After studying dozens of designs for application monitoring, it has been found that the optimal solution is often achieved through simple synthetic transaction monitors, combined with multi-measure containers for simple and less critical applications. The cost effectiveness of this solution is leveraged substantially when the same tools are used for monitoring release testing, and load testing of n-tier applications. The complex white box testing techniques are of useful primarily for diagnostics.

Applying these principles to application monitoring, coupled with a well-managed project, can achieve significant business benefits. These include higher application availability and employee productivity, and lower capital and operating costs. Whether using expensive monitoring software or open source tools, the value of the monitoring system derives from the effectiveness of its design and implementation plan, and the business processes that use its output - not the features of the software. For many organizations, this is good news.