Interesting research article done by the Aberdeen Group:
http://www.aberdeen.com/c/report/research_briefs/5021-RB-solar-winds-users.pdf
I agree, we are monitoring end devices, but not end to end services.I've been using the custom property editor to assign application labels to all devices (nodes and interfaces) in an effort to measure the whole service with a single view.
Understanding all the components making up a service is very difficult for some of the larger National services such as CTI.