Do You Need an APM Gap Analysis?

Every two to three years you should have a third party perform a gap analysis of your application performance management (APM) solution. Why? Here are 10 reasons:

1. Three years ago the cloud was only a thought and no one was making it a practice. Now it is part of just about every enterprise application in some way.
2. Mobile applications have become a must have and are part of most customer-facing applications and many internal applications.
3. Machine data has become a must-have in application monitoring; there are also many new solutions in this area.
4. Many APM vendors are releasing at least two versions each year, so you are most likely behind a few releases and may not know all the new features introduced with the upgrades you have completed.
5. Gartner has released new Magic Quadrant reports with new leaders and visionaries.
6. Virtualization has become the norm in most data centers; some data centers are pushing 80 percent to 90 percent server and desktop virtualization.
7. Procedures constantly change and outdated or unused procedures should be updated or eliminated.
8. Business metrics are now a very important part of performance impact analysis and business analysis. This information can be captured and analyzed cost-effectively.
9. Tools often introduce new features that cause overlap in your solution; are you paying twice for the same functionality?
10. You are wasting time and money on old processes and technology. Many times improved processes and technologies can be obtained with the money you save by reducing maintenance and resource costs.

What Is an APM Assessment?

Technologent will provide an outline showing the steps to achieve your APM maturity goals. This is not a canned solution but a custom, step-by-step process for your unique business. Technologent will then line up the technologies, resources and processes needed for each step of the solution. We will bring in technical writers to document and capture the custom solution created so the value will not only be realized immediately but will be a useful tool for the entire company into the future.

To get started, Technologent will first identify the scope of the project by assessing the current deployed tools and processes and what value is being achieved. From this data we will create a gap analysis against the existing state of the APM industry. This will assure you of getting the most value from what is available in the industry today.

Currently, Technologent’s APM solution suite covers tools for gathering data from both the infrastructure and running applications as well as business processes that utilize these systems. This data is placed into a central repository for analysis based on Big Data technologies. Information created from the data is used to generate messages, alerts, reports and real-time dashboards that will assist in the improvement of the availability and performance of the business.

The process doesn’t end with tool deployment and training. Technologent will assist in a continuous improvement initiative by regularly meeting with the customer to evaluate the current solution and how it is addressing the needs of the business.

Technologent has more than 20 years of experience delivering successful APM solutions. Let us help you create and document an APM process based upon continuous improvement methodologies that are customized, simple to understand and easy to implement.

This post was written by Technologent Solution Architect Eric Repec.