November 2011

Many companies are facing huge challenges as they move into becoming web companies. BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT's Brian Runciman MBCS spoke Nick Barker and Simon Oxley of Aware Monitoring, one of the finalists in the BCS IT Awards 2011, about their approach to addressing some of the issues raised by this.

With the continuous growth of e-retailing and the importance of web and mobile applications, site downtime and slowdowns can lead to unhappy customers, lost revenues and decreased brand value.

Aware Monitoring provides a comprehensive software solution that continually monitors websites or web applications and alerts providers to any issues, helping to keep users happy and revenues flowing. The product operates at a number of levels, from basic site monitoring to advanced monitoring of a customer's journey through a site, and is not only easy-to-use but requires no-installation.

‘Aware Monitoring is a web 2.0 style dashboard with a powerful user focus,’ says Nick Barker, Aware Monitoring’s CEO. ‘As with many web 2.0 simplified applications like Salesforce.com or Basecamp by 37Signals, we found that existing monitoring software could be made simpler and more effective.

'We wanted to provide end-user performance monitoring that was simple to configure, understand and use and this has enabled us to serve real-time transactional monitoring companies in new verticals like ecommerce and gambling.’

Aware Monitoring's service simultaneously uses two types of checks, protocol and 'real browser' monitoring, to double check applications are effectively working. It is effectively based in the cloud, using remotely hosted virtual private servers.

Location, location, location

The location of the company office at the Nottingham University Innovation Park enables frequent mutually beneficial interactions with other start-up organisations also based at the university.

Company staff is closely involved with the local and national start-up community, including sponsoring Nott Tuesday, a monthly tech event started by Adam Bird, CTO of Esendex, one of Nottingham's fastest growing technology companies.

This helps support and encourage the growth and development of the Nottingham technology business community.

Results

Aware Monitoring’s customer-centric innovation has won them the business of several of the UK's leading e-retailers and web application providers, such as Wiggle.co.uk, Boden, Kurt Geiger, Jigsaw, and Mfuse. The majority of these customers have upgraded to more advanced and extended service levels.

Aware Monitoring was a finalist in the BCS IT Awards Innovation and Entrepreneurship section.

BCS UK IT Industry Awards
Aware Monitoring