Meta Trends Driving the Need for Real Applications Performance Management

Real Applications Performance Management (of applications, not just their infrastructure) is a growing problem for enterprises, and a growing opportunity for vendors for the following really big reasons:

• Microsoft and the Java camp (Sun, IBM, BEA, Oracle) are in an arms race to improve programmer productivity. This is what .Net and the CLR for managed code vs. the J2EE applications servers is all about.
• The first order consequence of this arms race are that developers are increasingly able to deliver more business applications functionality with less effort.
• The second order consequence is that control of and responsibility for applications performance and reliability has been wrested from the hands of the developers who have been losing those skills at the hands of high level languages for years anyway.
• All of which results in the "blame game" when things go wrong with applications in production. The Developers blame IS infrastructure groups and the platforms that support the applications. The IS groups blame the Developers and the users. The vendors all proclaim innocence and lack of issues in their products. And, enormous amount of time and money is wasted trying to find the root cause of applications performance issues.
• And it is not going to get any better. The really important war is for control of the applications infrastructure. The major vendors (Microsoft, Sun, IBM, BEA) wage this war by making it easier for developers to develop new applications. not by making those applications scalable and reliable in production. So, enterprises are going to have to continue to fill in cracks created by the "elephant war" with creative solutions from innovative vendors.

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Bernd Harzog
CEO
APMExperts
bernd@apmexperts.com