The day is going to come when anyone who wants to leverage the power of technology will be able to do so. The rapid growth of cloud computing technologies could do more than help you manage your appointments via your smart phone. It could make smart refrigerators, smart TVs, you name it. If there's a vision to do it, someone will probably figure out how to do it.
When that day comes, application performance management (APM) is not going to remain a technology that only Fortune 500 companies and government services talk about and implement. It's going to become mainstream essential technology for small to medium sized businesses often referred to as SMBs.. Why? Because along with the cloud comes increased complexity in how applications interact. If you think Windows has issues, the cloud only offers an illusion of ease. With cloud based applications spanning datacenter, cloud service providers and of course your browser, the opportunity for trouble is high. Simplicity of usage often hides complexity of implementation and that usually spells risk.
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That failure of a transaction is a serious issue for many businesses. It can mean lost income, calls to service desks to find out where transactions went, etc. Someday that failure to execute could end up causing house damage (sound's extreme, but smart phones are controlling thermostats and other things already).
While APM is currently focused on big business because that's where the current need exists, the day is coming when no small business that depends on technology to deliver service or product will be able to do without it, even if the design of the product won't need to be quite as complex as those APM solutions designed to meet the high transaction volumes typical of larger businesses.
The Bigger You Get the More Powerful the Application Performance Management and Monitoring Solution Must Become.
Fortune 500 companies are already discovering that doing business without APM is akin to gambling. With the sheer volume of transactions the typical big-box business, manufacturer, bank, trading institution, telecommunications company or hospital handle each day, it takes only a small application error to cascade rapidly into a system failure that impacts customers and those who serve them. Lost revenue can quickly mount into the millions. Fines for failing to meet SLAs can cripple the business' bottom line even more.
Only when an application performance management product is monitoring the entire application stack and providing alerts before customers are impacted, can IT move from searching to solutions for business impacting service issues to preventing their occurrence in the first place.
As more businesses are looking at the scalability offered by private cloud and hybrid cloud, application performance that is cloud optimized is essential to successful implementation. Yesterday's APM solutions aren't good enough for today's needs. The cloud only makes the application stack more complex. What appears to be easier implementation from the end-user's view is in fact a greater management challenge from the IT side, especially as more IT services become an integrated part of delivering the business product.
Maybe the prediction that APM is going to become a mainstream need for businesses of all sizes won't materialize. One thing is certain. Application performance monitoring is never going to be optional for larger businesses that handle large volumes of transactions, at least not as long as keeping customers happy is a business goal.
What Cloud May Mean for Application Performance Management APPLICATION
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