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.
11. Network Performance Monitoring (NPM)
The performance and availability of the network is an essential factor in whether applications meet employee expectations. The rapid pace of innovation in mobile technology means that ensuring adequate network performance is becoming increasingly important. Therefore investing in a good network performance monitoring solution that is able to perform packet capture and analysis at a minimum in relation to the applications served is important and will enrich your APM strategy.
John Rakowski
Analyst, Infrastructure and Operations, Forrester Research
12. Application-Aware Network Performance Monitoring (AA-NPM)
The challenge is that APM has evolved into a mosaic of monitoring tools, analytic engines, and event processors that provide many solutions to different problems. When you step back and look at the big picture it all comes into focus, but when you're trying to rationalize one technology over another, things aren't so clear at close range. I have found that the simplicity and ease of use with agentless monitoring (i.e. wire data analytics) is a great place to start. You may also hear the terms Application Aware Infrastructure Performance Monitoring (AA-IPM) or Application Aware Network Performance Monitoring (AA-NPM) both of which are complimentary to APM and I believe to be an essential part of an overall APM solution.
Larry Dragich
Director of Enterprise Application Services at the Auto Club Group and Founder of the APM Strategies Group on LinkedIn.
13. Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)
When it comes to APM, Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) isn't the first thing that comes to mind, but it should be, and we consider it a must-have in supporting APM. The general consensus seems to be that flow-based technologies (NetFlow, sFlow, IPFIX, etc.) provide enough visibility regarding communication, and end-point solutions provide the details from the client point of view. But network and application analysis based on DPI can provide all this and more. DPI provides definitive latency measurements, and it quickly allows analysts to isolate the problem to the network or the application. Once isolated, payload information from packets in the communication path can provide insights that no other solution can – like error messages that are being returned but not correctly processed by applications. And when combined with network forensics (storing packets for detailed, post-incident analysis), critical application transactions can be unequivocally verified from days or even weeks ago, something that is not available in any other form of APM solution.
Jay Botelho
Director of Product Management, WildPackets
14. Network Packet Recording
Something that all enterprises should seek out is accurate network packet recording. It's imperative to have a solution that can capture, index and record network traffic with continuous 100% accuracy even during unpredictable traffic spikes. Accurate network packet recording enables IT teams to troubleshoot and diagnose network and application performance issues as soon as they arise, and help security teams investigate and contain security problems and help risk and compliance teams do their jobs. Operations teams can determine whether the problems reside within the IT infrastructure or within the applications running on the network – reducing time-to-resolution (TTR) and lowering operational expenditures (OPEX). Traditional detection tools won't cut it in an era where millions of dollars in revenue can be lost with milliseconds of downtime – the key is maintaining a network infrastructure that delivers continuous historical network visibility.
Mike Heumann
Sr. Director, Marketing (Endace), Emulex
15. Network Emulation
Network Emulation is a must have. The first part of an APM cycle is to ensure that applications are designed/suitable for the deployed environment. The Network (Mobile, WAN, Internet...) is a critical but often ignored component of this. One reason is the complexity of going about verifying applications in real world networks, however Network Emulation makes this easy by providing the ability to replicate the complete network environment. By re-creating all real world network conditions (restricted bandwidth, latency, loss, QoS etc), Network Emulation gives organizations an accurate assessment of whether an application is suitable for them, long before they try to manage, with APM, the unmanageable.
Jim Swepson
Pre-sales Technologist, iTrinegy
The Latest
Generative AI may be a great tool for the enterprise to help drive further innovation and meaningful work, but it also runs the risk of generating massive amounts of spam that will counteract its intended benefits. From increased AI spam bots to data maintenance due to large volumes of outputs, enterprise AI applications can create a cascade of issues that end up detracting from productivity gains ...
A long-running study of DevOps practices ... suggests that any historical gains in MTTR reduction have now plateaued. For years now, the time it takes to restore services has stayed about the same: less than a day for high performers but up to a week for middle-tier teams and up to a month for laggards. The fact that progress is flat despite big investments in people, tools and automation is a cause for concern ...
Companies implementing observability benefit from increased operational efficiency, faster innovation, and better business outcomes overall, according to 2023 IT Trends Report: Lessons From Observability Leaders, a report from SolarWinds ...
Customer loyalty is changing as retailers get increasingly competitive. More than 75% of consumers say they would end business with a company after a single bad customer experience. This means that just one price discrepancy, inventory mishap or checkout issue in a physical or digital store, could have customers running out to the next store that can provide them with better service. Retailers must be able to predict business outages in advance, and act proactively before an incident occurs, impacting customer experience ...
Earlier this year, New Relic conducted a study on observability ... The 2023 Observability Forecast reveals observability's impact on the lives of technical professionals and businesses' bottom lines. Here are 10 key takeaways from the forecast ...
Only 33% of executives are "very confident" in their ability to operate in a public cloud environment, according to the 2023 State of CloudOps report from NetApp. This represents an increase from 2022 when only 21% reported feeling very confident ...
The majority of organizations across Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) breached over the last year had personally identifiable information (PII) compromised, but most have not yet modified their data management policies, according to the Cybersecurity and PII Report from ManageEngine ...