Application Monitoring and the Types of Monitoring Available for Applications

Application monitoring is undertaken by various organizations to know the performance of their applications as well as network. Application monitoring software helps IT professionals to check for any unauthorized access or possible data theft within the business network. Application monitoring helps IT managers in judging application performance and their conformance with service level agreements. A major challenge in monitoring applications is gaining adequate visibility into all applications and network technologies of the business. To manage the increasing complexity and diversity, a business needs a custom-made monitoring solution that covers the entire organization. However, there are different types monitoring for applications and IT professionals need to judge the type of application monitoring applicable for the monitoring to be precise and complete.

Types of Monitoring for Applications

1. Security Monitoring
   Today business applications are connected to each other globally; they hence need to be monitored for security. Application monitoring for security purpose ensures that application, database as well as web servers are implemented with security patches. The security warnings included in software products should be carefully studied and implemented to ensure that they comply with security standards and the application is protected against hackers. Software versions should be monitored in order to understand if they pose any threat to security. Application monitoring should also ensure that applications are updated with secure and latest versions of softwares. Security monitoring is a very important aspect of business service management for business organizations. Security teams of companies, in addition to monitoring hardware and software applications, should keep themselves updated on ongoing security threats through newsletters and other mediums.
   
   
2. Application Monitoring for Errors
   An end user can be impacted adversely in case of an application error. Any error in an application can cause errors like failure to submit or display the requested information. Errors in applications can arise due to a software issues relating to application code or application, database and web servers. They can also arise due to hardware problems of CPU processing, network or memory. Application monitoring for errors is done by understanding the error message and finding the root of the error. For example, if an application has stopped processing new errors, one can find out through the log files whether the errors are due to resource shortage like bandwidth, memory, CPU, database performance etc. One can design application monitoring tools as well as requirements by studying the application architecture, platform, documentation, error messages etc. Error monitoring in applications is especially important in companies involved in IT service management.
   
   
3. Performance Monitoring
   Application performance is vital for a good end user experience. Application monitoring for performance is derived from the code of the application as well as the supporting hardware. The code of the application ensures that its program routines are capable of handling at least the desired number of actual user requests and the hardware provides the necessary capabilities like memory, processing etc. Application monitoring can determine the performance of applications by noting the time taken for access and request processing in the logs. One can judge the actual user experience by sending requests to applications for different location and then observing the real response time.
   
   
4. Health Monitoring
   IT professionals can judge application health by undertaking health monitoring. To address any problem before it becomes a serious issue, application health has to be monitored constantly. Application monitoring for health consists of comparing snapshots of system and application parameters to the standard benchmarks. For example, as part of application monitoring, IT professionals can set up alerts in case response time for transactions increases than the normal level. Application monitoring can be done best when it is automated and checks constantly to ensure application health.
   
   
5. Configuration Monitoring
   Configuration monitoring is a very important factor in application monitoring and avoids undocumented and untested configuration elements. New application releases and operating system changes can have an impact on the software and hardware configuration of a machine; in such a case, each configuration change needs to be monitored for unauthorized change. The best application monitoring for configuration is a change control process in which a change is approved on submission and only then implemented. Such application monitoring allows the people responsible for application to know exactly what changes have taken place in configurations.