We recently announced that we'd like to to talk to you about version 2 of our SQL Response alerting and monitoring tool. After all, you know best what you want to see in your ideal monitoring software, and we want to build a tool to your requirements. So we asked you to tell us what you wanted from a monitoring tool, to comment on our designs, and to send us your rough sketches of what you'd like to see on your ideal dashboard. We boldly called our project 'The Future of Monitoring' and the input we've received has matched our aspirations. 

We've had four fantastic entries to our 'Design a Dashboard' prize draw. The idea here is that we want to know what you need to see on your dashboard, but without requiring you to send a polished design. Winners will be chosen via a prize draw rather than on artistic merit. What we didn't expect then, was the first entry to be a fully functioning .NET application! Not deterred by this, it was followed by three more entries that prove the future of monitoring might look like anything from a Galileo Thermometer to an arcade game!

What have been equally thought provoking are the comments we've had from various readers of the blog. Just as the dashboards have given us insight into the high-level layouts, the level of detail in the comments has allowed us to define the precise metrics we need to display, from the global overview, through to the drill-down on Disk Counters.

We very much appreciate the contributions and look forward to handing out some prizes in November. In the meantime, we'll be talking to the many people who continue to sign up for our usability sessions, and we'll keep posting updates on The Future of Monitoring blog. And don't forget, it's not too late to enter our Design a Dashboard prize draw!

We look forward to seeing you on The Future of Monitoring.