The demand for application monitoring solutions is being shaped by today's consumers regardless of the sector or category in which your business operates. Organizations today need to take the time to ensure that all the software and applications in their stack are accessible and running efficiently. This includes processing loan applications to e-commerce platforms, web apps, and third-party connections.
Nobody wants to have a bad user experience. APM (Application Performance/Project Management) solutions are crucial in improving user experiences. An organization's main priority should be ensuring its applications function optimally - with the least downtime, as users can continuously track performance indicators for desktop, online, and mobile applications in real time.
Downtime is a business's worst enemy. It may undermine customers' confidence in the firm and divert focus from matters crucial to the enterprise's success. Furthermore, anything that negatively impacts IT infrastructure may also negatively impact end users. A well-implemented monitoring tool can examine your system's performance and provide downtime solutions.
Maintaining a web app can be difficult between network problems, server management, and help desk support. But a day is only so long. The application performance management (APM) system ensures that services are provided to customers up to the required level and spot any issues that may affect application performance. These issues include load time and application reaction time, which can be used to track or monitor app performance.
To satisfy the end-user inside a service ecosystem, you can monitor the complete IT infrastructure with the aid of Application Performance Management (APM) solutions. There is significant uncertainty in the definition of APM and who it serves within a company. You'll learn about APM in this post, get some tips on choosing a tool, and see a list of the top APM tools, along with descriptions of their features.
What are APM Tools
Application performance monitoring (APM) solutions enable users to track and monitor the functionality of specific software or web applications, and to locate and address any potential performance issues.
With precise insights into data like the number of transactions executed by the application or the processing time for those transactions, these solutions offer app performance metrics. And these APM tools establish a baseline for the metrics and keep track of any deviations from them in the applications.
Various data visualizations illustrate the metrics so that it is simple to understand how they relate to overall performance. Application administrators frequently use them to manage web applications and identify potential causes of response-time lags.
Businesses can deliver the best user experience by recognizing and addressing any performance issues, and some APM/ cloud-based solutions like Pivotal Tracker used by Fetchly include features similar to those of network monitoring programs and Milestone Tracking.
Guidelines for Selecting Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Tools
Various platforms, operating systems, apps, networks, etc., make up the IT ecosystem. As a result, it is crucial to list, review, and compare various APM solutions within a department. It is also helpful to have other departments audit them to ensure the tools selected to correspond with the organization's demands as business objectives and IT investments need to be more closely aligned.
IT operations used Application Performance Management tools, historically only affordable by larger businesses, to keep an eye on critical applications. They have been utilized for what is often called Business Transaction Monitoring.’
But in recent years, APM technologies have become more affordable and essential for all enterprises. They are increasingly used for application performance monitoring by developers rather than just IT operations. APM is also an essential component of the DevOps movement.
Several important points to remember:
- Support for programming languages
- Cloud support (Azure, AWS, Heroku, etc)
- On-premise vs SaaS
- Pricing
- Simplicity of use
- Plugins and integrations
- Support for cutting-edge technology
- Advanced options for reporting and alerting
- Worldwide network of surveillance
A comparison of APM tools would immediately disclose which feature sets are critical for your company, and today's users will probably be able to access your applications using various devices, browsers, and connection speeds from anywhere in the world.
For developing and releasing a high-quality application, it is crucial to find an application performance monitoring tool or framework that offers real-time access to your websites, web services, infrastructure, and networks and includes elements that complement your monitoring objectives, like performance testing.
In light of this, reviewing the top APM (Application Performance Monitoring) tools from recent years is recommended.
Top Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Tools
The IT support approach will influence your decision on an application performance management tool, including whether you prefer to use off-site solutions or run all of the services internally.
The organization's size and IT budget will both be important considerations in this case. To find the application performance management software that is best for you, keep your circumstances in mind as you read through this list:
1. New Relic: New Relic is a robust APM solution that describes itself as an "observability platform" and delivers on that promise; one of its best qualities is the crystal-clear view of the whole software stack it provides. The special WordPress functionality of New Relic is another area where it stands out.
Installing Additional Relic on a WordPress website unlocks several new monitoring tools that make it simple to keep track of hooks, plugins, and themes.
Features
- Compatible with NET, Java, PHP, and Python.
- SaaS, Web, Cloud, iOS, and Android-deployable.
- Has a reliable method for managing mobile apps
- A real-time alerting system is used.
- Allows for a large number of integrations
2. Pivotal Tracker: Pivotal Tracker is a cloud-based APM, Project management, and product planning solution used by Fetchly labs that were designed mainly for modern software development teams. The system enables Fetchly team members working on a project to prioritize tasks, identify actionable items, and assign responsibilities.
Pivotal Tracker is intended to be straightforward, efficient, and transformative so businesses can launch the best applications (products) more quickly while keeping track of each product's performance and delivery as the world changes.
Pivotal Tracker is not only focused on software engineers but is also attuned to teams who have a continuous development process as opposed to those that finalize projects fully upon delivery.
Features
- Monitoring velocity to demonstrate and gauge productivity
- Tracking of Milestones
- Analytics page
- Story Highlight
- Deployment through the Web
- Reporting and Product Monitoring
3. Traceview (Solarwinds): SolarWinds or Traceview is a low-cost and simple-to-use system monitoring tool that provides detailed insight into application and server performance concerns. It starts monitoring in a matter of minutes after automatically detecting the system's environment.
To speed up troubleshooting, it's also to identify the underlying causes of complicated problems and learn about the context and interdependencies between the application and the physical and virtual server infrastructure that supports it. Any custom-built and commercial virtual application can be monitored thanks to a combination of pre-built monitoring templates and simple customization tools.
Features
- Automatic detection
- Mapping of application dependencies
- Cloud service tracking
4. CodeScene: The industry-leading tool used by Fetchly, CodeScene, locates the precise lines of unhealthy code hindering software delivery flow and maps hotspots in your codebase.
With this knowledge, you could rank enhancements, problem fixes, and new features more effectively. Additionally, CodeScene evaluates the state of the code in pull requests and makes refactoring suggestions.
It serves as the Fetchly team's invisible developer; CodeScene is constantly monitoring for changes in technical debt and providing the devs with immediate input on how to enhance the health of the code.
Features
- Automated Code Review
- Detect and Correct Delivery Risks
- Use of algorithms and patented technology
Final Thoughts
It's crucial to test the chosen APM tool with a select group of IT experts or engineers, if at all possible. This will ensure that the APM software or Tools of choice interact smoothly with the day-to-day tasks of your company's developers or IT administrators.
The choice is sound if the APM tool is well-liked and widely used. If not, it might be important to reevaluate the possibilities.
*This is not the official Fetchly opinion but the opinion of the writer who is employed by Fetchly*
