It’s no secret that our world has seen a significant shift in the way we work and live following the COVID-19 pandemic, with remote work becoming the norm for many. While this has brought a host of benefits, it has also highlighted the limitations of traditional application performance monitoring, or APM, solutions. With the usage of APMs growing over the last couple of years, it’s important to explore the benefits, pitfalls, and user-centric approaches to these systems.
What is application performance monitoring?
APM solutions are tools that help developers and IT teams monitor and optimize the performance of their applications. APM solutions gather data from various sources such as application logs, server metrics, and user experience metrics. They use this data to provide insights into the performance of an application. With APM solutions, developers can identify and diagnose performance issues, such as slow response times, high error rates, and resource bottlenecks, and take action to improve the application's performance. APM solutions can also provide real-time alerts and notifications to help teams quickly respond to performance issues before they impact end-users.
In the past few years, APM solutions have advanced significantly to keep up with the evolving demands of modern application environments. Some of the key advancements include improved support for cloud-native monitoring, containerization, and microservices architectures. Modern APM solutions are also designed to handle large volumes of data and provide real-time insights into application performance through advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms.
Additionally, APM solutions now offer a more comprehensive view of application performance, including end-to-end transaction tracing, user experience monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring. APM solutions have become more user-friendly, with intuitive dashboards, automated workflows, and easy-to-use APIs, enabling developers and IT teams to quickly diagnose and resolve performance issues
The issue with legacy APM solutions
Legacy APM solutions refer to older, outdated, or no longer supported tools that were previously used to monitor and optimize the performance of applications. These solutions often lack modern features and capabilities, such as cloud-native monitoring and support for microservices architectures, which are critical for monitoring modern, complex applications.
One of the main issues with legacy APM solutions is that they only tell you if your cloud is up and running. They ignore the most important aspect: end-user experience. In today's world, users are dispersed, and they access applications from many different places at any given time. The performance of an application can even vary on the same network from one side of the building to the other. Monitoring application performance and availability from every individual user's perspective is critical to ensuring a positive digital experience.
Optimizing the end-user experience
By adopting an end-user-centric approach to APM, organizations can identify bottlenecks in their service. A user-centric APM solution helps to identify whether issues are individual, regional, or widespread and global. This allows organizations to cover all their bases and ensure that your service is performing optimally for all users.
Another significant benefit of adopting a user-centric approach to APM is the ability to identify users who are impacted by the digital divide, particularly those who are limited by poor internet connectivity or outdated hardware. By identifying these users, organizations can focus their resources on helping to overcome these barriers and provide a more equitable user experience.
In today's world, the end-user experience is critical, whether it's your customers accessing your cloud service or employees remaining productive while traveling or working remotely. This is where HubbleIQ comes in. HubbleIQ helps organizations monitor application availability and performance from the end user's perspective, which is constantly changing. By trying HubbleIQ for free and configuring your business-critical applications, you'll gain insight into what APM hides when it comes to the actual experience with your applications.
The time has come for organizations to take control of their application performance monitoring by adopting a user-centric approach. User-centric APM solutions enable organizations to take proactive measures to address issues before they affect the bottom line. HubbleIQ helps organizations support their employees and customers from anywhere in the world with a comprehensive and user-friendly digital experience management system. Try HubbleIQ for free today and experience the benefits of a user-centric APM solution firsthand.
