Skip to main content

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

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

For years, DevOps teams operated under a simple assumption: collect enough telemetry, and you can find and fix any problem. That assumption is breaking down. Modern enterprises now operate across microservices, hybrid cloud environments, APIs, Kubernetes, and highly automated delivery pipelines. Releases happen continuously, dependencies shift constantly, and failures spread faster than teams can diagnose them ...

New Relic surveyed IT and engineering leaders from the media and entertainment (M&E) sector to understand what's working — and where challenges persist with their observability practices. The findings reveal how M&E organizations are navigating rising platform complexity, audience expectations, and AI-driven change. Below are five takeaways that stand out ...

Let me start with something I've seen play out more times than I can count. A team hits a wall with the cloud. Costs creep up, then spike. Performance starts to feel inconsistent. Someone in finance asks a simple question like "why did this double?" and nobody has a clean answer ... Maybe this isn't the right place for everything. That realization feels like a breakthrough, like you've identified the problem. In reality, you've just identified the starting line ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 24, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network observability tool sprawl ... 

In cloud-native systems, scaling is often as simple as moving a slider. For on-premise databases, the stakes are different. Over-provisioning hardware is expensive. Under-provisioning leads to performance bottlenecks that are difficult to fix once the equipment is in the rack ...

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

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

For years, DevOps teams operated under a simple assumption: collect enough telemetry, and you can find and fix any problem. That assumption is breaking down. Modern enterprises now operate across microservices, hybrid cloud environments, APIs, Kubernetes, and highly automated delivery pipelines. Releases happen continuously, dependencies shift constantly, and failures spread faster than teams can diagnose them ...

New Relic surveyed IT and engineering leaders from the media and entertainment (M&E) sector to understand what's working — and where challenges persist with their observability practices. The findings reveal how M&E organizations are navigating rising platform complexity, audience expectations, and AI-driven change. Below are five takeaways that stand out ...

Let me start with something I've seen play out more times than I can count. A team hits a wall with the cloud. Costs creep up, then spike. Performance starts to feel inconsistent. Someone in finance asks a simple question like "why did this double?" and nobody has a clean answer ... Maybe this isn't the right place for everything. That realization feels like a breakthrough, like you've identified the problem. In reality, you've just identified the starting line ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 24, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network observability tool sprawl ... 

In cloud-native systems, scaling is often as simple as moving a slider. For on-premise databases, the stakes are different. Over-provisioning hardware is expensive. Under-provisioning leads to performance bottlenecks that are difficult to fix once the equipment is in the rack ...