introduction as a leader in the observability space managing monitoring for massive enterprises like Spotify, Samsung and Citrix. But with pricing starting at just $15 per host per month, Datadog now brings robust capabilities well within reach for resource-constrained SMBs.

For growing teams struggling to monitor web workloads scattered across AWS, Azure and hybrid infrastructures, Datadog provides a powerful yet intuitive single pane of glass. With over 400 out-of-the-box integrations, key strengths include:

• Unified visibility – Monitor all of your hosts, containers, services, apps and databases from one UI with advanced correlations Spot patterns across interconnected systems.
• Actionable alerts – Flexibly configure notification policies by device, user, hours and severity. Rule types range from threshold and anomaly detection to integration-specific forms like pull requests from Gitlab.
• APM distributed tracing – Visualize code-level application performance across microservices to isolate the root of performance issues quickly.
• Infrastructure maps – Auto-generate maps illustrate dependencies between cloud components to understand exactly how systems interconnect.
• Log management & analytics -Aggregate log data from all cloud sources for advanced troubleshooting with filtering, graphing and pattern recognition.

With cross-environment visibility, intelligent alerting and powerful analytics in a consumer-friendly package, Datadog provides unmatched capabilities compared to alternatives.

However, for some SMBs, the 15 metrics per second collection rate may prove inadequate during traffic surges. And core requirements like APM tracing incur added fees versus some competitors. But with Datadog‘s free trial, growing teams can easily confirm it’s the right fit.

In summary, SMBs wanting confidence managing intensive workloads across cloud providers should strongly consider Datadog as a primary monitoring solution.

2. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor (SAM)

SolarWinds SAM takes an app-centric approach to monitoring resources across on-prem and public cloud environments. The platform auto-discovers application dependencies map and components so teams instantly understand chains of custody.

While Datadog offers greater breadth across infrastructure layers, SolarWinds competes well for SMBs focused mainly on application services.

Key highlights include:

• App dependency mapping – Automatic application component discovery identifies communications between app tiers. Teams gain visibility following requests passing between services.
• Performance dashboard – Out-of-the-box dashboards present key app metrics with threshold-triggered alerts when usage spikes occur.
• Synthetic transaction monitoring – Script critical user journeys through vital funnels to receive alerts when conversions fail.
• Log consolidations with indexing – Collect app logs from various sources for faster troubleshooting during incidents.

SolarWinds SAM brings together several disciplines – APM tracing, infrastructure monitoring, log analysis, and synthetic monitoring – into a consolidated view of app health and performance. For lean teams needing to quickly understand and manage communications between microservices, SAM excels. The templated dashboards and alerts also accelerate setup compared to more manual alternatives.

Downsides include comparatively limited cloud integration currently. And longer term, we‘ve seen some SMB customers outgrow SAM capabilities as infrastructure expands across hybrid cloud environments. But for small teams running vital apps primarily in AWS, SAM warrants close look as a simplified but powerful application monitoring choice.

3. Paessler PRTG

PRTG by Paessler strikes a strong balance between ease of use and advanced functionality for SMBs adopting cloud and on-premises infrastructure. The all-in-one solution consolidates server, network and application monitoring capabilities through an intuitive web UI.

Key highlights include:

• Affordability at scale – Competitive licensing model offers full-featured monitoring for approximately $1,600 for 500 sensors/nodes with volume discounts readily available.
• Broad infrastructure coverage – Monitor everything from AWS instances to Docker containers, VPNs, storage arrays, SNMP devices and custom application APIs.
• Usability – Dashboard customization and hierarchical mapping enable stunning visuals accessible for non-technical stakeholders.
• Flexible alerting – Define complex threshold and logic-driven notification policies routing alerts to appropriate responders. Integrate and escalate alerts using REST API webhooks.
• Remote connectivity – Supported remote connection protocols include SSH, SMB, FTP, HTTP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and more.

As an economical commercial-grade solution, PRTG makes robust monitoring accessible for growing SMBs. The breadth of coverage, from on-premises gear to IaaS services and beyond, helps ensure teams gain cohesive visibility as infrastructure choices evolve over time. Highly customizable and controlled role-based access permissions also keep various users well informed without information overload.

For SMBs wanting enterprise-class infrastructure monitoring capabilities without a big price tag, Paessler PRTG warrants a close look.

4. ThousandEyes

Most monitoring platforms focus primarily on internal resources and metrics – looking inward at your own hosts, apps and services. ThousandEyes flips perspectives to analyze external delivery outward to customers globally across web and internet apps.

From ThousandEyes testing vantage points around the world, SMBs gain unique visibility into:

• ISP and Public Cloud Performance – View real user metrics for infrastructure and app response. Identify issues in Azure regions, AWS availability zones or network slowdowns at specific ISPs.
• WAN/Internet Outages – Be alerted when carriers peer outages isolate regions or countries from infrastructure.
• DNS Infrastructure – Validate DNSSEC configuration, trace DNS propagation and pinpoint mismatches blocking application availability.
• VoIP/UC Delivery – Assess call quality metrics and manage SIP trunking uptime.
• SaaS Experience – For services like Office 365 and Salesforce, monitor external vs internal availability and performance.

