Application team members need the right tools to ensure great user experiences. They need monitoring tools that provide information on user interactions and resource availability. With that data, they can run more targeted diagnostics, isolate problems and analyze them to determine the severity of issues, the number of affected users, and the locations where problems occur. From there, they can prioritize responses and resolve the issues quickly.
That requires visibility into live applications, regardless of how the apps are delivered and the type of device used. In this case, visibility means data from sensors that measure all kinds of metrics, such as time spent running in the foreground, active time, wait time and the number of crashes. Together, these metrics provide a big-picture view of an application’s performance and important details used for troubleshooting.
Some agencies try to use monitoring tools that aren’t designed specifically for applications. Why? An agency may be trying to protect their investment, or maybe a vendor led them to believe a tool could accomplish more than it really can. In these cases, a visibility gap can occur. The tools don’t raise red flags even though users report application problems. IT can’t address issues if they don’t know where the bottlenecks occur, when usage spikes, why an app is crashing and so on.
Application performance management, or APM, is a cohesive set of tools that provide deep visibility into networking, application and computing resources. Using APM, the application team can monitor the end user experience of cloud, web or enterprise mobile apps running on physical, virtual or mobile devices.
APM’s insights help staff understand how end users actually experience and interact with applications, and how the network and server are responding. APM enables IT staff to proactively identify, troubleshoot and rapidly resolve problems to prevent application slowdown and downtime.
All of this adds up to an exceptional end user experience and superior customer service, as far as application performance goes. Employees are more productive when the applications they use work consistently, and agencies are able to meet constituents’ expectations.
Does APM seem like must-have tech for your agency? Learn more by registering for our full course, “How Application Performance Management Enhances End User Experience,” created in partnership with Swish and Riverbed. Watch the full course here.
