Using Network Monitoring to Improve Application Performance

Experts working in the field of information technology surely know that downtime or outages are costly, with losses even calculated per minute! The problem is we live in a demand-driven world, where customers expect fast and consistent access to the company’s digital services. Therefore, network monitoring is needed to keep the network running smoothly.

A delay of just 1 second can result in &% fewer conversions for the business. In addition to its impact on customers, slow application performance can hinder employee productivity. To maintain good application performance, network monitoring tools are essential. Find the explanation below!

What is Application Performance Monitoring (APM)?

Application performance monitoring or APM is a tool that helps measure the performance of applications used by companies. When experiencing slow processing times or recurring application errors, companies need a way to dig into their performance data to identify where the problem lies.

This is where application performance monitoring tools come into play. These tools collect performance data across all applications used by the company to help the company gain insight into the overall application environment. Application performance monitoring falls under the umbrella of application performance management.

The sole purpose of monitoring is to collect performance data to inform the IT team about what is happening with the application. Managing the application helps the company understand why an issue occurs by determining where and when the problem happens.

This monitoring can be likened to a doctor coming in and checking a patient’s pulse, then finding that something is not quite right. The hospital management will then involve the patient’s medical history, analyze it, and diagnose the problem to help the patient manage their health better in the future.

Just like a doctor in the examination room, the IT team must first understand what “healthy” means from the beginning. The metrics provided by APM software can help companies start to understand when an application is performing well and when it needs to be checked.

What Does the APM Solution Analyze?

APM tools collect and aggregate metrics related to application performance to help IT teams gain visibility into the enterprise application environment. Some key metrics that need to be checked may include CPU usage, error rates, and response times. One of the most important metrics for businesses is the Application Performance Index (Apdex) score. The Apdex score is an indicator of user satisfaction with the application’s performance.

A perfect application score is 1, which means the company will not lose users due to slow application performance. If the Apdex score falls below 0.85, which is the average application score, then the IT team must delve into other application performance metrics to find the source of the problem.

Overall, all the data collected by APM tools help determine whether the application’s performance is normal. If the metrics do not match, the APM solution will inform its users about the issue and help identify the root cause.

Monitoring and understanding these metrics help IT teams in several ways below:

• Identifying what “normal” baseline performance looks like for enterprise applications
• Collecting and viewing all performance metrics in one place so that the IT team can see each data point in the context of all other application performance data
• Keeping applications running smoothly and identifying the causes when something goes wrong
• Connecting application performance with business performance using metrics like Apdex scores to measure customer satisfaction with enterprise applications.

Why Do Network Teams Use APM Tools?

After extracting application performance data from each silo, it makes sense to evaluate application performance with other important IT metrics, such as network performance data. Application performance and network performance are interrelated. Network downtime can cause application downtime. Additionally, suboptimal application performance can result in poor network performance.

Using tools that help companies gain network visibility can assist IT/network teams in understanding how to resolve network issues. Application monitoring data provides insights into performance at the application level. Combining and comparing these two sets of data offers greater diagnostic power.

How APM Tools Help Companies?

Companies can benefit from APM tools in terms of technical, operational, and business aspects. What are the advantages of using APM tools for businesses? Here is a detailed explanation:

1. Technical Benefits of APM

Business, operations, application, and development teams can expect several practical benefits from the implementation of APM practices and tools, including:

• Improving application stability and uptime through AI-supported root cause analysis and real-time responses
• Reducing performance incidents with proactive alerts
• Accelerating and automating performance issue resolution
• Accelerating and enhancing software release quality with automated development and delivery processes.

2. Operational Benefits of APM

Companies that have been using APM tools for a considerable time generally report that they have gained several unexpected but impactful operational benefits. Here are some of them:

• Improving collaboration between teams with a single source of truth
• Increasing confidence in making the right business decisions that impact teams across the company with new insights and reliable intelligence
• Enhancing efficiency and innovation for application, operations, and development teams for faster problem-solving
• Improving job satisfaction and higher employee retention among team members.

3. Business Benefits of APM

Those in the boardroom and handling the company’s business can gain many advantages from the implementation of APM solutions. Some of the business benefits include the following:

• Reducing operational costs through automation and better efficiency
• Increasing developer and operational productivity by facilitating cross-team collaboration
• Enhancing customer experience by improving understanding of end users and their preferences
• Improving conversion rates through increased application stability and optimized user experience
• Achieving sustainability goals with better insights into the IT carbon footprint.

Application and network performance are interconnected and influence each other, therefore reliable network monitoring is essential. Netmonk is a reliable network monitoring solution that has served over 1000 companies in Indonesia. Find the complete services on the Netmonk website right now!