Selecting a tool for Application Performance Management requires careful consideration. This article reviews 3 key considerations for APM solutions.
Any organization that is running business-critical and time-sensitive applications is in need of some sort of performance management system. When researching what type of performance management tool to invest in, things can get confusing. Surfing the web yield a sea of empty marketing messages, as the term “application performance management” is vastly over used. Below are a few considerations to think about when choosing an application performance management (APM) solution.
1. An application performance management offering must include an end-user monitoring capability
How else can you know how your application is really performing?
End-user monitoring tools provide a wonderful snapshot of how applications are performing. When it comes to Web application management, there is a long list of network appliances that serve the purpose—giving you a plug and play solution—with no need to install anything on the user’s desktop.
But what happens when the end-user monitoring tool that you are using for your Web application management shows that latencies have gone wild? You need an application performance management solution that knows how to connect between the latencies that users are seeing and the problem that is causing the latency in the data center.
Now, of course, you don’t want your investment to eat up your entire IT budget, so purchasing more than one performance management tool is simply out of the question. Network appliances cannot make the full connection to enable true APM.
2. An application performance management tool should aid with data center management
Why settle for an application performance management tool that sees only the application server?
True application performance management cannot be done with run-of-the-mill server management software. Conversely, true performance management solutions can perform data center management. The need for application performance monitoring tools to provide data center management comes from the complex, distributed, and interdependent nature of applications these days.
Application performance monitoring solutions must take into consideration the entire data center if they are to perform proper triage of a problem. Many data center management tools use information that is collected from server management software that is installed on various tiers. The problem is that you end up collecting a whole bunch of resource consumption metrics that do not correlate to what the end user is actually experiencing. Not monitoring what the end user sees means that users could be experiencing major problems with the application. However, you won’t know about it unless they contact customer service. The end result is that there are many cases where server management software shows availability is fine, yet to the view of the end user, transactions are taking too long to process.
3. Application Performance Management – Monitoring Network Performance
How good is your application without the network that it is sitting on?
Monitoring network performance also plays a role in application performance management. Imagine that your end-user monitoring tool shows that latencies are too high, while the latencies that you measure within your application server are only a small percentage of the total latency that your users are seeing. Only by monitoring network performance will your application performance management tool provide the performance management solution that will cover all of your bases.
Transaction Management Provides the Single Solution
Monitoring every transaction from the end user through the network and to data center is the only way for an application performance management solution to cover all of the bases that are listed above. This discipline is known as transaction management. Read more about Correlsense SharePath for transaction management, and view our videos.
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