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Two Ways to Improve Banking Application Performance

Keith Bromley

The financial industry is experiencing a massive wave of change over the last several years. Digital disruption has been truly disruptive to this industry. Traditional banks face stiff competition from fintechs because these new competitors are more nimble, faster, and often have a different viewpoint that allows them to understand customer needs (especially from a user experience) better.

This includes not only the technology involved with conducting business, but also how to interact and service customers in this day and age. For instance, a mobile-centric world demands optimization of mobile applications and content delivery to provide the best possible customer experience. To this end, there are several ways to go about monitoring the network and its applications to collect the necessary performance data and deliver the requisite customer quality of experience.

One way is to use packet data. A copy of the data can be made and forwarded on to purpose-built tools (like network performance monitoring (NPM) and application performance monitoring (APM) appliances) for packet analysis. The flow of this type of monitoring data to these tools should be optimized using a network packet broker (NPB) which can filter, deduplicate, strip extraneous header information, and perform other useful tasks. This reduces the amount of non-relevant data being sent to the performance tools.

A second way to monitor the network is to look at flow data. In this scenario, application intelligence within a packet broker can be used to deliver key NetFlow-based data about the network to external performance monitoring tools. Some packet brokers can also deliver additional value-add features like geolocation, user device type, user browser type, etc. to aid with better application management and troubleshooting across the network.

By combining geolocation, user device type, and browser type metadata, it is easy to understand if issues exist on the network and where. This saves an exorbitant amount of troubleshooting time. Instead of trying to figure out if there is a problem, where it is located, and who is affected, application-level metadata can answer most, if not all, of those questions. Specifically, you can visually see that there is (or is not) an application problem, which application(s) are having issues, where (i.e. between which network segments) the issue(s) is occurring, and the affected user types.

In the end, better monitoring data allows you to enhance your customer experience. Here are some examples:

■ Better monitoring data improves the measurement of key performance indicators (KPIs) for mobile application success

■ The collection of monitoring data allows you to isolate application design problems and issues to improve user experience

■ Complete network traffic visibility can be accomplished to speed up application performance analysis

■ You now have easy access to data to perform application performance trending

■ The capture and documentation of user data helps improve the collaboration between IT and the lines of business responsible for specified mobile banking applications

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Two Ways to Improve Banking Application Performance

Keith Bromley

The financial industry is experiencing a massive wave of change over the last several years. Digital disruption has been truly disruptive to this industry. Traditional banks face stiff competition from fintechs because these new competitors are more nimble, faster, and often have a different viewpoint that allows them to understand customer needs (especially from a user experience) better.

This includes not only the technology involved with conducting business, but also how to interact and service customers in this day and age. For instance, a mobile-centric world demands optimization of mobile applications and content delivery to provide the best possible customer experience. To this end, there are several ways to go about monitoring the network and its applications to collect the necessary performance data and deliver the requisite customer quality of experience.

One way is to use packet data. A copy of the data can be made and forwarded on to purpose-built tools (like network performance monitoring (NPM) and application performance monitoring (APM) appliances) for packet analysis. The flow of this type of monitoring data to these tools should be optimized using a network packet broker (NPB) which can filter, deduplicate, strip extraneous header information, and perform other useful tasks. This reduces the amount of non-relevant data being sent to the performance tools.

A second way to monitor the network is to look at flow data. In this scenario, application intelligence within a packet broker can be used to deliver key NetFlow-based data about the network to external performance monitoring tools. Some packet brokers can also deliver additional value-add features like geolocation, user device type, user browser type, etc. to aid with better application management and troubleshooting across the network.

By combining geolocation, user device type, and browser type metadata, it is easy to understand if issues exist on the network and where. This saves an exorbitant amount of troubleshooting time. Instead of trying to figure out if there is a problem, where it is located, and who is affected, application-level metadata can answer most, if not all, of those questions. Specifically, you can visually see that there is (or is not) an application problem, which application(s) are having issues, where (i.e. between which network segments) the issue(s) is occurring, and the affected user types.

In the end, better monitoring data allows you to enhance your customer experience. Here are some examples:

■ Better monitoring data improves the measurement of key performance indicators (KPIs) for mobile application success

■ The collection of monitoring data allows you to isolate application design problems and issues to improve user experience

■ Complete network traffic visibility can be accomplished to speed up application performance analysis

■ You now have easy access to data to perform application performance trending

■ The capture and documentation of user data helps improve the collaboration between IT and the lines of business responsible for specified mobile banking applications

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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