Business impact analysis

Abstract

A system and method is disclosed for identifying and evaluating the business relevant impact of observed operating anomalies of monitored components of computing environments like data centers or cloud computing environments. The disclosed technology uses end-to-end transaction trace, availability and resource utilization data in combination with topology data received from agents deployed to the monitored computing environment. An abnormal operating condition is localized within a topological model of the monitored environment and has a defined temporal extent. On detection of an anomaly, affected transaction traces are selected that used the topology entity on which the anomaly was observed while the anomaly existed. Those transactions are then traced backwards, until a topology entity is reached that represents an entry point of monitored system. The affected transactions are compared with unaffected transactions that entered via the entry point to determine the extent to which the entry service is affected by the abnormal behavior.