This document is addressed to Infrastructure Managers looking after mission-critical applications and responsible for monitoring SLAs (Service Level Agreements) for virtualised infrastructure; their staff; and associated business managers.

The nub of the business issue this report spotlights is that performance affects infrastructure risk just as much as availability (probably more so) but vendors of virtualised infrastructure platforms and services (and even an in-house technology provider) are loath to provide effective performance SLAs. In fact, even if they do provide performance information, can it be relied on to be unbiased? And, is it siloed rather than holistic? In the increasingly virtualised world, in order to deliver services reliably, companies need seamless access to performance metrics across their entire infrastructure, whether on-premises or in private/ hybrid/public cloud.