What is application performance monitoring?

Apps are everywhere. This is even more true today than it was only a few years ago, with a growing number of customers choosing to shop, interact with businesses, and manage their finances remotely rather than face to face. Many companies have likewise seen an internal shift, where business applications are increasingly being used to support remote-working initiatives and other important tasks. 

When these apps are slow to respond, suffer from unexpected crashes, fail to operate correctly, or simply fall below user expectations, the damage to the business may be significant. Users want software that is dependable and intuitive. Unfortunately, optimizing application performance is often a complex and time-consuming job. With potentially hundreds of different applications being fielded at once, made up of millions of lines of code each, and comprising interconnected services, solutions, and hosting environments, the sheer number of issues that can negatively impact app performance are staggering.

Application performance monitoring empowers organizations with the visibility they need to peer into the heart of their applications and dependencies, and to easily identify and root out issues before they can create problems. This allows for many different business benefits:

Gathering real-time performance data on vital applications, companies gain a detailed picture of problem areas within the software, as well as other variables that may be causing unexpected problems. With this information, IT can adapt the application environment and identify and resolve issues across the board, effectively eliminating incidents before they occur.

Because of their increased complexity, it’s little wonder that applications experience unforeseen problems. Application performance monitoring keeps constant tabs on software programs, so that organizations receive immediate notification for any issues that might emerge. With application performance monitoring, businesses can quickly locate root causes and take action to find a resolution.

The best application performance monitoring solutions provide companies with a single source of truth. With reliable, agreed-upon insights, teams across departments can more easily align their efforts and improve how they work together. This not only creates a better end product; it also establishes a more rewarding and satisfying job environment for those involved.

As an added benefit to improved collaboration, teams can apply their aligned vision towards improving how they operate. Decision makers in different departments have access to the same reliable information, creating a solid foundation for brainstorming and innovation.