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What You Should Be Monitoring to Ensure Digital Performance - Part 2

APMdigest asked experts from across the IT industry for their opinions on what IT departments should be monitoring to ensure digital performance. Part 2 covers key performance metrics like availability and response time.

Start with What You Should Be Monitoring to Ensure Digital Performance - Part 1

AVAILABILITY

To ensure digital performance, availability is one of three key performance areas I always recommend monitoring. Your applications and networks must first be available to service users and customers. Otherwise, they're useful to no one.
Jean Tunis
Senior Consultant and Founder of RootPerformance

Monitoring the login page of an application with a synthetic transaction is an essential part of an Enterprise Monitoring strategy. Active monitoring is a good starting point to provide visibility on application availability especially when monitoring outside the Data Center. Synthetic Transactions can provide location-based availability and act as a barometer for measuring application performance.
Larry Dragich
Technology Executive and Founder of the APM Strategies Group on LinkedIn.

Read Larry Dragich's latest blog: Digital Intelligence - Why Traditional APM Tools Aren't Sufficient

Read Larry Dragich's new white paper: The Case for Converged Application & Infrastructure Performance Monitoring

INFRASTRUCTURE RISK

Understanding Infrastructure Risk is a key component of monitoring that most organizations miss. APM tools do a great job of tracking left-to-right performance across an application, and modern application designs ensure that no single component can cause a failure. Building an understanding of the risk inherent in the current IT infrastructure — below the application — is critical for stopping unexpected downtime and sudden capacity limits. You can do that by tracking links from between overlay and underlay networks, file systems to storage units, and hypervisor to server hardware — or you can use a unified monitoring tool do do it for you. Key buying decision — can you see the IT infrastructure risk for the specific components that your application relies on?
Kent Erickson
Alliance Strategist, Zenoss

THROUGHPUT

To ensure digital performance, throughput is one of three key performance areas that must be included. Applications and networks must be able to provide all the relevant data that is required to fulfill a specific request. Monitoring throughput ensures you know when your systems do not deliver all of the data that was requested, and you can act on it before the complaints come in.
Jean Tunis
Senior Consultant and Founder of RootPerformance

PAGE LOAD SPEED

Ultimately you want to be monitoring everything that impacts customer experience and conversion rates, but the most important thing is the page load speed. This drives more conversions than any other factor. And the key pages are those at the beginning of a user journey since the more time someone has invested in the process the less likely they are to abandon.
Antony Edwards
CTO, Eggplant

RESPONSE TIME

To ensure digital performance, response time is one of three key performance areas that must not be forgotten. Requests for specific information from users must be fulfilled with as much speed as possible. This is a common expectation of every IT system, so you should be monitoring them.
Jean Tunis
Senior Consultant and Founder of RootPerformance

Monitor application response from user to application (last mile) and application to the data (middle mile) to not only measure is the app up but of it is working.
Jeanne Morain
Author and Strategist, iSpeak Cloud

TRANSACTION UPTIME

A good starting point is to implement end-to-end performance monitoring with real transaction uptime to complement your APM tools.
Sven Hammar
Founder and CSO, Apica

TIME TO FIRST BYTE

Initial motivation in the user journey can be lost very quickly if for example the first time the user clicks on an advertisement or logs into an application is not performant. The appearance of performance is important; monitoring time to first byte (TTFB)can help ascertain the experience of what a user sees marching towards a minimum viable/viewable product (MVP) of the page or app before being loaded to completion. TTFB is a leading indicator on web performance to the end user and also is used by the leading search engines in factoring in page rank as the more performant pages get a higher rank.
Ravi Lachhman
Evangelist, AppDynamics

LOG EVENTS

If it has an IP address, it sends logs, and logs must be monitored to gain detailed insight on server performance, security, error messages or underlying issues.
Clayton Dukes
CEO, LogZilla

Logs have been around since the dawn of computing, but with constantly increasing threats, logs are more important than ever. Log events are one of the key data sources SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) solutions use for threat detection.
Otis Gospodnetić
Founder, Sematext

Read What You Should Be Monitoring to Ensure Digital Performance - Part 3, covering the development side.

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 ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

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 ...

