Application performance management (APM)

There are varying definitions of the term "application performance management tools", and different vendors use various contexts to define it and answer the What is APM question.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) is done to ensure that your business applications are performing as expected, at all times, with proper tracking and reporting of performance issues. The end goal of an application performance management software in any business is to ensure that the supply of services to end users is uninterrupted and that the quality of delivered end user experience is supreme.

Let us try to understand the various concepts of an APM system and see why they are gradually becoming an inevitable part of IT Ops and DevOps teams across different businesses.

Let us split the operations of IT teams broadly into three primary components:

1. Server & infrastructure
2. DevOps
3. End user experience

As we examine these three components in detail, the boundaries of APM tools will become increasingly clearer. While operations across mentioned teams are often overlapping, it is important to understand the precise scope of these operations and their importance in ensuring a smooth application lifecycle process with minimal performance hiccups.

Application performance management for servers and infrastructure.

The role of IT Ops teams is to solve internal as well as client needs by ensuring the infrastructure and operational environments supporting application deployments are in order. Application Performance Management therefore becomes extremely crucial in maintaining a continuous and smooth flow of operations. Monitoring CPU usage, load, memory, server uptime, etc. are some of the primary steps involved in infrastructure monitoring which is a part of application performance management. These are some of the key metrics that IT admins rely on to understand and optimize server and network performance through thorough network application performance management, and plan capacity upgradation as well as resource allocation:

1. Information about CPUs running at full capacity
2. System processes using high resources
3. Network load in the server
4. CPU, memory, Disk I/O analytics

While some key metrics can be retrieved with ad hoc scripts, a comprehensive application performance management software can dig deeper and wider to present more than just a few performance counters of these business applications. If your application performance components right at the grassroot levels are measured, it is an indication that the foundations of your app performance monitoring principles are strong.

Application performance management software in DevOps.

While application performance management tools are mostly employed to monitor application performance in production environments, similar systematic application monitoring in the development environment can significantly decrease development time and increase application performance and stability. The terms DevOps (development + operations) is becoming increasingly popular. It is important to note that web application performance management is a key component of DevOps practices acting as a catalyst in most DevOps processes. In fact, most enterprises that have adopted DevOps find this as one of the core applications of enterprise application monitor systems.

Monitor application performance to measure end user experience

The objectives of IT Ops and DevOps teams across organizations converge at one common goal that is satisfying customer demands. A good user experience leads to continued usage of service which directly translates to more revenue generated. Usually, an APM tool employs a technique called synthetic transaction monitoring to mimic, record, and re-run possible end user interactions with a given web application by executing behavioral scripts. These transaction details present important information that can ensure your application can handle the projected load. These synthetic transactions in any application monitor are captured with an agent that executes these transactions and collects information for optimal web app performance monitoring across geographies. Applications Manager, which offers digital experience monitoring along with application performance management, enables business organizations to:

1. Test and monitor application performance before its launch
2. Become aware of performance issues before the end user does
3. Measuring impact of third party components in your application
4. Performance stats for application access across geographies

While most application performance management tools tend to associate monitoring application performance only with DevOps, the implementation of application management solutions spans across several industries education, manufacturing, sports, IT, banking, hospitality, etc. ManageEngine Applications Manager is one such application performance management tool that is recommended by thousands of admins across numerous industries. Applications Manager offers out of the box monitoring for over 100 popular servers and business applications. With its unified console offering monitoring, alerting and analytics capabilities for IT Ops, DevOps, Web Application Management as well as End User Monitoring, Applications Manager is an ideal and affordable application performance management tool for small, medium as well as enterprise organizations.