Unifying APM and NPM
November 12, 2012
Matt Stevens
Share this

Separate application and network monitoring approaches simply won’t cut it anymore. To be truly successful, your organization must bring these two solutions together.

Recent advances that provide unified and complete visibility across both applications and networks offer the promise of the next generation of end user experience (EUE) monitoring. This combination is the only way to ensure optimal Web performance in today’s world.

Why APM + NPM?

Web-based applications rely on three main components to deliver an acceptable EUE:

1. The Web application itself, which in turn is made up of several layers of software and servers that all have to work together to make the "back-end" work.

2. The end user client/browser, which renders and processes local data coming from the Web application.

3. The mix of data center LAN, Internet and content delivery network WANs, and end-user WAN/LANs, which all have to work together to permit the Web application and end user's browser/client to communicate effectively.

All three of these components must work together seamlessly to deliver a predictable and well-performing application experience to the end user.

The challenge with many application performance monitoring solutions is that they treat the networks as a single "black box." These solutions simply assign one performance metric (most commonly latency) to the network. However, the reality is far more complicated, and solutions must address the effects of loss, congestion, quality of service (QoS), and other factors that dramatically affect the quality of the connection between the application’s server and the end user's browser.

The same is true for the majority of today's network performance management solutions. They're focused on watching device statistics from routers and switches, and they have little-to-no actual understanding or visibility into the transmission control protocol (TCP), HTTP/HTTPs or actual Web transactions happening on the network.

The reality is that networks are built to support applications, and unless both application and network performance are viewed in totality with a full understanding of how different Web applications run on a given network, and how a given network condition affects different Web-based applications, the game of finger-pointing between the network and application teams will continue.

How a Unified APM and NPM Approach Improves End User Experience

Monitoring and measuring end user experience is absolutely the place to start – after all, it all begins and ends with the end user.

If the experience is at or above acceptable business standards for a given application, then everything is good. The challenge is that most EUE solutions stop there. They tell you IF end user experience has fallen below some preset or historical baseline, but not WHY.

Where did the problem start?

What tier in the delivery chain was responsible?

Is the ownership for resolving within direct control of the organization on the hook for delivering end-user experience, or does a third-party need to be contacted to mitigate the issue?

To gain better end user experience visibility, one key is the realization that a single method of measuring performance is simply insufficient. Many solutions get overly hung-up on “their approach being the best approach.” The reality is that it takes a combination of synthetic transactional monitoring, real user monitoring (RUM), and in some cases, even end-point instrumentation to get a total picture of the end user experience. No single approach fits all use cases, so the ability to leverage multiple approaches together offers the most effective path to understand both “what is” (RUM and end point) versus “what is possible” (synthetics).

The bottom line is that if EUE monitoring does not deliver actionable information based on the type of IT professional involved, then all you have is a yet another yapping dog and no way to effectively quiet the noise. To solve the problem, you need an integrated APM and NPM solution that starts with EUE at the top of the stack, and then allows different people within the organization to drill into the details they care about. This will solve the big problem of EUE monitoring and enable the right teams to take fast action to resolve issues when they arise.

What to Look For in a Unified APM and NPM Solution

The key again is to begin with the end user experience - your unified solution needs to start here.

To truly understand the actual end user experience you need multiple methods of measuring, including server-side code injection for RUM, all the way to instrumenting the actual end-users end point (be it a PC or a mobile device). From there, the solution should enable the performance to measure from the true end-to-end of the application service delivery chain.

Once that perspective is obtained, then the solution should be able to understand the details behind a rich, service-oriented architecture (SOA)-type application running over multiple networks and be able to easily and accurately isolate which areas are affecting the performance the most.

As you lead your organization into 2013, it’s important to consider how to keep your performance management strategy up to speed with the growing complexity of your applications and their dependence on the network. Without a holistic approach to monitoring and assuring application and network performance, your team will be stuck in 2012 while everyone else moves forward.

ABOUT Matt Stevens

Matt Stevens is CTO at AppNeta, responsible for guiding technology and product vision and managing the advanced research, development, QA, customer support and information technology teams. Prior to joining AppNeta, Matt was the CTO of the Information and Event Management business unit of RSA, The Security Division of EMC. He joined EMC after the acquisition of Network Intelligence Corp. where he was a founder. In that role, Matt was also part of EMC's Office of the CTO, where he and his peer group had responsibility for EMC's overall strategic technology direction. Prior to NIC and RSA, Matt held senior technology and sales management positions with NetApp, Solbourne Computer and Harris Corporation.

Related Links:

www.appneta.com

Share this

The Latest

March 23, 2023

APMdigest and leading IT research firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) are partnering to bring you the EMA-APMdigest Podcast, a new podcast focused on the latest technologies impacting IT Operations. In Episode 2 - Part 1 Pete Goldin, Editor and Publisher of APMdigest, discusses Network Observability with Shamus McGillicuddy, Vice President of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA ...

March 22, 2023

CIOs have stepped into the role of digital leader and strategic advisor, according to the 2023 Global CIO Survey from Logicalis ...

March 21, 2023

Synthetic monitoring is crucial to deploy code with confidence as catching bugs with E2E tests on staging is becoming increasingly difficult. It isn't trivial to provide realistic staging systems, especially because today's apps are intertwined with many third-party APIs ...

March 20, 2023

Recent EMA field research found that ServiceOps is either an active effort or a formal initiative in 78% of the organizations represented by a global panel of 400+ IT leaders. It is relatively early but gaining momentum across industries and organizations of all sizes globally ...

March 16, 2023

Managing availability and performance within SAP environments has long been a challenge for IT teams. But as IT environments grow more complex and dynamic, and the speed of innovation in almost every industry continues to accelerate, this situation is becoming a whole lot worse ...

March 15, 2023

Harnessing the power of network-derived intelligence and insights is critical in detecting today's increasingly sophisticated security threats across hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure, according to a new research study from IDC ...

March 14, 2023

Recent research suggests that many organizations are paying for more software than they need. If organizations are looking to reduce IT spend, leaders should take a closer look at the tools being offered to employees, as not all software is essential ...

March 13, 2023

Organizations are challenged by tool sprawl and data source overload, according to the Grafana Labs Observability Survey 2023, with 52% of respondents reporting that their companies use 6 or more observability tools, including 11% that use 16 or more.

March 09, 2023

An array of tools purport to maintain availability — the trick is sorting through the noise to find the right one. Let us discuss why availability is so important and then unpack the ROI of deploying Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) during an economic downturn ...

March 08, 2023

Development teams so often find themselves rushing to get a release out on time. When it comes time for testing, the software works fine in the lab. But, when it's released, customers report a bunch of bugs. How does this happen? Why weren't the flaws found in QA? ...