Application performance monitoring (APM) helps businesses track the performance of software applications to identify and drill down into issues that occur during development and runtime. With the rise of SaaS applications and cloud-native infrastructure, application performance monitoring — not to be confused with application performance management — has become an essential tool for ensuring high-quality service for applications running on the web and, especially, on mobile apps.
APM metrics revolve heavily around performance, measuring the number of transactions per second that the application processes and the total response time for each of those transactions. You can also use APM to measure the performance of devices executing those transactions as well as to assess hardware performance issues that may result in bottlenecks. APM tools, however, are primarily designed to directly measure application performance on a granular level, relying on AI-driven analytics to quickly understand any problematic dependencies in the infrastructure.
With an application performance monitoring tool, organizations can make better use of the data they’re already collecting, which includes discovering issues before they impact customers, reducing recovery time when failures occur, responding faster and meeting service-level agreements (SLAs).
In this article, we’ll take an in-depth look at the types of systems and processes that APM monitors, the types of metrics that APM tools report and the recommended features to look for when considering a top-tier APM solution for your organization.
What Is Application Performance Monitoring: Contents
What are the key metrics for APM?
How does application performance monitoring compare to infrastructure monitoring?
How does application performance monitoring compare to container monitoring?
How do you choose the right APM solution?
What does APM monitor?
APM doesn’t directly measure the health of the network but rather the health of an application running on that network. At its core, APM monitors the transactional speed of a web application, including the speed at which different services execute their part of the transaction and other metrics related to app performance. While APM tools differ in design and feature set, APM’s primary goal is to collect all the components of every transaction generated by an application and its users, providing organizations actionable insights into every facet of an application. APM can also detect anomalies that the application generates and reports to IT operations and management, allowing developers and site reliability engineers (SREs) to identify and troubleshoot unknown issues hidden in the application architecture.
APM tools are designed to answer several key questions, including:
What are the key metrics for APM?
APM tools usually measure three types of metrics, known as RED metrics:
Different tools take varying approaches to APM, giving developers and SREs a more comprehensive understanding of application performance issues. Specifically, APM tools typically collect the following metrics:
What is an APM solution?
An APM solution is software that provides several key application monitoring features. These features include:
While APM solutions vary in complexity, design, scope and price, it’s critical to realize that the goal of an APM solution is to give developers and SREs actionable insights not only into applications’ performance problems, but also into the reasons those problems exist. Simply knowing that an application is slow or throwing errors isn’t very useful. APM is most helpful when it empowers teams to quickly understand the root cause of those slowdowns and errors. A solid APM tool will present this information graphically through a dashboard that outlines and tracks the performance of each service and its dependencies over time.
Why should I use APM?
APM provides a number of clear advantages to organizations that adopt these tools, such as:
How does application performance monitoring compare to infrastructure monitoring?
Both application performance monitoring and infrastructure monitoring help administrators understand and address performance and productivity issues that can impede business operations. They can both aggregate metrics around user experience, assess whether an IT environment is maintaining or falling below performance metrics or experiencing bugs and other disruptive issues. However, the approach to both systems of monitoring varies.
As mentioned, application performance monitoring observes how applications are performing and if they’re functioning appropriately. If they’re not, then the monitoring tool collects data on the source of the issue, alerting IT teams so they can correlate the performance of a specific application or set of applications to business or outcomes. It also allows them to identify and address performance issues on the backend before they affect end-user experience or negatively impact the bottom line.
IT infrastructure monitoring, on the other hand, automates information collection and review for various components of an enterprise's computing environment. Once an issue is identified, the infrastructure monitoring tool communicates it to IT teams so they can more effectively and efficiently get to the root before the problem impedes or degrades productivity. Infrastructure monitoring also ensures that network resources are running optimally and as intended.
How does application performance monitoring compare to container monitoring?
While there is no direct comparison, performance monitoring and container monitoring have a number of overlapping uses. Some APM tools can monitor applications that are deployed in containers as well as non-containerized application environments. Container monitoring tools contain many of the same features as application performance monitoring systems but may also include additional features that go beyond performance measurement. That said, most container monitoring tools are also APM tools.
If your applications are containerized, it’s important to consider a container monitoring tool specifically to keep tabs on them. Traditional APM tools were not historically designed to monitor containerized environments — their architecture is too complex and has too many complicated dependencies for a standard APM tool to handle.
The good news is that dedicated container monitoring solutions are now widely available, so managing containerized application performance is just as possible today as managing traditional application performance.
How do you choose the right APM solution?
Many APM solutions exist, each with advantages and disadvantages. To help you choose the right APM solution for your organization, below are a number of key considerations, keeping in mind that budget will be a factor too.
Organization-specific questions to answer:
Features to look for:
The Bottom Line: APM is rapidly becoming a business necessity
In a time when changing service providers is as easy as opening a new browser window, it’s crucial for organizations to guarantee their applications are at peak performance.
APM’s upward growth trends haven’t been lost on industry analysts. MRFR Analysis pegs the growth rate at 10.7 percent through 2025, while Research and Markets predicts an 11.2 percent growth rate through 2027 for application performance monitoring tools.
Today, it’s vital for enterprises with customer-facing applications to include an application performance monitoring system as part of their strategic arsenal. APM can help to ensure high customer satisfaction and, ultimately, prevent revenue loss due to customer defections and performance degradations. What’s more, APM is an essential tool that helps developers build and maintain best practices when coding applications, creating a virtuous circle that benefits everyone.