Join Matthew Long, Richard Benwell, and a host of other Christmas contributors, as we close the year with 12 Tips and Tricks, a review of 2018, and what we can expect looking forward to 2019. Make sure you check out the links section below, as we've added loads of links to related resources this month. Happy Holidays!

Global Service Monitor (GSM) checks the availability of web-based applications from different geographies across the world. Why is that important? It gives an insight in to the end user’s experience, and how well the application works for them. It also allows the monitoring expert to isolate network from application issues. And the best news? SCOM takes that awesome data from GSM and beams it into the console.

SCOM surged forward as an application performance management (APM) tool this summer. It received a Customers’ Choice 2018 award from Gartner in the APM category. SCOM shared the honour with AppDynamics, Dynatrace, New Relic and Solarwinds. I see you thinking – how did this happen? Well, more than 50 reviewers gave SCOM an average rating of 4.2, which means it met Gartner’s criteria to win the award.