Let's go back in time. Think of when your applications used to run from a single server and when the monolithic enterprise management software approach was more than enough to effectively monitor them. I know those days may have been just 10 years ago, but given the fast pace of the tech industry, those are officially our dark ages.
Now, let's fast-forward to the present application economy in which your customers are demanding higher quality applications faster than ever before. To meet these new expectations, the infrastructure of the application has evolved; inevitably becoming more sophisticated and ultimately more complex.
The complexity begins with the microservices architecture, which is the way many of today's enterprise applications are built. Microservices compartmentalize the application by function. Each function within the application architecture focuses on performing a small, specific process and communicates with other functions using APIs. This differs from the traditional service-oriented architecture (SOA), in that SOAs work to integrate multiple applications that function independently to perform a service.
Why Complicate Things?
The more an app can do, the better. Customers expect more than ever of enterprise applications — they want them to perform like consumer apps do — which results in an added pressure on organizations to be agile. Microservices do just that. By dividing application functions across the architecture, developers are better able to resolve issues and make adjustments more quickly — without having to redeploy the entire application.
Just as with the architecture, the monolithic approach of application monitoring that used to work is no longer sufficient. Microservices are more granular than SOAs and introduce a variety of new monitoring challenges that require an application monitoring approach better able to manage the more sophisticated application environment.
The four main challenges microservices present to application monitoring are complexity, change, resiliency and scale. These new intricacies make it difficult for application monitoring solutions to pinpoint the source where application issues arise, monitor environments at the rate in which they change, triage alerts, and scale the large amounts of data.
Your Apps Are Your Business
Microservices provide the functionality end users are looking for in their applications and your application monitoring solutions need to keep those applications up and running – and performing as customers demand.
But, the old approach to application monitoring just isn't working. It's time to forget about the dark ages; success in the application economy starts with providing your customers with a superior application experience. Is your application performance management approach enlightened?
Matthew Dubie is a Marketing Associate at CA Technologies.
