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Choosing an APM Solution

New Ovum Decision Matrix Provides Guidance on APM
Michael Azoff

The market for Application Performance Management (APM) solutions continues to expand on the strength of innovation within the APM industry, resulting in new-generation tools, and also as a result of major shifts in IT usage around mobile and cloud, leading to demand for new APM capabilities.

To help IT decision-makers choose the right solution for their needs, the Ovum Decision Matrix on APM takes 10 of the leading APM solutions and evaluates and compares them side-by-side.

APM is Essential for Businesses, Providing Transparency into IT Applications and Infrastructure

APM is an essential activity for enterprises at multiple levels:

- During development, APM assists developers and QA staff with pre-release performance testing

- During live production, APM assists IT operations ensure mission-critical applications are running within the boundaries of SLAs (service-level agreements)

- APM supports the delivery of IT services to the business; advanced technology can preempt issues before end users are affected

- APM supports troubleshooting and defect-fixing when problems do occur

APM solutions monitor the IT environment, manage the gathering of metric data, and provide reports and dashboards for administrators, managers, and other stakeholders.

Cloud and Mobile Application Support is Essential for APM Solutions

APM remains a market with many different types of solutions, from hardware-based appliances to pure-software solutions. Typically, vendors approach the market with particular strengths and build out their coverage portfolio on top of these – for example, building solutions around complex event processing engines, or Big Data real-time analytics capabilities.

The market has seen a definite shift towards solutions supporting the latest mobile and cloud computing trends. As enterprises make better use of cloud services, and enterprise end users and consumers increasingly use smart mobile devices, the need to manage performance on these environments correspondingly grows. Another noticeable trend is the availability of APM-as-a-Service solutions.

Log Management Makes a Major Impact in APM

An emerging category within APM is log management, which has been growing at a strong pace with a number of new vendors joining the market; Splunk, in particular, has made quite a splash. These solutions mine the fields embedded in machine-generated data, including log files and headers in messages, and content that is generated by a host of applications from social network services such as Twitter, enterprise applications, and IT tools, including other APM solutions.

Log management tools process vast amounts of machine data in real time, exploiting Big Data technologies, so they represent a fusion of new technologies applied to existing categories of data. As the capabilities of log management tools are realized by users, developers write improved logs, creating a virtuous circle.

The incumbent APM vendors with Big Data capabilities are also addressing log management and are responding to this emerging solution category by better targeting their existing features.

To help enterprise IT users choose their APM tools, Ovum has recently published the Ovum Decision Matrix on APM 2014–15, which evaluates and compares 10 of the leading solutions in the market side-by-side.

Michael Azoff is a Principal Analyst at Ovum.

Related Links:

www.ovum.com

For Ovum Subscribers: Ovum Decision Matrix on APM 2014–15

Available from CA Technologies: Ovum Decision Matrix on APM 2014–15

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Choosing an APM Solution

New Ovum Decision Matrix Provides Guidance on APM
Michael Azoff

The market for Application Performance Management (APM) solutions continues to expand on the strength of innovation within the APM industry, resulting in new-generation tools, and also as a result of major shifts in IT usage around mobile and cloud, leading to demand for new APM capabilities.

To help IT decision-makers choose the right solution for their needs, the Ovum Decision Matrix on APM takes 10 of the leading APM solutions and evaluates and compares them side-by-side.

APM is Essential for Businesses, Providing Transparency into IT Applications and Infrastructure

APM is an essential activity for enterprises at multiple levels:

- During development, APM assists developers and QA staff with pre-release performance testing

- During live production, APM assists IT operations ensure mission-critical applications are running within the boundaries of SLAs (service-level agreements)

- APM supports the delivery of IT services to the business; advanced technology can preempt issues before end users are affected

- APM supports troubleshooting and defect-fixing when problems do occur

APM solutions monitor the IT environment, manage the gathering of metric data, and provide reports and dashboards for administrators, managers, and other stakeholders.

Cloud and Mobile Application Support is Essential for APM Solutions

APM remains a market with many different types of solutions, from hardware-based appliances to pure-software solutions. Typically, vendors approach the market with particular strengths and build out their coverage portfolio on top of these – for example, building solutions around complex event processing engines, or Big Data real-time analytics capabilities.

The market has seen a definite shift towards solutions supporting the latest mobile and cloud computing trends. As enterprises make better use of cloud services, and enterprise end users and consumers increasingly use smart mobile devices, the need to manage performance on these environments correspondingly grows. Another noticeable trend is the availability of APM-as-a-Service solutions.

Log Management Makes a Major Impact in APM

An emerging category within APM is log management, which has been growing at a strong pace with a number of new vendors joining the market; Splunk, in particular, has made quite a splash. These solutions mine the fields embedded in machine-generated data, including log files and headers in messages, and content that is generated by a host of applications from social network services such as Twitter, enterprise applications, and IT tools, including other APM solutions.

Log management tools process vast amounts of machine data in real time, exploiting Big Data technologies, so they represent a fusion of new technologies applied to existing categories of data. As the capabilities of log management tools are realized by users, developers write improved logs, creating a virtuous circle.

The incumbent APM vendors with Big Data capabilities are also addressing log management and are responding to this emerging solution category by better targeting their existing features.

To help enterprise IT users choose their APM tools, Ovum has recently published the Ovum Decision Matrix on APM 2014–15, which evaluates and compares 10 of the leading solutions in the market side-by-side.

Michael Azoff is a Principal Analyst at Ovum.

Related Links:

www.ovum.com

For Ovum Subscribers: Ovum Decision Matrix on APM 2014–15

Available from CA Technologies: Ovum Decision Matrix on APM 2014–15

Hot Topics

The Latest

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...