Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Topology is a multilayered map showing how everything in the IT environment is related. It's similar to Google Maps, which gives you a bird's eye view into an area and how everything is interconnected. Also, in Google Maps, you can see how traffic is flowing and which intersections may be causing bottlenecks. A view into topology allows similar visibility. You can see how components of an IT system are laid out to interact with each other.

A floor of commotion bustling with people holding phones and shouting out purchase and sell orders, some using hand signals to communicate over the noise. This was a common scene on Wall Street in the 1980s. Nowadays, transactions happen at the push of a button with traders sitting directly in front of a computer. In fact, the computer has made it possible to automate the buying and selling of securities, leading to an era of high-frequency, algorithmic trading.

When starting a cloud migration project, one of the most important and often challenging parts is to have an accurate understanding of what you are trying to migrate. Over time, companies start new projects, which means creating new infrastructure, adding servers, databases, etc. This is a normal part of the development cycle. However, despite best efforts, inventories get out of sync.