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Integrated Performance Management for Physical, Virtual and Cloud Infrastructure

Arun Balachandran

Today's businesses increasingly use software applications that run in a wide variety of environments, everything from physical to virtual to cloud. As organizations look for ways to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and increase scalability, cloud computing and virtualization are playing a vital part in their IT strategies. However, these new technologies also present new challenges for organizations in the areas of application monitoring and application performance.

Traditional NSM Tools Don’t Work

Traditionally, most organizations have gone for a silo-based approach for application performance management. However, as more organizations adopt and experience the advantages of virtualization and cloud computing, they are realizing that this model is no longer practical.

Web-based applications are becoming the standard for both internal and external services. Most traditional tools monitor each component of an application or transaction individually, by picking up various segments of transactions without providing a unified view of the entire transaction flow. For example, the database tool tracks only the databases or the web services tool tracks only the web services, etc. without showing how they are interconnected within the complex infrastructure. So when an application slowdown occurs, these tools might not be able to pinpoint the root cause of the problem as they do not have end-to-end visibility into the transaction.

Moreover, the increasing proliferation of virtualization and cloud applications has added another layer of complexity to application performance management. Most businesses are finding out that their conventional monitoring tools do not have the necessary operational intelligence for monitoring complex virtual or cloud infrastructure. This is because the traditional approach focuses too much on the physical infrastructure alone.

Purchasing multiple performance management tools to monitor such different and constantly changing IT environments is not feasible either. These point tools introduce additional overhead, lack adequate integration and cannot perform in-depth application performance management.


A New Strategy for Monitoring in Physical, Virtual and Cloud Environments

So, how do you monitor application performance issues in a heterogeneous IT environment that is constantly evolving? What you need is a monitoring strategy that combines proactive monitoring of a hybrid set of applications and servers across physical, virtual and cloud environments.

An ideal application performance management strategy should include deep dive application component monitoring spanning across application servers, databases, servers, ERPs, middleware, web transactions, virtual machines, cloud services, etc. The IT team should have no difficulty in troubleshooting performance bottlenecks or tracking end user experience from across the world. They need the right kind of end-to-end visibility to see what’s working and what’s not across their IT environments.

Today’s IT Managers are expected to understand how specific IT services are affecting business operations, so the organization’s IT strategy should facilitate this to happen. The IT team must be able to troubleshoot problems quickly and effectively with minimal reliance on manual processes and guesswork. At the same time, the teams must be able to monitor compliance with service level agreements and ensure a high quality end-user experience.

By re-inventing their application performance management strategy, IT departments can be confident their services meet business goals.

Arun Balachandran is Sr. Market Analyst for ManageEngine.

Related Links:

www.manageengine.com

Arun Balachandran, Sr. Market Analyst for ManageEngine, Joins the APMdigest Vendor Forum

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Integrated Performance Management for Physical, Virtual and Cloud Infrastructure

Arun Balachandran

Today's businesses increasingly use software applications that run in a wide variety of environments, everything from physical to virtual to cloud. As organizations look for ways to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and increase scalability, cloud computing and virtualization are playing a vital part in their IT strategies. However, these new technologies also present new challenges for organizations in the areas of application monitoring and application performance.

Traditional NSM Tools Don’t Work

Traditionally, most organizations have gone for a silo-based approach for application performance management. However, as more organizations adopt and experience the advantages of virtualization and cloud computing, they are realizing that this model is no longer practical.

Web-based applications are becoming the standard for both internal and external services. Most traditional tools monitor each component of an application or transaction individually, by picking up various segments of transactions without providing a unified view of the entire transaction flow. For example, the database tool tracks only the databases or the web services tool tracks only the web services, etc. without showing how they are interconnected within the complex infrastructure. So when an application slowdown occurs, these tools might not be able to pinpoint the root cause of the problem as they do not have end-to-end visibility into the transaction.

Moreover, the increasing proliferation of virtualization and cloud applications has added another layer of complexity to application performance management. Most businesses are finding out that their conventional monitoring tools do not have the necessary operational intelligence for monitoring complex virtual or cloud infrastructure. This is because the traditional approach focuses too much on the physical infrastructure alone.

Purchasing multiple performance management tools to monitor such different and constantly changing IT environments is not feasible either. These point tools introduce additional overhead, lack adequate integration and cannot perform in-depth application performance management.


A New Strategy for Monitoring in Physical, Virtual and Cloud Environments

So, how do you monitor application performance issues in a heterogeneous IT environment that is constantly evolving? What you need is a monitoring strategy that combines proactive monitoring of a hybrid set of applications and servers across physical, virtual and cloud environments.

An ideal application performance management strategy should include deep dive application component monitoring spanning across application servers, databases, servers, ERPs, middleware, web transactions, virtual machines, cloud services, etc. The IT team should have no difficulty in troubleshooting performance bottlenecks or tracking end user experience from across the world. They need the right kind of end-to-end visibility to see what’s working and what’s not across their IT environments.

Today’s IT Managers are expected to understand how specific IT services are affecting business operations, so the organization’s IT strategy should facilitate this to happen. The IT team must be able to troubleshoot problems quickly and effectively with minimal reliance on manual processes and guesswork. At the same time, the teams must be able to monitor compliance with service level agreements and ensure a high quality end-user experience.

By re-inventing their application performance management strategy, IT departments can be confident their services meet business goals.

Arun Balachandran is Sr. Market Analyst for ManageEngine.

Related Links:

www.manageengine.com

Arun Balachandran, Sr. Market Analyst for ManageEngine, Joins the APMdigest Vendor Forum

Hot Topics

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 ...

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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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