Application Monitoring: 5 Steps to ensure effective monitoring of business-critical applications

Businesses are starting to give due importance to application monitoring of business critical applications, which prevents bottlenecks from affecting end users. Application monitoring also ensures that any glitches in the application can be solved quickly and efficiently before they become bigger problems. In addition to this, monitoring makes sure that application performance is up to the mark so that the business can function efficiently. The following are 5 steps through which you can ensure effective application monitoring for all business applications.

ADVANCED PLANNING

The first step for effective application monitoring is to plan well in advance. Application monitoring cannot be undertaken unless a roadmap is laid out. This is true especially in case of a new application or software. Such monitoring ensures that application performance is also on par with the business standards which are set.

PROACTIVE APPLICATION MONITORING

Many businesses make the mistake of ignoring application monitoring unless there is a problem in it. This is a blunder, as waiting for a problem to occur before solving it may affect end users adversely. Application monitoring should be proactive and constant so that any bottlenecks in the application can be dealt with before they start affecting end users. Constantly monitoring applications also results in optimum application performance. IT managers can undertake proactive monitoring by establishing threshold values of IT infrastructure like bandwidth, CPU, memory etc. In case these parameters are exceeded, they can perform a system health check to prevent a major problem.

SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT

A written contract like a service level agreement (SLA) can serve businesses well and establish the extent to which application monitoring needs to be undertaken. The IT team can determine the requirements and measure application availability according to the standards set in the service level agreement.

FORM A RECOVERY PLAN FOR APPLICATION FAILURE

An important step in ensuring application monitoring is to have a well-prepared recovery plan in case of application failure. Sometimes, despite taking precautions and ensuring application performance of business-critical applications, they fail; in such a scenario, the IT team needs to ensure that the error is rectified as soon as possible so that there is minimum impact to business bottom line.

GET PROFESSIONAL HELP

If your business-critical applications are not being monitored for application performance, your bottom line may get affected in case of a serious problem in any application. You can get the help of a professional for application monitoring. There are many service providers today who offer customized APM solutions which cover all the applications within the organization, and are highly efficient in ensuring optimum application performance. Such APM solutions can help you ensure that applications are available and there is minimum downtime.