Four Tips for Improving Application Performance Management

Experts at Logicalis say ensuring proper application performance is increasingly important in an age of hybrid computing and software-defined enterprises.

Aldrin Brown, Editor-in-Chief

May 25, 2016

2 Min Read
Four Tips for Improving Application Performance Management

The growing use of software tools is allowing managed services providers (MSPs) to connect, provision and manage network components with unprecedented efficiency.

But the trend of more digital-enabled enterprises is increasingly revealing shortcomings in applications that aren’t optimized for such computing environments.

Ensuring that applications perform as intended is as important as ever, as client organizations seeking digital transformation aim to provide better customer experiences for end users.

“You simply can’t build a software-defined enterprise without a focus on application performance management,” said Paul Williams, director of software solutions for IT solutions provider Logicalis US. “You must have the ability to comprehensively monitor across the entire enterprise computing environment, quickly identify the root cause of a service disruption, and quickly remediate the issue to satisfy end users.”

This week, Logicalis US released a list of four practices they suggest IT professionals adopt as part of an application performance management scheme.

  1. Set a measurable baseline: Many organizations lack an empirical benchmark for how an application should perform. As a result, too many rely on human perception or the number of support calls to deduce that an application is not performing as desired. Logicalis experts recommend setting a baseline for application performance that is based on data and analytics.

  2. Shorten the time to resolution: Quickly identifying the root cause of the problem is essential but can be challenging. Often, the various component monitoring solutions in a network are not integrated. Network monitoring should begin at the end-user perspective and work back through the infrastructure, Logicalis experts said. The goal is to anticipate potential performance problems before they occur, allowing for proactive or automated remediation of issues.

  3. Employ Dev-Ops: A Dev-Ops strategy and related tooling can provide an organization with applications that are optimized for digital environments, helping to avoid performance problems in the first place. In-house coding can mean fewer defects and support issues down the line.

  4. Report on performance: Service providers should combine the benchmarking information with data about the supporting technologies, including the network, servers, storage, tuning and remediation procedures, with an eye toward continually improving performance and meeting service level agreements.

An application performance management strategy is essential in the age of software-defined networks, Logicalis officials said, as organizations seek more digitization while employing a variety of disparate technologies, from network infrastructure, to third-party tools to commercial off-the-shelf applications.

“Using application performance management software to better understand performance from the end users’ perspectives across hybrid environments, and then being able to proactively take action to ensure peak performance is delivered is becoming an IT operational requirement in the digital world,” Williams said.

 

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About the Author

Aldrin Brown

Editor-in-Chief, Penton

Veteran journalist Aldrin Brown comes to Penton Technology from Empire Digital Strategies, a business-to-business consulting firm that he founded that provides e-commerce, content and social media solutions to businesses, nonprofits and other organizations seeking to create or grow their digital presence.

Previously, Brown served as the Desert Bureau Chief for City News Service in Southern California and Regional Editor for Patch, AOL's network of local news sites. At Patch, he managed a staff of journalists and more than 30 hyper-local and business news and information websites throughout California. In addition to his work in technology and business, Brown was the city editor for The Sun, a daily newspaper based in San Bernardino, CA; the college sports editor at The Tennessean, Nashville, TN; and an investigative reporter at the Orange County Register, Santa Ana, CA.

 

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