Importance of APM in Enterprises Date:   Thursday , September 08, 2011 The IT industry flourishes on the stability and reliability of the applications that it either develops or services. Everyday when newer applications are developed and administered the need to manage their performance goes hand in hand. Over the last few years, the awareness for application performance and monitoring has increased manifold. Such awareness is primarily driven by the development of a more integrated approach to monitor, manage and provide service assurance to applications that utilize the network. The industry today is growing at a tremendous rate and the need to compete in the market depends on the performance of the concerned products. The growing usage of web applications is driving the market towards APM adoption by large enterprises simply because of the collaborative environment and growing customer base. The Market Trends Today: The market for Application Performance Management (APM) is experiencing a steady growth with the introduction of more advanced applications. Further, the increasing usage of networks such as wireless and new technologies, adoption of wide range of network technologies by the companies and the requirement for high security of networks are driving the APM market. Decision makers are highly aware of the impact the internet has on day-to-day business performance. They want better, more user friendly information to help improve customer support, maintain employee productivity, and sustain revenues. The Need for Application Performance Management (APM): In addition to the increasing usage of networks like wireless and new technologies the APM market is also driven by end-user experience. With the entry of virtualization, cloud computing and other emerging technologies in an already highly complex environment, traditional system management tools are insufficient. The focus is solely on siloed infrastructure components. A recent Forrester study says that 73% of all performance issues are discovered by end users, and they would not waste time in complaining, they will take their business elsewhere or stop using the application if it doesn’t meet their expectations. While these solutions confirm how well the database, network and servers are working, they can’t predict the actual experience of the end-users or the business impact of a problem. Without this information, it is not possible to be sure if applications are performing optimally for the end users, or if they are meeting the needs of the business. The Challenges faced without APM: Applications on the internet and a mobile device are the order of the day today. There are times when a particular website or an application doesn’t work properly for the end user. In times like these the user will not wait for it to fix itself, he will take his business elsewhere. Companies face various challenges without a system of measuring the performance of their critical business applications. Getting results that help to multiply the company’s revenues, customer satisfaction and brand perception is how a business will survive in the world today. Testing key applications before they go live lets a business avoid production issues. By measuring the end user’s experience it can be determined how many users are affected by a problem and how critical the issue can get to the business. Benefits of Application Performance Management- Application performance management (APM) helps organizations to proactively monitor and manage critical applications. It also aids to detect, diagnose and resolve incidents and problems quickly and effectively before it becomes a bottleneck. APM combines critical information from across the IT environment into a single repository captured from already existing data to instantly provide insights into designing the future of the applications. APM manages vast amounts of configuration items that require monitoring into operations by applying familiar object-oriented principles and models to an application environment. It correlates data from across the IT environment in real time or historically, allowing IT to perform problem diagnosis and capacity planning. The scale of measurement is based on time intervals, number of users and the number and type of transaction used at a given time period. APM if implemented will open up opportunities for current or future optimization on performance that can cut costs and save time and effort with the optimal use of resources. It aids in providing consistency of resource usage and availability. Therefore performance can be maintained over a given period of time. Application performance management is more important now than it ever has been, with applications that reside both in house and in the cloud, and applications that have components that are split across applications, systems, and environments. Innovations and key trends in markets that are adjacent to the APM are also impacting how application performance management products are being used, as well as the value that they are delivering to end-users. Organizations need to pay attention now more than ever to how well their applications perform under a wide range of potential operational issues. In future, the major task for APM providers will be to discover the best way to support the growing need of end-user organizations to center their IT management efforts on the overall health of IT services, as opposed to managing the performance of infrastructure parts separately. The author is Managing Director, Compuware Corporation India