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20 Technologies to Support APM - Part 4

APMdigest rounds out the list with some final thoughts on 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

Start with Part 2

Start with Part 3

16. Database Query Management

Integrated database query management is quickly becoming a required capability to ensure application performance. While performance problems can come from a lot of sources, the database is often at the top of the list of suspects. Being able to stay ahead of application performance issues caused by query issues is one of the best ways to get a quick boost to overall application uptime and performance.
Michael Thompson
Principal, Product Marketing, SolarWinds

17. Application Delivery Controllers

Applications are no longer contained in data center environments on stable, over-provisioned infrastructures. As the number of lightweight mobile applications increases, the task of ensuring superior application performance has become very complex. By using application delivery controllers, companies can optimize, secure and control the delivery of every enterprise and cloud service in use, while understanding the actual end-user experience delivered by those applications.
S. “Sundi” Sundaresh
CEO, Xangati

18. Agent Management

Whether it's a traditional on-premises deployment or a vendor-managed SaaS, APM solutions often rely on application-aware monitoring agents to collect key performance indicators on the health and availability of various application components, or to track and time transactions. However, in today's world of rapid application lifecycles, pattern-based application provisioning and dynamic workloads that appear and disappear frequently, keeping those agents pointed at these oft-changing application components can be a challenge. An intelligent endpoint management system that can deploy, patch and refresh agents automatically, in the background, and as part of automated batch jobs, is essential to the goal of having a low-touch, high-value APM solution.
Marvin Goodman
Market Manager, APM, IBM

19. DevOps

The most powerful augmentation of modern APM comes not from a specific technology, but from the adoption of a DevOps approach to software development. DevOps stresses communication, collaboration and integration between software developers, QA and operations professionals – and APM is the platform that empowers this approach. DevOps enables IT to deliver better business results faster, while reducing costs, and reducing the amount of time it takes to fix problems and launch new features and services to end users. Nothing is more effective at unlocking and maximizing value of your APM investments.
Andreas Grabner
Lead of Center of Excellence, Compuware APM

20. Business Intelligence

The gathering of data regarding the performance of applications and the infrastructure is of course key to effective APM. However, recent Quocirca research shows that the same data is also an important feed for operational intelligence tools which provide guidance not just for IT staff but for those managing business process.
Bob Tarzey
Analyst and Director, Quocirca

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UK IT leaders are reaching a critical inflection point in how they manage observability, according to research from LogicMonitor. As infrastructure complexity grows and AI adoption accelerates, fragmented monitoring environments are driving organizations to rethink their operational strategies and consolidate tools ...

For years, many infrastructure teams treated the edge as a deployment variation. It was seen as the same cloud model, only stretched outward: more devices, more gateways, more locations and a little more latency. That assumption is proving costly. The edge is not just another place to run workloads. It is a fundamentally different operating condition ...

AI can't fix broken data. CIOs who modernize revenue data governance unlock predictable growth-those who don't risk millions in failed AI investments. For decades, CIOs kept the lights on. Revenue was someone else's problem, owned by sales, led by the CRO, measured by finance. Those days are behind us ...

Over the past few years, organizations have made enormous strides in enabling remote and hybrid work. But the foundational technologies powering today's digital workplace were never designed for the volume, velocity, and complexity that is coming next. By 2026 and beyond, three forces — 5G, the metaverse, and edge AI — will fundamentally reshape how people connect, collaborate, and access enterprise resources ... The businesses that begin preparing now will gain a competitive head start. Those that wait will find themselves trying to secure environments that have already outgrown their architecture ...

Ask where enterprise AI is making its most decisive impact, and the answer might surprise you: not marketing, not finance, not customer experience. It's IT. Across three years of industry research conducted by Digitate, one constant holds true is that IT is both the testing ground and the proving ground for enterprise AI. Last year, that position only strengthened ...

A payment gateway fails at 2 AM. Thousands of transactions hang in limbo. Post-mortems reveal failures cascading across dozens of services, each technically sound in isolation. The diagnosis takes hours. The fix requires coordinated deployments across teams ...

Every enterprise technology conversation right now circles back to AI agents. And for once, the excitement isn't running too far ahead of reality. According to a Zapier survey of over 500 enterprise leaders, 72% of enterprises are already using or testing AI agents, and 84% plan to increase their investment over the next 12 months. Those numbers are big. But they also raise a question that doesn't get asked enough: what exactly are companies doing with these agents, and are they actually getting value from them? ...

Many organizations still rely on reactive availability models, taking action only after an outage occurs. However, as applications become more complex, this approach often leads to delayed detection, prolonged disruption, and incomplete recovery. Monitoring is evolving from a basic operational function into a foundational capability for sustaining availability in modern environments ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 22, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses DNS Security ... 

The financial stakes of extended service disruption has made operational resilience a top priority, according to 2026 State of AI-First Operations Report, a report from PagerDuty. According to survey findings, 95% of respondents believe their leadership understands the competitive advantage that can be gained from reducing incidents and speeding recovery ...

