Application servers, media servers and devices are just some technologies that pump out performance data. Application Performance Management (APM (News - Alert)) is a method for putting that into a single console for use as a troubleshooting and diagnostic tool to help better run business. Eric Wegner, director of business development at Zoho (News - Alert) Corporation, provider of ManageEngine and WebNMS network management services, and Gurmeet Lamba, vice president of R&D and chief architect, Unified Communications Management at OPNET Technologies, recently joined up at ITEXPO (News - Alert) Miami for a panel session titled, “Time to Rethink Performance Management.”
The two explained that APM prevents the unproductive finger-pointing scenario between network, applications, voice and service providers to locate exactly where the problem is. APM offers a single source of where a problem may be, providing deep visibility into every possible component. On a desktop client, users can engineer Web applications with JavaScript, monitor performance for end-users and monitor network traffic and transmission time. On the back end, APM provides engineers with deep component monitoring to see how Java apps are running. According to Lamba, all of this applies to the mobile side too.
UC applications are IT apps, incorporating real-time communications such as VoIP, video communications, telepresence, IM/presence and unified messaging. In order to adapt to current technologies, APM implementations need to extend to provide a true end-to-end monitoring of service availability and performance of UC and real-time communications. Wegner explains that for the networking side of APM, solutions look at uptime, traffic analysis and bandwidth utilization to determine what apps take up the most bandwidth. IT infrastructure involves a lot of complexity, so companies need to be able to identify any issues before they affect uptime. The overall goal is to make sure business is, and stays, running.
Lamba emphasizes that APM is a category – there are many specialized areas, such as voice and video. According to Wegner, configuration is a big component. Auditing who touched what, when and where gives a trail, which in turn, allows managers to find out specifically why a system is going down and gives them tools for insight of where to look.
So, what’s ahead for APM? Wegner predicts a lot of cloud and emphasis on the end-user experience. ManageEngine (News - Alert) recently announced that its Applications Manager performance monitoring solution now supports NoSQL technologies that drive big data, which offer superior scalability and read/write performance when compared to traditional relational databases.
"NoSQL technologies are relatively new and expertise is hard to find, and that makes it difficult to ensure the performance of big data," said Gibu Mathew, director of product management at ManageEngine, in a recent company statement. "With out-of-the-box support for Apache Cassandra and MongoDB, Applications Manager can empower existing IT teams and make it easy for businesses to justify their investments in big data technologies."
Edited by
Allison Boccamazzo
