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APM and Viewpoints - Part 1

Terry Critchley

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) is a set of disciplines, part of Performance Management, designed provide accurate information on how business applications are performing. Many organizations rely on APM to give them sufficient information to see if their internally‐developed applications and third party applications are performing well. The purpose of this exercise is both operational and, in the longer term, capacity planning purposes.

The overarching reason is to match delivered performance with the service level agreements (SLAs) developed between IT and the business(es). There are other reasons, not least those of organization productivity and external customer acceptance of the online service, particularly web sites.

The cruel fact of the matter is that poor or erratic performance (response times and throughput) are bad for business. Zero performance when the system is down doesn't help the cause either. As an aside, note that availability is an essential component of performance.

Aspects of Performance

There are several aspects of applications and related software that need to be monitored since an application makes use of other software in its execution. The number of aspects needing consideration depends on the complexity of the supporting environment. Typically, IT personnel will need to be aware, at a detailed level, of the performance of:

■ Internet services

■ Response times (overall)

■ Network traffic and latency

■ Transaction tracking (visibility) where applicable

■ The infrastructure - operating system, hypervisors

■ Database

■ Web server software

■ Other middleware

■ ERP and other application systems. These sometimes have their own resource and reporting monitors.

■ File servers, messaging systems etc.

■ Use of what are known as "deep dive diagnostics" for knotty problems

An important aspect of performance (and other) monitoring is where the observer stands when looking at the IT scenario. If a complaint says the performance of an application is dreadful, the network man might say "Everything is fine" and the database man may agree, both saying "What's the problem?" All these people may say that the performance world is rosy but not to other people who have a different idea on what is rosy and what is not.

These are what I call viewpoints, a popular concept in IT architecture design method. Read APM and Viewpoints - Part 2, outlining the different viewpoints.

Dr. Terry Critchley is the Author of "Making It in IT", "High Performance IT Services" and “High Availability IT Services”.

This blog was created from extracts from Terry Critchley's book: High Performance IT Services [ August 25 2016]

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APM and Viewpoints - Part 1

Terry Critchley

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) is a set of disciplines, part of Performance Management, designed provide accurate information on how business applications are performing. Many organizations rely on APM to give them sufficient information to see if their internally‐developed applications and third party applications are performing well. The purpose of this exercise is both operational and, in the longer term, capacity planning purposes.

The overarching reason is to match delivered performance with the service level agreements (SLAs) developed between IT and the business(es). There are other reasons, not least those of organization productivity and external customer acceptance of the online service, particularly web sites.

The cruel fact of the matter is that poor or erratic performance (response times and throughput) are bad for business. Zero performance when the system is down doesn't help the cause either. As an aside, note that availability is an essential component of performance.

Aspects of Performance

There are several aspects of applications and related software that need to be monitored since an application makes use of other software in its execution. The number of aspects needing consideration depends on the complexity of the supporting environment. Typically, IT personnel will need to be aware, at a detailed level, of the performance of:

■ Internet services

■ Response times (overall)

■ Network traffic and latency

■ Transaction tracking (visibility) where applicable

■ The infrastructure - operating system, hypervisors

■ Database

■ Web server software

■ Other middleware

■ ERP and other application systems. These sometimes have their own resource and reporting monitors.

■ File servers, messaging systems etc.

■ Use of what are known as "deep dive diagnostics" for knotty problems

An important aspect of performance (and other) monitoring is where the observer stands when looking at the IT scenario. If a complaint says the performance of an application is dreadful, the network man might say "Everything is fine" and the database man may agree, both saying "What's the problem?" All these people may say that the performance world is rosy but not to other people who have a different idea on what is rosy and what is not.

These are what I call viewpoints, a popular concept in IT architecture design method. Read APM and Viewpoints - Part 2, outlining the different viewpoints.

Dr. Terry Critchley is the Author of "Making It in IT", "High Performance IT Services" and “High Availability IT Services”.

This blog was created from extracts from Terry Critchley's book: High Performance IT Services [ August 25 2016]

Hot Topics

The Latest

The enterprises that will define the next decade are not the ones that deployed the most technology. They are the ones who understood what their technology was actually doing. That distinction is not a philosophical point. It is the central operational challenge facing every organization that has spent the last five years modernizing at speed ...

AI is becoming the operating system of the enterprise. It acts as an invisible coordination layer that understands intent, connects systems, and executes work across complex SaaS environments. Previously, employees had to click through multiple systems — CRM, ERP, support tools, collaboration platforms — to complete a single task. Now, instead of navigating each application manually, they can simply state what they need to accomplish ...

In 2026, the cost of downtime or an outage is no longer just a technical inconvenience; it's a $600 billion wake up call for global businesses. As our digital ecosystems become  more interconnected, each touchpoint introduces new risks and multiplies the consequences when things go wrong. And the data is clear: aggregate downtime costs  for Global 2,000 companies have surged 50% since 2024, reaching a staggering $600 billion ...

Deloitte found that 74% of enterprises expect to deploy agentic AI solutions in the next 24 months. However, the rush to deployment is outpacing foundational work, though. Only 21% of enterprises have fully formed agent governance models in place. The result? AI agents deployed without guidance or governance begin to function as fragmented islands of complexity ...

Cloud spending is no longer viewed as a passthrough IT expense, but as a strategic financial lever that directly impacts innovation capacity, profitability and enterprise resilience, according to the CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report from Azul ...

As AI moves from generating responses to performing actions, the need for trust increases exponentially. And as organizations enlist AI agents for increasingly sophisticated business processes, trust is going to be the single most important theme for spurring adoption. What can organizations do to build trustworthy AI agents? ...

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...