20 Technologies to Support APM - Part 4

APMdigest rounds out the list with some final thoughts on 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

Start with Part 2

Start with Part 3

16. Database Query Management

Integrated database query management is quickly becoming a required capability to ensure application performance. While performance problems can come from a lot of sources, the database is often at the top of the list of suspects. Being able to stay ahead of application performance issues caused by query issues is one of the best ways to get a quick boost to overall application uptime and performance.
Michael Thompson
Principal, Product Marketing, SolarWinds

17. Application Delivery Controllers

Applications are no longer contained in data center environments on stable, over-provisioned infrastructures. As the number of lightweight mobile applications increases, the task of ensuring superior application performance has become very complex. By using application delivery controllers, companies can optimize, secure and control the delivery of every enterprise and cloud service in use, while understanding the actual end-user experience delivered by those applications.
S. “Sundi” Sundaresh
CEO, Xangati

18. Agent Management

Whether it's a traditional on-premises deployment or a vendor-managed SaaS, APM solutions often rely on application-aware monitoring agents to collect key performance indicators on the health and availability of various application components, or to track and time transactions. However, in today's world of rapid application lifecycles, pattern-based application provisioning and dynamic workloads that appear and disappear frequently, keeping those agents pointed at these oft-changing application components can be a challenge. An intelligent endpoint management system that can deploy, patch and refresh agents automatically, in the background, and as part of automated batch jobs, is essential to the goal of having a low-touch, high-value APM solution.
Marvin Goodman
Market Manager, APM, IBM

19. DevOps

The most powerful augmentation of modern APM comes not from a specific technology, but from the adoption of a DevOps approach to software development. DevOps stresses communication, collaboration and integration between software developers, QA and operations professionals – and APM is the platform that empowers this approach. DevOps enables IT to deliver better business results faster, while reducing costs, and reducing the amount of time it takes to fix problems and launch new features and services to end users. Nothing is more effective at unlocking and maximizing value of your APM investments.
Andreas Grabner
Lead of Center of Excellence, Compuware APM

20. Business Intelligence

The gathering of data regarding the performance of applications and the infrastructure is of course key to effective APM. However, recent Quocirca research shows that the same data is also an important feed for operational intelligence tools which provide guidance not just for IT staff but for those managing business process.
Bob Tarzey
Analyst and Director, Quocirca

Hot Topics

The Latest

UK IT leaders are reaching a critical inflection point in how they manage observability, according to research from LogicMonitor. As infrastructure complexity grows and AI adoption accelerates, fragmented monitoring environments are driving organizations to rethink their operational strategies and consolidate tools ...

For years, many infrastructure teams treated the edge as a deployment variation. It was seen as the same cloud model, only stretched outward: more devices, more gateways, more locations and a little more latency. That assumption is proving costly. The edge is not just another place to run workloads. It is a fundamentally different operating condition ...

AI can't fix broken data. CIOs who modernize revenue data governance unlock predictable growth-those who don't risk millions in failed AI investments. For decades, CIOs kept the lights on. Revenue was someone else's problem, owned by sales, led by the CRO, measured by finance. Those days are behind us ...

Over the past few years, organizations have made enormous strides in enabling remote and hybrid work. But the foundational technologies powering today's digital workplace were never designed for the volume, velocity, and complexity that is coming next. By 2026 and beyond, three forces — 5G, the metaverse, and edge AI — will fundamentally reshape how people connect, collaborate, and access enterprise resources ... The businesses that begin preparing now will gain a competitive head start. Those that wait will find themselves trying to secure environments that have already outgrown their architecture ...

Ask where enterprise AI is making its most decisive impact, and the answer might surprise you: not marketing, not finance, not customer experience. It's IT. Across three years of industry research conducted by Digitate, one constant holds true is that IT is both the testing ground and the proving ground for enterprise AI. Last year, that position only strengthened ...

A payment gateway fails at 2 AM. Thousands of transactions hang in limbo. Post-mortems reveal failures cascading across dozens of services, each technically sound in isolation. The diagnosis takes hours. The fix requires coordinated deployments across teams ...

Every enterprise technology conversation right now circles back to AI agents. And for once, the excitement isn't running too far ahead of reality. According to a Zapier survey of over 500 enterprise leaders, 72% of enterprises are already using or testing AI agents, and 84% plan to increase their investment over the next 12 months. Those numbers are big. But they also raise a question that doesn't get asked enough: what exactly are companies doing with these agents, and are they actually getting value from them? ...

Many organizations still rely on reactive availability models, taking action only after an outage occurs. However, as applications become more complex, this approach often leads to delayed detection, prolonged disruption, and incomplete recovery. Monitoring is evolving from a basic operational function into a foundational capability for sustaining availability in modern environments ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 22, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses DNS Security ... 

The financial stakes of extended service disruption has made operational resilience a top priority, according to 2026 State of AI-First Operations Report, a report from PagerDuty. According to survey findings, 95% of respondents believe their leadership understands the competitive advantage that can be gained from reducing incidents and speeding recovery ...