The Unmet Customer Need For Real APM

Enterprises (large and small) collectively spend $7B a year for software and hardware to manage the performance of their systems. Well here is the ugly little secret. Precious little of the spending for "APM" products and services has to do with applications at all. Based upon numerous conversations with large enterprise organizations that are struggling with this issue, APMExperts believes that a real APM solution must incorporate the following elements:

1. It must measure the performance at the presentation layer of the application system. So, if an application system has 50 web servers as the front end, performance measurement must occur on each web server while covering ever user and every transaction. Sampling user experience with scripted synthetic agents is not sufficient.
2. It must collect detailed performance and utilization data from every layer of the application system (presentation. business logic and database) and it must synthesize this data with the performance information collected at the presentation layer.
3. It must be able to use applications level information in combination with infrastructure information (however collected) to be able to tell Systems Administrators if the problem is in the underlying infrastructure (network, server, OS, middleware), or in the application itself.
4. If the problem is in the application itself, it must be able to pinpoint the root cause of a performance degradation with a sufficient level of detail so that an application owner can go back to either the vendor or the in-house developer with proof that it is an application problem, and enough data to get the resolution process started.
5. In addition to gathering performance information across the application system, it must be able to verify the integrity of specific transactions (this is the valid role for scripts).
   It must support at least one of the major web based applications architectures (Windows/COM+/.Net or J2EE).

At APMExperts we help enterprises identify the applications performance tools that they really need, and we help vendors meet the real need in the market. So, our focus is upon the unmet need for real applications performance management on the part of enterprises and the strategy development for vendors who desire to meet those needs.

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