According to information recently released by Gartner (News - Alert), IT stakeholders in charge of application performance monitoring should utilize five main types of testing to evaluate APM.

First, start with the end-use experience, says Pete Goldin of APM Digest. Even though few Web experiences are straight-line affairs, enterprises need to look for tools that will deliver insight on all aspects of the user experience.

For instance, companies cannot control all of the third-party data that is pushed to their websites and apps. However, they can gather information on how that data affects the end-user. For example, enterprises can gather data on how speedily Web pages load, especially when affected by third-party servers, so that they know whether or not their customers have an easy path to the “Place My Order” button.

Second, IT staff need to monitor the discovery, modeling and display aspects of application architecture. Staff should be able to monitor application architecture on the same console that provides end-user monitoring to guarantee maximum efficiency.

Another type of testing includes creating user-defined transaction profiling. Organizations should be able to trace application performance in the context of previously defined key performance indicators. This insight will allow enterprises to know whether application events are occurring when, where and as efficiently as they want them to occur.

Gartner also recommends component deep-dive monitoring in application context. Organizations should especially know how well their component monitoring tools work together so that they don’t have solutions spread out across multiple consoles. Information captured by the tools should transfer to other APM components in real time.

When enterprises are certain that their APM (News - Alert) data is modeled successfully, they can then utilize analytics to identify multiple ways to improve APM performance. All efforts to improve APM should be oriented toward generating a profitable transaction in real time while focusing on the quality of the user’s experience.

Bottom line: The break-fix mentality will no longer work. Businesses have to utilize APM to deliver proactive, real-time responsiveness.