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20 Technologies to Support APM - Part 2

APMdigest continues the list, cataloging the many valuable tools available – beyond what is technically categorized as Application Performance Management (APM) – to support the goals of improving application performance and business service.

Start with Part 1

6. Synthetic Monitoring

Understanding Web and mobile app performance starts with the end-user experience, no matter how and when a customer accesses the application. And while today's IT departments are facing enormous pressure to deliver a flawless end-user experience, they must also drive down costs. These competing forces create a compelling case for adding a synthetic-transaction SaaS solution to the APM mix. IT pros responsible for application performance can understand the health and availability of key applications, and track global and local end-user experience, with a cost-effective, easy-to-use and fast-to-implement solution.
Aruna Ravichandran
VP Product and Solution Marketing, APM and DevOps, CA Technologies

Active, or synthetic, monitoring of applications, services, and websites 24/7 is an essential component of an enterprise-wide APM strategy. It ensures that online properties are fast and reliable for end users, helping to protect brand image and drive revenue. While passive monitoring provides a view into end user experience, it cannot detect downtime or get a full picture of what end users see outside of your datacenter(s) or cloud.
Mehdi Daoudi
CEO and Founder, Catchpoint

7. Infrastructure Monitoring

While APM solutions and corresponding strategy is critical for modern enterprises it's essential to also adopt an appropriate infrastructure monitoring solution. Applications sit on top of increasingly complex infrastructure workloads (server, network, storage) brought about by innovations in areas cloud architecture, mobile and non-relational data stores. This means that a unified infrastructure monitoring solution that is able to cover these areas is an essential component of a strategic monitoring strategy.
John Rakowski
Analyst, Infrastructure and Operations, Forrester Research

While APM provides great insight into service delivery from a user perspective, it alone isn't sufficient to properly identify and resolve performance or availability issues pertaining to the back-end infrastructure. Service-centric unified monitoring tools are the key to ensuring the health of applications and all the infrastructure components needed for consistent and reliable delivery of the service.
Deepak Kanwar
Senior Manager, Zenoss

8. Load Testing

APM is a cornerstone of delivering a quality user experience. To supplement the 360 degree view of your APM solution it is important to also implement and obtain correlation between your APM and Load Testing solutions. This combination provides a clear perspective of your application and your application environment, allowing you to use load to help predict application performance prior to seeing real life behavior through your APM solution.
Denis Goodwin
Director of Product Management, AlertSite by SmartBear

Among the thousands of product reviews by real users on IT Central Station – aka the "Yelp for IT" – we find numerous cross-references between APM and testing tools. Our community of IT professionals evidently find that investment in testing tools is complimentary to APM.
Russell Rothstein
Founder and CEO, IT Central Station

9. Log Management

While APM tools are definitely widely used for a view into how your own application code is performing, in many cases APM alone is not enough to give an end-to-end perspective of your system - especially in cloud environments where you no longer have the same level of access and it can be more difficult to apply instrumentation. We are seeing a huge increase in users sending more and more performance metrics into their log data – giving them the ability to use "logs as data" along side their APM tools, and providing deeper log-level insights into key business metrics.
Trevor Parsons, Phd
Co-founder & Chief Scientist, Logentries

Combining unified monitoring with log analysis provides faster trouble-shooting, improved root cause analysis, and more effective IT event correlation and forensic analysis.
David Dennis
VP of Marketing & Business Development, GroundWork

10. Middleware Management

Middleware Infrastructure Visibility is a necessity for application and business service performance. Enterprise applications are inherently complex and built on a combination of technologies including middleware systems (e.g., WebSphere MQ, IBM Data Power, TIBCO, and Oracle BPEL), packaged applications, and other legacy technologies. Middleware, in particular, serves as the plumbing connecting a multitude of heterogeneous systems. In this way, middleware management complements traditional APM offerings because it provides deep visibility into the infrastructure these applications depend on to deliver data and business services.
April Hickel
Product Manager, APM, BMC Software

20 Technologies to Support APM - Part 3

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Despite the frustrations, every engineer we spoke with ultimately affirmed the value and power of OpenTelemetry. The "sucks" moments are often the flip side of its greatest strengths ... Part 2 of this blog covers the powerful advantages and breakthroughs — the "OTel Rocks" moments ...

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The power of Kubernetes lies in its ability to orchestrate containerized applications with unparalleled efficiency. Yet, this power comes at a cost: the dynamic, distributed, and ephemeral nature of its architecture creates a monitoring challenge akin to tracking a constantly shifting, interconnected network of fleeting entities ... Due to the dynamic and complex nature of Kubernetes, monitoring poses a substantial challenge for DevOps and platform engineers. Here are the primary obstacles ...

The perception of IT has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. What was once viewed primarily as a cost center has transformed into a pivotal force driving business innovation and market leadership ... As someone who has witnessed and helped drive this evolution, it's become clear to me that the most successful organizations share a common thread: they've mastered the art of leveraging IT advancements to achieve measurable business outcomes ...

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20 Technologies to Support APM - Part 2

APMdigest continues the list, cataloging the many valuable tools available – beyond what is technically categorized as Application Performance Management (APM) – to support the goals of improving application performance and business service.

