I use Xymon because I started using Big Brother years ago when it was way ahead of its time. I continue to use Xymon because it continues to be a valuable tool and is easily extendable and extremely flexible.
You would probably be surprised by the number of vendors who have been amazed by the amount of data we capture and track across the wide variety of devices on our network. Also how easy it is to flip from looking at temperatures and humidity in our network closets to the number of users connecting to our ERP system throughout a given day. On top of all that, it finds issues and alerts the proper staff to take action, no matter when they occur.
We use devmon to monitor our network devices which are best designed for monitoring via SNMP (which is where it got its start), clients to monitor our servers, and custom scripts using a whole host of tools to monitor all kinds of other things.
I think the advice you got about getting xymon in and getting a demo started right away is the best you have been given. That is precisely what I did at my current location. I was able to do it because there were no license fees. After it was up and running, had already found issues, and had sent out alerts when something failed, it had pretty much proven its worth. The talk of other tools died quickly. Especially when it came time to put together proposals for money from already tight budgets.
.....Bruce
Bruce White Senior Enterprise Systems Engineer | Phone: 1-630-671-5169 | Fax: 630-893-1648 | bewhite at fellowes.com | http://www.fellowes.com/ Disclaimer: The information contained in this message may be privileged and confidential and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the message and deleting it from your computer. Thank you. Fellowes, Inc.