Twitter as Systems Management Tool

If you want people to pay attention to something, sometimes you have to bring it to them in a format they can’t ignore.

Crescendo Networks, maker of an appliance application delivery controller that essentially replaces the need for load balancers, has added the ability to send messages to systems management people via Twitter should certain traffic thresholds be exceeded.

Crescendo officials argue that because an application delivery controller sees all the traffic coming into the data center, the device provides a perfect hub for monitoring that traffic.

Application delivery controllers are a new class of IT infrastructure that has been specifically designed to balance traffic across hundreds of virtual and physical servers. In essence, they perform the same kind of tasks as a traditional load balancer, but can also given preference to different types of application traffic and scale to handle hundreds of servers.

Twitter, meanwhile, has become a primary vehicle for not only sharing messages with broad groups of people, but is also being increasingly used as a low-cost alternative for delivering specific messages, such as system alerts,  to small groups of distributed individuals.