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The Confusing Flavors of APM

Jim Swepson

Attending Interop in Vegas last month, I was surprised to note the number of vendors exhibiting their wares under the banner of APM – Application Performance Management. With all the different offerings, it was rather confusing.

It got me thinking about a trip I’d taken the night before to an ice-cream parlour. I love ice-cream, and at the parlour there were plenty of flavors on offer. With APM, as with ice-cream, meeting customer demand is key — one flavor doesn’t suit everyone.

I’ve been aware of APM for a good number of years but it’s only recently that companies are taking performance of applications (as opposed to availability) seriously. It can be a bit confusing for anyone venturing into this area, but with more cloud and virtual solutions being taken up, the importance of application performance over networks becomes paramount as networks, of all sorts, form a critical part of the delivery.

So what are the flavors of APM? According to Bojan Simic, an analyst with TRAC Research, "APM consists of multiple underlying technologies and nine sub-markets that cover buyers’ requirements” and he goes on to say that ”the APM market is not well defined and end-user organizations often find it challenging to understand what APM technologies are relevant for their specific needs."

No wonder it’s confusing to the customer who has a need - it sounds like the market itself is offering many solutions around APM, but, somehow you have to work out for yourself, which one will best meet your needs. There doesn’t seem to be no-one flavor that suits all…

APM is a term that has been invented relatively recently. Clearly, the name should say it all - “Application Performance Management”, but there are two general approaches: Those tools that deal with Application Performance e.g. "response time" and "throughput", and those that deal with "infrastructural issues" which lead to poor application performance e.g. running out of network bandwidth.

The latter have pre-existed the name APM and in a sense are not truly APM tools at all, but they are now often bundled into this terminology as infrastructure performance issues inevitably lead to Application Performance Issues.

But there are other important aspects of APM, e.g. Enterprise Management Associates recently completed their EMA Radar for Application-Aware Network Performance Management 2013. In the report, EMA VP of Research, Jim Frey, talks about how there is now "a focus on recognizing and eliminating performance degradations".

From my perspective this fits in nicely with my view of APM, it may have a different title, but fundamentally it’s about keeping your application performing well, but with greater understanding of the issues.

In the end though, it’s going to be up to you, the client, to decide what flavor of APM suits your environment (server focused, client focused, network focused, investigative etc.), and if Interop 2013 is anything to go by, there is a plethora of options to choose from.

If you can’t get out of the office, then check out blog sites such as APMdigest and analyst information such as Ovum Group’s Solution Guide: Application Performance Management — as with TRAC and EMA, there is a good overview of not only the differing vendor offerings, but also what now constitutes APM.

So like ice cream there may be many flavors, just make sure you know which flavors suits your business needs and when you’ve chosen your flavor you can choose from the brands that deliver it.

Jim Swepson is Pre-sales Technologist at Itrinegy.

Related Links:

www.itrinegy.com

TRAC Research APM Spectrum

EMA Radar for Application-Aware Network Performance Management 2013

Ovum Solution Guide for APM

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The Confusing Flavors of APM

Jim Swepson

Attending Interop in Vegas last month, I was surprised to note the number of vendors exhibiting their wares under the banner of APM – Application Performance Management. With all the different offerings, it was rather confusing.

It got me thinking about a trip I’d taken the night before to an ice-cream parlour. I love ice-cream, and at the parlour there were plenty of flavors on offer. With APM, as with ice-cream, meeting customer demand is key — one flavor doesn’t suit everyone.

I’ve been aware of APM for a good number of years but it’s only recently that companies are taking performance of applications (as opposed to availability) seriously. It can be a bit confusing for anyone venturing into this area, but with more cloud and virtual solutions being taken up, the importance of application performance over networks becomes paramount as networks, of all sorts, form a critical part of the delivery.

So what are the flavors of APM? According to Bojan Simic, an analyst with TRAC Research, "APM consists of multiple underlying technologies and nine sub-markets that cover buyers’ requirements” and he goes on to say that ”the APM market is not well defined and end-user organizations often find it challenging to understand what APM technologies are relevant for their specific needs."

No wonder it’s confusing to the customer who has a need - it sounds like the market itself is offering many solutions around APM, but, somehow you have to work out for yourself, which one will best meet your needs. There doesn’t seem to be no-one flavor that suits all…

APM is a term that has been invented relatively recently. Clearly, the name should say it all - “Application Performance Management”, but there are two general approaches: Those tools that deal with Application Performance e.g. "response time" and "throughput", and those that deal with "infrastructural issues" which lead to poor application performance e.g. running out of network bandwidth.

The latter have pre-existed the name APM and in a sense are not truly APM tools at all, but they are now often bundled into this terminology as infrastructure performance issues inevitably lead to Application Performance Issues.

But there are other important aspects of APM, e.g. Enterprise Management Associates recently completed their EMA Radar for Application-Aware Network Performance Management 2013. In the report, EMA VP of Research, Jim Frey, talks about how there is now "a focus on recognizing and eliminating performance degradations".

From my perspective this fits in nicely with my view of APM, it may have a different title, but fundamentally it’s about keeping your application performing well, but with greater understanding of the issues.

In the end though, it’s going to be up to you, the client, to decide what flavor of APM suits your environment (server focused, client focused, network focused, investigative etc.), and if Interop 2013 is anything to go by, there is a plethora of options to choose from.

If you can’t get out of the office, then check out blog sites such as APMdigest and analyst information such as Ovum Group’s Solution Guide: Application Performance Management — as with TRAC and EMA, there is a good overview of not only the differing vendor offerings, but also what now constitutes APM.

So like ice cream there may be many flavors, just make sure you know which flavors suits your business needs and when you’ve chosen your flavor you can choose from the brands that deliver it.

Jim Swepson is Pre-sales Technologist at Itrinegy.

Related Links:

www.itrinegy.com

TRAC Research APM Spectrum

EMA Radar for Application-Aware Network Performance Management 2013

Ovum Solution Guide for APM

Hot Topics

The Latest

AI is becoming the operating system of the enterprise. It acts as an invisible coordination layer that understands intent, connects systems, and executes work across complex SaaS environments. Previously, employees had to click through multiple systems — CRM, ERP, support tools, collaboration platforms — to complete a single task. Now, instead of navigating each application manually, they can simply state what they need to accomplish ...

In 2026, the cost of downtime or an outage is no longer just a technical inconvenience; it's a $600 billion wake up call for global businesses. As our digital ecosystems become  more interconnected, each touchpoint introduces new risks and multiplies the consequences when things go wrong. And the data is clear: aggregate downtime costs  for Global 2,000 companies have surged 50% since 2024, reaching a staggering $600 billion ...

Deloitte found that 74% of enterprises expect to deploy agentic AI solutions in the next 24 months. However, the rush to deployment is outpacing foundational work, though. Only 21% of enterprises have fully formed agent governance models in place. The result? AI agents deployed without guidance or governance begin to function as fragmented islands of complexity ...

Cloud spending is no longer viewed as a passthrough IT expense, but as a strategic financial lever that directly impacts innovation capacity, profitability and enterprise resilience, according to the CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report from Azul ...

As AI moves from generating responses to performing actions, the need for trust increases exponentially. And as organizations enlist AI agents for increasingly sophisticated business processes, trust is going to be the single most important theme for spurring adoption. What can organizations do to build trustworthy AI agents? ...

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 ...