Application performance monitoring (APM) has been very popular since the last decade. However, APM is rapidly evolving since the nature and scope of applications and the way they access and process data are also evolving. Gartner predicted this evolution along with an uptick in the rate of adoption of APM strategy and tools, back in 2018. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring Suites states that APM frameworks would monitor 20% of all businesses worldwide, by 2021.
The APM market is ginormous; 4 out of 5 key players in the APM space have achieved IPO with two market caps over $10Bn. But here’s the kicker – most businesses that jump on the popular-APM-tools bandwagon too soon suffer setbacks soon too. Not all applications and business cases are equal – which means traditional, “one-size-fits-all” APM tools don’t always make for an effective APM strategy. Businesses must choose the right resources and development partners to ensure that their APM framework is perfectly suited to their business case.
What your APM tools can and cannot do
APM solutions are perfect for identifying anomalies, tracing transactions, and notifying teams of bottlenecks in code. However, this data represents only one subset of the information required to paint a complete picture of the performance of your applications. APM solutions are usually blind to the service-level operations of today’s diverse infrastructure, where there is plenty of room for issues to stem. The primary functionality of APM solutions is the monitoring and analysis of segmented, pre-deployed code against downstream performance issues. The bottom line is, readymade APM solutions may feel incomplete to businesses with an intricate data center architecture.
Why traditional, run-of-the-mill APM tools don’t always work
A robust, comprehensive APM strategy can radically change the efficiency of business-critical applications and ultimately improve ROI. But given the complex, varying nature of today’s solutions, networks, and data storage patterns, a typical run-of-the-mill APM strategy won’t always cover all your bases and deliver the same benefits. A good APM strategy includes unobscured visibility up and down the stack, through all stages of the application lifecycle, along with an insight into how it accesses, processes, and stores data. This means a customized APM solution is your best bet.
Market analysis reports from research and consultancy firm Research in Action found that 57% of organizations are currently migrating to a new APM solution, piloting another solution, or considering migration to another solution in the next one to three years. This underlines the fact that rushing into adopting a new APM strategy or tool may soon leave you worse than when you started, owing to the losses that follow constant changes. Kicking the tires hard before you commit to an APM tool or vendor is important.
Why your APM strategy must cover infrastructure monitoring
Monitoring real-time behavior as well as massive, complex archives of event data is increasingly becoming imperative given the increase in data produced every day. Understanding the intricacies and relationships between components in your environment is crucial to efficiently monitor it and troubleshoot problems. An effective APM solution must integrate APM data with infrastructure metrics and analytics for a bird’s eye view of the entire environment. Stats flowing directly from applications accessing elastic, distributed architectures must be aggregated and validated with appropriate alerts to maintain ship shape. Many anomalies and opportunities for potential errors belong to the infrastructure layer and may create graver problems that may go unnoticed without infrastructure monitoring as a part of your APM efforts.
How to improve your APM strategy with a customized development plan
Choosing the right development partners is of prime importance. This is how you can develop an APM framework that is best suited to your business. You need experts who will work as an extension to your team, understand the components of not only your architecture but also your company infrastructure and third-party libraries, and guide you correctly.
Acquiring or leveraging this niche expertise is especially vital because times have changed. Monitoring and managing the performance of legacy applications is simpler than monitoring cloud applications and their data centers which are prevalent now. You need experts who will design an APM strategy that automatically discovers varying, underlying components and monitors the code accordingly – one that enables a complete understanding of your applications and their complexity.
Calsoft has mature expertise of over two decades in the IT infrastructure service space. Our teams of skilled engineers have worked in close conjunction with numerous customers to improve operational efficiency and minimize downtime and costs, with a sharp focus on resource optimization and ROI. At Calsoft, we’re committed to customer satisfaction, and it is the great customer experiences that have enabled us to maintain long-standing partnerships with our customers. You can rely on our experience and expertise and trust us to provide you genuine value with a customized, end-to-end APM strategy. Explore our services in-depth, see our best work, and contact us to get in touch with our technical experts.
