Outsourcing, software as a service, virtualization and cloud computing are ushering in an era in which enterprises distribute increasingly critical IT assets and applications across multiple service providers and platforms. These changes are rendering legacy monitoring tools virtually useless. Here, Knowledge Center contributor Gary Read provides a list of seven criteria enterprises should consider when evaluating IT monitoring solutions that will enable them to extend monitoring from their data center to the cloud. – Economic pressures, scalability demands, advances in innovation, and the need to squeeze every bit of value available out of IT resources are all driving an enterprise computing paradigm shift. This shift centers around cloud computing and its promise to provide organizations with the ability to exp…