Application Performance Management (APM): The Top Use Cases

Most businesses run on applications. There are mission-critical applications in every department. Sales and marketing use CRMs and marketing automation applications. Customer service, accounting, and human resources all have applications that they couldn’t work without. It’s critical that these applications are available and running well in order for your business to survive and grow.

That’s where Application Performance Management (APM) and the associated application performance monitoring tools are invaluable. As you’ll see, there are a variety of use cases that your company can consider in order to satisfy your internal users and your customers.

Key Use Cases for APM

Application Development

Some people think of APM tools as production tools. But, they’re an effective tool to use during application development, also. Your AppDev teams need to test their applications as they’re being developed. Effective monitoring during the development process produces apps more quickly and cleanly. With the right APM tool, you can perform root cause analyses at the code level.

In addition, when you use APM during development, you can address bugs or defects while they’re cheaper to fix. Waiting to address problems until a final test cycle, or even finding problems after apps have been released, increases the cost of making repairs and it can cause havoc among users and customers.

Configuration Testing

Deploying new applications or reconfiguring the infrastructure that many of your applications rely on can cause unforeseen problems. APM allows you to check to make sure that your applications haven’t been negatively affected. Most APM vendors let you compare real-time and previous performance so that you can compare the two and find any issues. Assuming that there are none, you can assure your company’s leaders that routine maintenance isn’t affecting the performance of the applications.

Tracking Application Effectiveness

Having the ability to save the results of APM activity gives you a unique way to compare how applications are working now with how they were working in the past. If users think an application is running slower than usual, you’ll have the data to prove or disprove the perception.

User Experience Monitoring

Many businesses are using user experience (UX) as an important metric. The ability to see application performance from a user’s perspective is an excellent tool. If your user expectations aren’t being met, it may be caused by an issue you can’t pin down with application metrics. Obtaining user metrics means you can get the story at the source.

APM Benefits

Besides the wide variety of places where you can use APM, there are a host of other benefits, including:

• Increasing uptime due to the ability to spot future problems.
• Support for SEO is possible because search engines are more concerned with the speed and availability of your website.
• Reducing operational silos is possible because when you monitor across system components the teams responsible for those components must come together to fix issues.
• Faster response to problems is a result of collecting real-time data and the system helping to identify root causes.
• Increasing innovation is possible because IT teams have more time to work on mission-critical projects rather than spending time monitoring and fixing application problems.

Careful Implementation for APM

It’s important to implement APM effectively in order to obtain the potential benefits. Using best practices can go a long way toward ensuring that your APM platform works hard for you. You’ll need to address issues like these:

• Establishing relationships with your internal stakeholders and doing a deep dive into the type of information they need is a critical first step.
• Once you know what output you need, create a list of data items you’ll need to produce those outputs.
• Create meaningful alerts and separate them between those that need immediate action and those that don’t. Develop procedures for each type of alert.
• Create documentation that you update on a regular basis to create a roadmap of where you’ve been and where you’re going.

You’ll also need to communicate effectively to obtain senior management support and to let the organization know about your progress and your successes.

How Can Datavail Help?

We’ve created a white paper, “Application Performance Management – Vital to Keeping Businesses Running and Customers Happy,” that goes into much more detail about the things you need to know about APM. Download it today for more information.

In addition, our APM experts offer end-to-end assistance. So, whether you need assistance with selection and configuration or ongoing monitoring support, Datavail is ready to help. Our experts can fill any skills gap you have in terms of selecting and implementing APM. And our 24/7/365 teams can supplement your staff to monitor APM tools and take the right actions in response to alerts.

Contact our APM experts to discuss how we can help you make the most of your APM platform.