Start with Part 1

6. Synthetic Monitoring

Understanding Web and mobile app performance starts with the end-user experience, no matter how and when a customer accesses the application. And while today's IT departments are facing enormous pressure to deliver a flawless end-user experience, they must also drive down costs. These competing forces create a compelling case for adding a synthetic-transaction SaaS solution to the APM mix. IT pros responsible for application performance can understand the health and availability of key applications, and track global and local end-user experience, with a cost-effective, easy-to-use and fast-to-implement solution.
Aruna Ravichandran
VP Product and Solution Marketing, APM and DevOps, CA Technologies

Active, or synthetic, monitoring of applications, services, and websites 24/7 is an essential component of an enterprise-wide APM strategy. It ensures that online properties are fast and reliable for end users, helping to protect brand image and drive revenue. While passive monitoring provides a view into end user experience, it cannot detect downtime or get a full picture of what end users see outside of your datacenter(s) or cloud.
Mehdi Daoudi
CEO and Founder, Catchpoint

7. Infrastructure Monitoring

While APM solutions and corresponding strategy is critical for modern enterprises it's essential to also adopt an appropriate infrastructure monitoring solution. Applications sit on top of increasingly complex infrastructure workloads (server, network, storage) brought about by innovations in areas cloud architecture, mobile and non-relational data stores. This means that a unified infrastructure monitoring solution that is able to cover these areas is an essential component of a strategic monitoring strategy.
John Rakowski
Analyst, Infrastructure and Operations, Forrester Research

While APM provides great insight into service delivery from a user perspective, it alone isn't sufficient to properly identify and resolve performance or availability issues pertaining to the back-end infrastructure. Service-centric unified monitoring tools are the key to ensuring the health of applications and all the infrastructure components needed for consistent and reliable delivery of the service.
Deepak Kanwar
Senior Manager, Zenoss

8. Load Testing

APM is a cornerstone of delivering a quality user experience. To supplement the 360 degree view of your APM solution it is important to also implement and obtain correlation between your APM and Load Testing solutions. This combination provides a clear perspective of your application and your application environment, allowing you to use load to help predict application performance prior to seeing real life behavior through your APM solution.
Denis Goodwin
Director of Product Management, AlertSite by SmartBear

Among the thousands of product reviews by real users on IT Central Station – aka the "Yelp for IT" – we find numerous cross-references between APM and testing tools. Our community of IT professionals evidently find that investment in testing tools is complimentary to APM.
Russell Rothstein
Founder and CEO, IT Central Station

9. Log Management

While APM tools are definitely widely used for a view into how your own application code is performing, in many cases APM alone is not enough to give an end-to-end perspective of your system - especially in cloud environments where you no longer have the same level of access and it can be more difficult to apply instrumentation. We are seeing a huge increase in users sending more and more performance metrics into their log data – giving them the ability to use "logs as data" along side their APM tools, and providing deeper log-level insights into key business metrics.
Trevor Parsons, Phd
Co-founder & Chief Scientist, Logentries

Combining unified monitoring with log analysis provides faster trouble-shooting, improved root cause analysis, and more effective IT event correlation and forensic analysis.
David Dennis
VP of Marketing & Business Development, GroundWork

10. Middleware Management

Middleware Infrastructure Visibility is a necessity for application and business service performance. Enterprise applications are inherently complex and built on a combination of technologies including middleware systems (e.g., WebSphere MQ, IBM Data Power, TIBCO, and Oracle BPEL), packaged applications, and other legacy technologies. Middleware, in particular, serves as the plumbing connecting a multitude of heterogeneous systems. In this way, middleware management complements traditional APM offerings because it provides deep visibility into the infrastructure these applications depend on to deliver data and business services.
April Hickel
Product Manager, APM, BMC Software

20 Technologies to Support APM - Part 3

Hot Topics

The Latest

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 ...

Despite the frustrations, every engineer we spoke with ultimately affirmed the value and power of OpenTelemetry. The "sucks" moments are often the flip side of its greatest strengths ... Part 2 of this blog covers the powerful advantages and breakthroughs — the "OTel Rocks" moments ...

OpenTelemetry (OTel) arrived with a grand promise: a unified, vendor-neutral standard for observability data (traces, metrics, logs) that would free engineers from vendor lock-in and provide deeper insights into complex systems ... No powerful technology comes without its challenges, and OpenTelemetry is no exception. The engineers we spoke with were frank about the friction points they've encountered ...

Enterprises are turning to AI-powered software platforms to make IT management more intelligent and ensure their systems and technology meet business needs for efficiency, lowers costs and innovation, according to new research from Information Services Group ...

The power of Kubernetes lies in its ability to orchestrate containerized applications with unparalleled efficiency. Yet, this power comes at a cost: the dynamic, distributed, and ephemeral nature of its architecture creates a monitoring challenge akin to tracking a constantly shifting, interconnected network of fleeting entities ... Due to the dynamic and complex nature of Kubernetes, monitoring poses a substantial challenge for DevOps and platform engineers. Here are the primary obstacles ...

The perception of IT has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. What was once viewed primarily as a cost center has transformed into a pivotal force driving business innovation and market leadership ... As someone who has witnessed and helped drive this evolution, it's become clear to me that the most successful organizations share a common thread: they've mastered the art of leveraging IT advancements to achieve measurable business outcomes ...

More than half (51%) of companies are already leveraging AI agents, according to the PagerDuty Agentic AI Survey. Agentic AI adoption is poised to accelerate faster than generative AI (GenAI) while reshaping automation and decision-making across industries ...

Image
Pagerduty

 

Real privacy protection thanks to technology and processes is often portrayed as too hard and too costly to implement. So the most common strategy is to do as little as possible just to conform to formal requirements of current and incoming regulations. This is a missed opportunity ...

The expanding use of AI is driving enterprise interest in data operations (DataOps) to orchestrate data integration and processing and improve data quality and validity, according to a new report from Information Services Group (ISG) ...