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What is Network Visibility for APM and NPM?

Keith Bromley

Most everyone in IT has heard about network performance monitoring (NPM) and application performance monitoring (APM) tools. But what are the real benefits? For instance, what kind of information do I really get and is it worth the investment? Also, what about the complexity involved with these types of solutions?

The answer boils down to implementation. Essentially, did you install a visibility architecture first (so that you can optimize the flow of information to APM and NPM tools), or did you just add point solutions for APM and NPM? This answer will determine the effectiveness of your application monitoring solutions.

Any performance monitoring solution is only as good as the quality of data feeding the tools

The visibility architecture concept is extremely important because it organizes the flow of information to security and monitoring tools. Without it, you don’t know what the quality and integrity of the input data to the tools is. A visibility architecture delivers an end-to-end infrastructure which enables physical and virtual network, application, and security visibility. Specifically, network packet brokers can be included in the architecture to parse the requisite data needed and distribute that data to one or more application monitoring tools.

Once the network packet brokers are installed, it makes it much easier for the APM and NPM solutions to optimize your performance. In addition to these tools, other capabilities, like application intelligence and proactive network monitoring, can be installed as part of the visibility architecture to further increase the range of capabilities.

Here are some example use cases of what you can accomplish when a visibility architecture is combined with performance monitoring tools:

■ NPM solutions can be used to improve the quality of service (QoS) on the network and optimize the network service level agreement (SLA) performance.

■ APM solutions can be used to improve quality of experience (QoE) and optimize SLA performance for network applications, i.e. capture data that can be used by an APM tool to observe and diagnose application slowness.

■ APM tools can be used to analyze user behaviors.

■ Application intelligence can be used to identify slow or underperforming applications and network bottlenecks.

■ Proactive monitoring can be used to provide better and faster network rollouts by pre-testing the network with synthetic traffic to understand how it performs against either specific application traffic or a combination of traffic types.

■ Proactive troubleshooting can be combined with application intelligence to help you more quickly anticipate where network and application problems may be coming from.

■ It is also possible to prevent applications from overloading the network bandwidth by using application intelligence to “see” application growth on the bandwidth in real-time and prevent catastrophic events.

■ You can also conduct inline network performance monitoring to optimize A/B traffic route flows (i.e. investigate path latency and performance problems)

In the end, any performance monitoring solution is only as good as the quality of data feeding the tools. Extraneous and duplicate data will affect the ability and speed of monitoring tools to come to an accurate analysis. A few minutes of time to understand your network visibility and the types of blind you have might be well worth it.

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What is Network Visibility for APM and NPM?

Keith Bromley

Most everyone in IT has heard about network performance monitoring (NPM) and application performance monitoring (APM) tools. But what are the real benefits? For instance, what kind of information do I really get and is it worth the investment? Also, what about the complexity involved with these types of solutions?

The answer boils down to implementation. Essentially, did you install a visibility architecture first (so that you can optimize the flow of information to APM and NPM tools), or did you just add point solutions for APM and NPM? This answer will determine the effectiveness of your application monitoring solutions.

Any performance monitoring solution is only as good as the quality of data feeding the tools

The visibility architecture concept is extremely important because it organizes the flow of information to security and monitoring tools. Without it, you don’t know what the quality and integrity of the input data to the tools is. A visibility architecture delivers an end-to-end infrastructure which enables physical and virtual network, application, and security visibility. Specifically, network packet brokers can be included in the architecture to parse the requisite data needed and distribute that data to one or more application monitoring tools.

Once the network packet brokers are installed, it makes it much easier for the APM and NPM solutions to optimize your performance. In addition to these tools, other capabilities, like application intelligence and proactive network monitoring, can be installed as part of the visibility architecture to further increase the range of capabilities.

Here are some example use cases of what you can accomplish when a visibility architecture is combined with performance monitoring tools:

■ NPM solutions can be used to improve the quality of service (QoS) on the network and optimize the network service level agreement (SLA) performance.

■ APM solutions can be used to improve quality of experience (QoE) and optimize SLA performance for network applications, i.e. capture data that can be used by an APM tool to observe and diagnose application slowness.

■ APM tools can be used to analyze user behaviors.

■ Application intelligence can be used to identify slow or underperforming applications and network bottlenecks.

■ Proactive monitoring can be used to provide better and faster network rollouts by pre-testing the network with synthetic traffic to understand how it performs against either specific application traffic or a combination of traffic types.

■ Proactive troubleshooting can be combined with application intelligence to help you more quickly anticipate where network and application problems may be coming from.

■ It is also possible to prevent applications from overloading the network bandwidth by using application intelligence to “see” application growth on the bandwidth in real-time and prevent catastrophic events.

■ You can also conduct inline network performance monitoring to optimize A/B traffic route flows (i.e. investigate path latency and performance problems)

In the end, any performance monitoring solution is only as good as the quality of data feeding the tools. Extraneous and duplicate data will affect the ability and speed of monitoring tools to come to an accurate analysis. A few minutes of time to understand your network visibility and the types of blind you have might be well worth it.

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 ...

Image
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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