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Why You Need An Application Performance Monitoring Tool


We live in a technological world. Any business operation nowadays is supported by technology. 

And technology, like it or not, needs to be supervised and tested to see if everything is going well. That’s where an Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tool comes in.

APM tool is a service that ensures that software is performing properly.

Therefore, performing APM and optimizing the systems that support companies ensures greater stability and availability of applications.

Do you want to understand how APM works and how they help bring insights into possible improvements for many companies worldwide? In this article, we’ll cover:

  1. What Are APM Tools?
  2. How Do You Monitor the Performance of an Application?
  3. Why Do You Need an Application Performance Monitoring Tool?
  4. What Are the Types of Application Monitoring?
  5. How Do You Measure Application Performance?
  6. How to Choose an APM Tool
  7. How APM Benefits WordPress Users

Ready to learn all about APMs? 

What Are APM Tools?

An APM tool is a type of software or service that simplifies the troubleshooting of applications, ensuring that the software is performing properly. It monitors the speed and linearity of digital transactions of the most varied types: software, systems, and network infrastructures.

It provides unified monitoring, tracking, and analytics for both the frontend and backend of an application. It does load testing or usability testing, accurate user monitoring, web performance monitoring and much more. It clearly shows how prepared your environment is to receive users and where it can improve. 

This is perfect for companies that are growing fast, have systems developed in-house, or have major challenges related to complex infrastructures. This result should be a good end experience for the user. Observability plays a crucial role in application performance monitoring (APM). Organizations can gain visibility into various aspects of an application’s behaviour, including latency, error rates, request volumes, and throughput. It also helps to identify bottlenecks in the application architecture that are causing performance issues. This information can be used to optimize the application for better performance.

There are different types of dimensions that APM tools check: end-user experience, application architecture at runtime, business transactions, monitoring of deep-dive components, and analytics/reporting.

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How Do You Monitor the Performance of an Application?

As we mentioned above, APM tools collect, store, and analyze the necessary data and metadata for troubleshooting and optimizing performance, but how does this process work?

There are all sorts of metrics generated by apps as they run, and part of the challenge of monitoring performance to optimize is knowing which stats to focus on.

So, pay attention and monitor the following:

  • CPU usage, memory demands, and disk read/write speeds
  • Customer satisfaction
  • Response times
  • Error rates
  • Request rates
  • Number of instances because you need to know how many app instances you have running at any one time
  • Application availability/uptime
  • Garbage collection

Hardware resource usage monitoring should be a priority. If your server’s CPU is being pushed to its limits, the memory is near capacity, or the I/O activity spikes unexpectedly, you’ll know something is wrong. 

So, having an APM tool will tell you everything that is acting differently or doing good right on the spot.

Why Do You Need an Application Performance Monitoring Tool?

Isn’t it great to be able to identify and resolve all problems before they become serious?

For a company that wants to be big, or a company that wants to consolidate, even more, checking all the processes, understanding the flaws in the systems and understanding the user experience is very important.

Think of an APM as a guide to find the needle (or needles) in a digital haystack that spans multiple locations and is “lost” in various types of technology.

So, with an APM tool running through your infrastructure, you’ll be able to:

  • Break down operational silos
  • Create synthetic transactions
  • Receive alerts and notifications if the monitored application deviates from its normal state
  • Automatically detect abnormalities in your process
  • Test environments
  • Develop service maps
  • Have excellence in customer service

What Are the Types of APMs?

There are a bunch of different APM tools, but you must have a close look at these ones:

If you’re considering using an APM, make sure these elements will be parsed to perfection.

How Do You Measure Application Performance?

Development teams need insights into what their code is doing and how it is impacting the performance.

So, knowing how to measure those applications’ performance and, more importantly, which metrics you should look for is important. Let’s name a few:

  1. Throughput: Throughput is the amount of a product a company can produce and deliver to a client within a specified period. Throughput can help you to check how users will perceive their site
  2. Average Response Time: This is essential to establish trust and a good relationship with the customer. 
  3. Apdex: Its purpose is to measure user satisfaction by specifying a standard for analyzing and reporting the degree to which average performance meets user expectations. So, if your average response time is high, the user naturally becomes frustrated, and Apdex will show you that.
  4. Errors: As the name says, this metric will find the errors (the famous 404, 500, etc.). It is always important to have a matric that shows you the errors in your application.

Now, you just need to find a tool that gives you all this information. Of course, keep in mind that price will be a consideration.

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How to Choose an APM Tool

Of course, you will probably have people trained to operate and understand the APM software, but choosing the software that is easy to use and can provide actionable insights is always welcome. So, make sure to choose an APM tool that:

  • Manage the applications in the languages that your applications use
  • Code-level monitor performance
  • Track the user experience
  • Use artificial intelligence 
  • Monitor the entire infrastructure of your business and provide information that helps you connect app performance metrics with business outcomes

How APM Benefits WordPress Users

Three types of websites can benefit from using APM tools:

You can scan everything with the right APM tool and see what is good or what needs to be improved. 

You must be wondering, how does this benefit WordPress users? Well, APM tools, as we said in this article, can identify performance issues within your website, such as slow loading times, database problems, and downtime.

So, if your WordPress website goes offline while you are sleeping, you will probably lose money if you have an eCommerce website. So it’s in your best interest to know about these problems before they happen, don’t you think?

Is Splunk an APM Tool?

Yes, Splunk is an APM tool that provides many features for all types of customers. It offers a lot of solutions. 

Let’s Wrap It Up

When some people come across this acronym (APM), sometimes they get scared and think they won’t be able to understand or even implement it in their business. Still, as you can see, it’s easy to understand their functionalities and functions.

Even easier to understand is that every business needs an APM tool that checks its entire infrastructure and facilitates changes and automation processes. 

Did you identify in this article which part of your infrastructure needs a closer look? 

Let us know in the comments!

Last modified on: December 8th, 2023

Categorized as Web Hosting

José is a journalist with a lot of experience in producing digital content focused on SEO. Has experience with translations, content production for social networks, and content editing. He is also an esports nerd!

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