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How to Avoid Mobile Application Meltdown

Mobile Computing: A Whole New Approach to APM

Consumer mobile apps are everywhere, but many CIOs are just beginning to consider how to best distribute mobile apps to workers and customers. Companies with more progressive outlooks are developing their own internal app stores, and analyzing which legacy apps should go mobile and which third-party apps to support. In the rush to meet the needs of the business, and keep pace with demands from customers and partners who crave mobile access, IT risks making some missteps.

The consumer IT movement means that expectations for performance have changed dramatically. Developers and IT managers need to understand the requirements for “instant-on” apps, which launch at the touch of a finger and work flawlessly all the time. If an application stops working, the user will ditch it and go download something else. So what can you do to avoid mobile application meltdown and failed ROI?

Performance in the Mobile World

There are many differences between mobile, distributed computing and computing of the past -- in which users and applications were tethered to the desktop. For one, most enterprise IT departments have limited visibility beyond servers.

In the mobile world, IT needs to determine how to efficiently and accurately trace the transaction to a single user’s device -- no matter whether the device runs Android, Apple iOS, Windows or something else. That requires a new approach to monitoring, and possibly, new tools and processes based on user-centric experiences. From the narrow angle of the server side performance, response times may seem peachy. In reality, due to inefficient website implementation (e.g. multiple roundtrips) or a slow network, users may suffer.

Then IT must consider the vast number of different locations from where users will be accessing corporate data and applications on their mobile devices. The more variability -- users who log on from home, the airport, over corporate or public cloud connections -- the more complicated troubleshooting will be for the IT team. Also, IT has a higher incidence of unexpected use patterns, as more people log on during unpredictable hours and from unknown locations.

With so many different potential issues and devices to monitor, not to mention higher volumes of traffic altogether, a sophisticated alert system based on historical trend analysis will help IT stay in the driver’s seat.

What is the threshold for each device and operating system, after which performance will likely begin to suffer? How do certain geographic regions and common user locations (e.g. metropolitan airports) differ from others when it comes to performance and network reliability? Alerts should be customized for a much larger number of potential situations and scenarios so that IT can respond appropriately -- versus a costly and ineffective one-size-fits-all approach.

Website and IT managers need to consider how well their public and private sites are optimized for mobile access. Many enterprise applications today, particularly legacy ones, don’t run well from the mobile Web. Best coding practices for supporting mobile clients include minimizing the number of “round trips” or the requests from client to server such as client-side redirection and loading only the content that the user needs to see right now, often called “lazy loading”.

Finally, application managers will need to develop and monitor a much larger number of performance baselines. Most organizations are supporting multiple different platforms across the user base. This means that there is no such thing anymore as a single transaction baseline, related to a hardwired PC. To compare apples to apples, application monitoring must be segmented by network and platform (e.g. LAN user, WiFi user, teleworker, mobile user by device) so when things go wrong you can locate exactly the problem spot.

In our mobile world, maintaining the status quo for application performance isn’t viable. Employees and customers now have much more power when it comes to information technology. Enterprise mobile computing is bound to have vast and still unknown implications on the practice of application performance management. Yet being proactive with a mobile APM strategy can deliver a whole new level of business productivity and innovation to delight employees and end customers alike.

About Zohar Gilad

Zohar Gilad is Executive Vice President, Products, Marketing and Channels at Precise Software. Before joining Precise, Zohar held several senior executive positions with Mercury Interactive, acquired by HP in 2006. At Mercury, Zohar drove expansion into new markets, creating new product categories: Load Testing, Quality Management, Application Management, and finally Business Technology Optimization. From 2000-2003, as the General Manager of the Application Management business unit, he helped grow the business from $0 to about $100M a year. Prior to joining Mercury, Zohar held software development positions at IBM and Daisy Systems.

Related Links:

www.precise.com

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How to Avoid Mobile Application Meltdown

Mobile Computing: A Whole New Approach to APM

Consumer mobile apps are everywhere, but many CIOs are just beginning to consider how to best distribute mobile apps to workers and customers. Companies with more progressive outlooks are developing their own internal app stores, and analyzing which legacy apps should go mobile and which third-party apps to support. In the rush to meet the needs of the business, and keep pace with demands from customers and partners who crave mobile access, IT risks making some missteps.

The consumer IT movement means that expectations for performance have changed dramatically. Developers and IT managers need to understand the requirements for “instant-on” apps, which launch at the touch of a finger and work flawlessly all the time. If an application stops working, the user will ditch it and go download something else. So what can you do to avoid mobile application meltdown and failed ROI?

Performance in the Mobile World

There are many differences between mobile, distributed computing and computing of the past -- in which users and applications were tethered to the desktop. For one, most enterprise IT departments have limited visibility beyond servers.

In the mobile world, IT needs to determine how to efficiently and accurately trace the transaction to a single user’s device -- no matter whether the device runs Android, Apple iOS, Windows or something else. That requires a new approach to monitoring, and possibly, new tools and processes based on user-centric experiences. From the narrow angle of the server side performance, response times may seem peachy. In reality, due to inefficient website implementation (e.g. multiple roundtrips) or a slow network, users may suffer.

Then IT must consider the vast number of different locations from where users will be accessing corporate data and applications on their mobile devices. The more variability -- users who log on from home, the airport, over corporate or public cloud connections -- the more complicated troubleshooting will be for the IT team. Also, IT has a higher incidence of unexpected use patterns, as more people log on during unpredictable hours and from unknown locations.

With so many different potential issues and devices to monitor, not to mention higher volumes of traffic altogether, a sophisticated alert system based on historical trend analysis will help IT stay in the driver’s seat.

What is the threshold for each device and operating system, after which performance will likely begin to suffer? How do certain geographic regions and common user locations (e.g. metropolitan airports) differ from others when it comes to performance and network reliability? Alerts should be customized for a much larger number of potential situations and scenarios so that IT can respond appropriately -- versus a costly and ineffective one-size-fits-all approach.

Website and IT managers need to consider how well their public and private sites are optimized for mobile access. Many enterprise applications today, particularly legacy ones, don’t run well from the mobile Web. Best coding practices for supporting mobile clients include minimizing the number of “round trips” or the requests from client to server such as client-side redirection and loading only the content that the user needs to see right now, often called “lazy loading”.

Finally, application managers will need to develop and monitor a much larger number of performance baselines. Most organizations are supporting multiple different platforms across the user base. This means that there is no such thing anymore as a single transaction baseline, related to a hardwired PC. To compare apples to apples, application monitoring must be segmented by network and platform (e.g. LAN user, WiFi user, teleworker, mobile user by device) so when things go wrong you can locate exactly the problem spot.

In our mobile world, maintaining the status quo for application performance isn’t viable. Employees and customers now have much more power when it comes to information technology. Enterprise mobile computing is bound to have vast and still unknown implications on the practice of application performance management. Yet being proactive with a mobile APM strategy can deliver a whole new level of business productivity and innovation to delight employees and end customers alike.

About Zohar Gilad

Zohar Gilad is Executive Vice President, Products, Marketing and Channels at Precise Software. Before joining Precise, Zohar held several senior executive positions with Mercury Interactive, acquired by HP in 2006. At Mercury, Zohar drove expansion into new markets, creating new product categories: Load Testing, Quality Management, Application Management, and finally Business Technology Optimization. From 2000-2003, as the General Manager of the Application Management business unit, he helped grow the business from $0 to about $100M a year. Prior to joining Mercury, Zohar held software development positions at IBM and Daisy Systems.

Related Links:

www.precise.com

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

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 ...

Image
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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