By correlating app delivery metrics from global vantage points with internal infrastructure telemetry, SMBs can isolate whether issues stem from cloud platforms, networks or originating on-premises environments. Having objective visibility into the end user experience for modern web applications is incredibly powerful.

ThousandEyes pricing may stretch budgets for very early stage startups. However for revenue-dependent SMBs, the platform delivers tremendous value ensuring your services are reliably accessible and performing well for customers everywhere.

5. OpsRamp

Taking a fundamentally different approach, OpsRamp consolidates cloud infrastructure monitoring with event management, incident response and IT operations management in one modern platform.

OpsRamp centers around five key disciplines:

1. Discovery & Visualization – Automatically map dependencies across cloud and on-prem environments using live topology maps.
2. Infrastructure Monitoring – Instrument metrics, events and alerts aggregated across public cloud, containers, VMs and servers.
3. Intelligent Alerting – Machine learning reduces event noise and rapidly surfaces priority alerts using automated event grouping, correlation and routing.
4. Incident Management – Purpose-built console enables efficient incident response and remediation leveraging run books, collaboration and visibility into infrastructure changes.
5. Reporting & Analytics – Custom reports provide visibility into operations for both technical and executive stakeholders.

Such sweeping capabilities cater well to mature SMBs managing expansive, complex technology operations across distributed hybrid infrastructure. The breadth can provide a central nervous system and layer of intelligence unifying various monitoring, management and security tools.

For early stage startups or simpler environments, OpsRamp may prove overkill initially. However the platform can readily scale from a few dozen infrastructure elements and alerts to millions with the same UI and data model. OpsRamp pricing also scales progressively in a cost-conscious manner to accommodate growth.

In summary, OpsRamp excels for SMB graduates needing mature IT operations practices, automation and intelligence augmenting lean teams managing expansive hybrid clouds.

Key Considerations for Choosing Your Platform

With diverse solutions now available, identifying the ideal SMB cloud monitoring investment requires thoughtful reflection on unique needs and constraints including:

Current team skills & capacity – Look for intuitive navigation and workflows if teams lack monitoring expertise presently. Consider breadth of features versus phases of operational maturity.

Top platforms used – If standardized on AWS, optimize for native integrations and joint capabilities vs multi-cloud visibility.

Scale of current workloads – Size capabilities and licensing to your present needs but with room for growth over 24-36 months.

Application architectures – If running microservices, prioritize APM tracing to monitor interservice communications.

Compliance considerations – Assess security oversight, access controls and auditing functionality required.

IT roadmap – Understand expected trajectory for use of cloud, containers, serverless, VMs and bare metal over next few years.

While assessing technical fit, carefully gauge total cost of ownership against value delivered. Leverage free trials to validate capabilities before major commitments.

Getting the Most Value from Your Selected Platform

Beyond installation, follow these best practices with any monitoring tool:

• Implement role-based access controls – Limit visibility and control based on responsibilities to minimize configuration risks.

• Set alert thresholds wisely – Avoid false positives yet allow for adequate warning on performance issues.

• Build useful dashboards – Consolidate interrelated metrics telling a story vs presenting disjointed stats.

• Validate notifications work – Continuously test alert delivery ensures urgent notices aren‘t missed.

• Analyze trends via logs – Retain adequate history to inform capacity planning and optimize workloads.

• Regularly tune configurations – As the monitored environment evolves, review metrics, alarms and mappings are still appropriate.

• Integrate with complementary tools – Unify visibility connecting related IT management solutions via API integrations.

• Designate cloud monitoring owner – While collaborating with other technical leads, ensure clear ownership, accountability and resourcing.

Key Takeaways

Migrating business processes, data assets and services to the cloud can transform customer experience, revenues and operations for SMBs. But lack of visibility into the performance, cost and security of cloud infrastructure poses profound risks from outages to breaches.

Modern cloud monitoring platforms now make robust, enterprise-grade visibility accessible for high-growth startups. Platforms like Datadog, SolarWinds, Paessler PRTG, ThousandEyes and OpsRamp cater specifically to resource constrained teams running business critical systems deployed across hybrid cloud environments.

Capabilities like synthetic monitoring, application tracing, intelligent alerting and log analysis provide tremendous value ensuring reliable and optimal customer experiences. These solutions also help SMBs optimize cloud spending through detailed metering of consumption-based resources. And with strong security tooling, SMBs can verify configurations, user activity and events adhere to best practices.

For growing startups and small businesses selling through websites, web applications or SaaS services, investment in cloud monitoring should rank among the top IT priorities. Visibility and control over hybrid environments not only enables trust in cloud platforms but saves money by eliminating unneeded spend. With the right monitoring solution in place, teams gain peace of mind operating workloads in the public cloud or SaaS securely, reliably and cost efficiently.

Looking for guidance identifying the ideal cloud monitoring strategy and platform for your growing SMB? Reach out to discuss needs and constraints to determine the best solutions matching technical requirements, operational maturity and budget.