Application Performance Management Industry Dynamics

The Application Performance Industry is rife with rapid change. The big vendors are not standing still, and the small ones are trying to be nimble and fill in cracks as they emerge. Here are the key vendor dynamics driving the industry:

• Microsoft has lost control of the applications architecture and tools industry. More important business applications are being built today to the J2EE applications server platforms from BEA and IBM, than to the Windows platform. However, Microsoft is determined to gain that market share back with .Net and the CLR environment for C# and VB.Net.
• Due to the fact that a large number of business critical applications are being written to J2EE, the near term nexus of innovation in Systems and Application Performance Management has shifted from Windows to the J2EE platform. Therefore as .Net gains traction, it will be temporariliy underserved relative to J2EE in terms of real applications performance management solutions.
• With MOM 2005 Microsoft is entering the infrastructure management business on Windows servers with a vengence, and will likely move upstream into APM in future releases.
• Agentless monitoring is rapidly gaining traction in the infrastructure monitoring space. This is collapsing price points for infrastructure monitoring, and is wrecking havoc with the business models of vendors like BMC, CA, IBM/Tivoli and NetIQ that rely on the per server tax to grow their businesses.
• Appliances are the order of the day. Vendors like Vieo are able to package an astonishing array of fuctionality into an easy to implement and support package by delivering a software solution in a pre-configured hardware box.
• While there is much talk, and much in the way of point solutions offering real value and progress, the notion of application infrastructure as a plug-and-play utility remains as elusive now as it was when the idea was first surfaced 10 years ago.
• The "aircraft battle group" approach to systems and appliations management is dead. Applications environments within and across enterprises are so complex that no one "framework" can deal with and keep up with the complexity.
• Since no one vendor can meet the needs for real APM solutions across the range of environments and customer requirements, small, creative, and nimble vendors will be needed to meet the needs for real APM solutions. APMExperts was formed to help vendors and customers address the requirements for real APM solutions.

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Bernd Harzog
CEO
APMExperts.com
bernd.harzog@apmexperts.com