The Need for Monitoring in the Digital Workplace
Reviewed and updated in October 2026.
Monitoring is a key part of any IT infrastructure. It keeps an eye on what is going on, ensures good quality of service for end users, and gives peace of mind to everyone involved, from the IT support team up to senior leadership.
What is IT monitoring? IT monitoring continuously collects and analyzes status and performance data from the systems an organization depends on, such as UEM, email, messaging, web services and mobile threat defense, and alerts the responsible team when something deviates. Its purpose is to find problems before users notice them. And it only works when every alert reaches someone who knows what to do with it.
What monitoring does
The primary task of monitoring is to collect and analyze data from the different systems in the ecosystem (messaging, web, MTD, email and so on), detect possible issues or service degradation, and notify the responsible person so they can act if needed. Ideally this happens proactively, before the problem reaches end users. The last thing any IT service provider wants is a phone call from a VIP user or, even worse, from the CEO, asking what is going on and why IT was not already aware of it and working on a fix.
Spotting recurring issues and planning capacity
Monitoring also detects recurring issues that may point to a bigger problem, such as a hardware malfunction. And it helps you anticipate when the infrastructure needs an update or upgrade to keep up with growing demand from users and the mobile devices they bring to work. For the latter, an accurate inventory is crucial: it ensures a minimum level of security and reveals devices that were never authorized, so you can block them or ask the user to enroll them in the company UEM and bring them back into compliance.
Why the response matters as much as the alert
In the end, monitoring is only as good as the response to an alert. People have to take the right action once they are notified, and this is where the fun starts. In a small environment it might be easy: a jack-of-all-trades administrator working nine to five knows what to do, because they most likely built the environment themselves. Most environments, however, have larger teams that are each responsible for specific tasks and parts of the infrastructure. The right team has to be triggered for the right issue, with a documented process so they know what to do in most situations, for example restarting a specific service.
Responders need secure remote access
That is manageable when the whole team sits on premises. With outsourced services and more people working from home, you also need to make sure responders can connect to the infrastructure securely from wherever they are, whether that is a service center on another continent or a home office a few miles away.
On-call staff must be reachable
Responders also have to be reachable when they are needed. This sounds obvious, but anyone who has been on call will remember needing to escalate to a colleague who could not be reached: phone switched off, battery empty, no signal, call forwarding from the landline not working, or one of our favorites, simply asleep.
Even large providers have outages
In July 2024, a faulty update for CrowdStrike's Falcon sensor caused Windows systems to crash around the world. Microsoft estimated that 8.5 million Windows devices were affected. The cause sat with a vendor, not with the affected organizations, and that is the point: if it can happen to well-established providers, it can happen anywhere in your infrastructure. Monitoring has to cover the services your users depend on, not only the ones you run yourself.
Monitoring a multi-vendor digital workplace
Most organizations run several UEM, mail and security platforms side by side, and every one of them comes with its own console. A combined view needs a layer on top that pulls status data from each system. ISEC7 SPHERE, introduced in Introducing ISEC7 SPHERE, is that layer: it brings data from UEM systems, servers, networks and applications into one database, calculates a real-time health status and sends notifications by email, SMS, SNMP, Microsoft Teams, ServiceNow or BlackBerry AtHoc. Expiring certificates are a classic blind spot; Certificate Monitoring with ISEC7 SPHERE shows how to close it. For general UEM hygiene, see Best Practice: Get the Most out of Your UEM.
Monitoring is integral to the quality of service for end users and to the quality of the IT infrastructure itself. A monitoring solution succeeds when it detects existing and potential issues, alerts the right people, and is backed by a diligent and responsive service team.
So how are you monitoring your mission-critical infrastructure? And are you monitoring all of your mobile infrastructure?
Frequently asked questions
What should be monitored in a digital workplace?
Everything users' work depends on: UEM servers and cloud services, mail systems, network components, security tools such as MTD and EDR, and the compliance state of devices, including OS and patch levels. Certificates, tokens and client secrets with an expiry date belong on the list too, because an expired one stops enrollment or connections.
Why is proactive monitoring better than waiting for user reports?
Because an alert that names the failing component arrives before users are affected and shortens troubleshooting. A user report arrives after the impact and rarely says where the problem is.
Who should receive monitoring alerts?
The team responsible for the affected component, with a documented procedure for the most common cases and an on-call rota that has been tested. Alerts that open tickets automatically, for example in ServiceNow, keep the handover from getting lost.
Can one tool monitor several UEM platforms?
Yes, if it sits on top of the platforms and reads their APIs. ISEC7 SPHERE does this for BlackBerry UEM, Ivanti, Omnissa Workspace ONE UEM and Microsoft Intune at the same time; every connection needs a service account in the connected system.
Want to bring your monitoring up to date? Learn more about ISEC7 SPHERE, our endpoint management services and our trainings, or contact us with any questions.
