February, 2010
Reviewed by Michael S. Hines
Realtime Publishers, 2009
120 pp (a work in process - Chapters 1 - 8 currently available, of 10 chapters total)
Available free from Realtime Publishers - http://nexus.realtimepublishers.com
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You've seen these words before. Perhaps you were buying a just-released book or video through an online Web site and it popped up in the middle of checking out. Maybe you were trying to get tickets to that important sporting event or that one-night-only concert. What about when the winter storm of the century hits your airport and thousands of people scramble at once to find a new flight or a hotel room.
The central problem in all of these situations is the inability to properly manage application performance.
It's no longer a question of application being available ('on') or not ('off'). Now it has to do with the performance of the total application - from the user's perspective. The user cares less (and most likely does not even understand) your infrastructure - they just want to get a task accomplished. I doubt any of you have had a customer call and ask for the F5 Load Balancers in front of the Apache Web server to be rebooted because performance is slow - eh? On the other hand - how many customers went to a different vendor because your applications are slower than theirs and they can get the same goods elsewhere? That is a business situation that requires attention.
Definition: Application Performance Management (APM) is an IT service disciple that encompasses the identification, prioritization, and resolution of performance and availability problems that affect business applications.
APM involved measuring performance across domains to obtain a total view of the application - services as well as network links. It's not just monitoring particular servers or particular network segments - it is a comprehensive view of the total application from the user's perspective. It is monitoring the entire transaction from initiation to completion.
APM helps align IT with the business. Critical applications that use APM will meet business needs and help alleviate problems like those in the introduction above.
Gartner's 2003 report "Transforming IT Operations into IT Service Management1" is highlighted, and the five levels of maturity are described (chaotic, reactive, proactive, service, value). This Guide is intended to assist you in getting to the highest level (value).
The remainder of the Guide provides various approaches to building an Application Performance Management system.
If you have critical business applications (the kind that can close down your business if they are not available to users to complete their business) then you seriously should consider Application Performance Management if you don't have it already. The job you save could be your own.
1Deb Curtis and Donna Scott, Gartner IT Management Process Maturity Model, "Transforming IT Operations into IT Service Management", Data Center 2003.
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