We live in the Internet era, a time when everything is shared through social media, everyone is connected to everyone else, and you can get any information about anything in a matter of seconds, no matter where you are. Almost everything we do is shared on the Internet for the whole world to see. Organisations and businesses use this opportunity for their marketing purposes and their own growth, often with great success.
Today, almost every business, whether a huge brand everyone knows or a small local business, has at least its own social media profile or a website people can use to get in touch and learn more. In addition, huge organisations provide a lot of web services for the masses.
Using this opportunity to share with the world and connect through the Internet, organisations — especially big ones — sometimes have problems with traffic on their websites, applications and services, which mostly happens when a lot of people try to access them at the same time.
Because of this, organisations and businesses try to monitor their web services so they can see and predict if a problem occurs, so they can resolve the issue fast. Most common is HTTP monitoring, which can be done in various ways and through various services. Some use free plugins, some use special software, and some hire whole teams to work on these issues. No matter which way they use, the results are almost the same: they get results about any pending problems and then try to resolve them.
Using HTTP monitoring gives results about HTTP objects in use, like the responsiveness of the servers, the status of DNS resolving, network connections, matching of content, authentication status, amount of traffic passed through, request methods (POST or GET), number of packets sent, loading time, and server timeouts. Getting results about these monitored HTTP objects gives organisations exact answers about where a problem is, so they can resolve it: Are the servers working and accessible? Is the correct web page shown? Are the contents of the website displayed correctly? How much data is transferred through the request methods when trying to access a particular page? What is the loading time of the page — is it fast or too slow? Do the servers crash when a lot of people try to access the page at the same time? Is the correct URL connected to the correct IP address? Is the number of packets sent correct, or are they overflooding the server, causing it to crash or slow down the connection? Are the client/server communications working perfectly?
If any of these issues occur and are not resolved quickly, the results are always the same: either the server crashes, leading to the website being inaccessible, or it slows down so much that waiting and loading time takes forever. Both result in people losing interest, losing paying clients, and getting bad reviews and feedback — leading to losing future possible clients and visitors, which is a huge loss for the business.
All of these are normal issues that can occur anytime, to anyone, but having good HTTP monitoring software or a good team leads to early detection and resolving problems almost in real time as they occur. What happens if those problems occur and the organisation doesn’t monitor them, or has poor HTTP monitoring software or an inexperienced team? Instant loss of clients and finances.
In conclusion, in this Internet era, organisations and businesses have to monitor their web services and try to resolve any pressing issue as soon as it’s detected — this should be a priority. Losing access to web services means losing clients, losing potential future clients, and a great loss to the business. Organisations must take precautions if they want to keep their business up and running.