What You Should Be Monitoring to Ensure Digital Performance - Part 2

APMdigest asked experts from across the IT industry for their opinions on what IT departments should be monitoring to ensure digital performance. Part 2 covers key performance metrics like availability and response time.

Start with What You Should Be Monitoring to Ensure Digital Performance - Part 1

AVAILABILITY

To ensure digital performance, availability is one of three key performance areas I always recommend monitoring. Your applications and networks must first be available to service users and customers. Otherwise, they're useful to no one.
Jean Tunis
Senior Consultant and Founder of RootPerformance

Monitoring the login page of an application with a synthetic transaction is an essential part of an Enterprise Monitoring strategy. Active monitoring is a good starting point to provide visibility on application availability especially when monitoring outside the Data Center. Synthetic Transactions can provide location-based availability and act as a barometer for measuring application performance.
Larry Dragich
Technology Executive and Founder of the APM Strategies Group on LinkedIn.

Read Larry Dragich's latest blog: Digital Intelligence - Why Traditional APM Tools Aren't Sufficient

Read Larry Dragich's new white paper: The Case for Converged Application & Infrastructure Performance Monitoring

INFRASTRUCTURE RISK

Understanding Infrastructure Risk is a key component of monitoring that most organizations miss. APM tools do a great job of tracking left-to-right performance across an application, and modern application designs ensure that no single component can cause a failure. Building an understanding of the risk inherent in the current IT infrastructure — below the application — is critical for stopping unexpected downtime and sudden capacity limits. You can do that by tracking links from between overlay and underlay networks, file systems to storage units, and hypervisor to server hardware — or you can use a unified monitoring tool do do it for you. Key buying decision — can you see the IT infrastructure risk for the specific components that your application relies on?
Kent Erickson
Alliance Strategist, Zenoss

THROUGHPUT

To ensure digital performance, throughput is one of three key performance areas that must be included. Applications and networks must be able to provide all the relevant data that is required to fulfill a specific request. Monitoring throughput ensures you know when your systems do not deliver all of the data that was requested, and you can act on it before the complaints come in.
Jean Tunis
Senior Consultant and Founder of RootPerformance

PAGE LOAD SPEED

Ultimately you want to be monitoring everything that impacts customer experience and conversion rates, but the most important thing is the page load speed. This drives more conversions than any other factor. And the key pages are those at the beginning of a user journey since the more time someone has invested in the process the less likely they are to abandon.
Antony Edwards
CTO, Eggplant

RESPONSE TIME

To ensure digital performance, response time is one of three key performance areas that must not be forgotten. Requests for specific information from users must be fulfilled with as much speed as possible. This is a common expectation of every IT system, so you should be monitoring them.
Jean Tunis
Senior Consultant and Founder of RootPerformance

Monitor application response from user to application (last mile) and application to the data (middle mile) to not only measure is the app up but of it is working.
Jeanne Morain
Author and Strategist, iSpeak Cloud

TRANSACTION UPTIME

A good starting point is to implement end-to-end performance monitoring with real transaction uptime to complement your APM tools.
Sven Hammar
Founder and CSO, Apica

TIME TO FIRST BYTE

Initial motivation in the user journey can be lost very quickly if for example the first time the user clicks on an advertisement or logs into an application is not performant. The appearance of performance is important; monitoring time to first byte (TTFB)can help ascertain the experience of what a user sees marching towards a minimum viable/viewable product (MVP) of the page or app before being loaded to completion. TTFB is a leading indicator on web performance to the end user and also is used by the leading search engines in factoring in page rank as the more performant pages get a higher rank.
Ravi Lachhman
Evangelist, AppDynamics

LOG EVENTS

If it has an IP address, it sends logs, and logs must be monitored to gain detailed insight on server performance, security, error messages or underlying issues.
Clayton Dukes
CEO, LogZilla

Logs have been around since the dawn of computing, but with constantly increasing threats, logs are more important than ever. Log events are one of the key data sources SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) solutions use for threat detection.
Otis Gospodnetić
Founder, Sematext

Read What You Should Be Monitoring to Ensure Digital Performance - Part 3, covering the development side.

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 ...

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 ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

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 ...