Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Reduce application performance issues through strong monitoring tools

When a business provides web services or relies on applications for delivery of services, end users react as soon as there is a problem in application performance. The business will receive calls and emails from end users complaining of lost productivity and depleting revenue as soon as application performance falls below the expected threshold. IT and network managers generally struggle to handle complaints from end users and alerts from monitoring tools at the time of application failure. The main reason for this problem is the deployment of multiple tools within the organization to measure application performance; when applications fail, all of these monitoring tools generate alerts, and IT and network managers struggle to find the root cause amongst so many tools.

Multiple tools for gauging the application performance is a complication that IT and network managers can do without. That is why an end-to-end monitoring tool is required to ensure that downtime can be avoided. Even if applications are down, an end-to-end solution ensures that the root of the problem can be identified quickly and downtime can be minimized. Such a tool can be combined with regular performance testing to ensure that all applications are monitored and end users have a consistent and satisfying experience.

In addition to being an end-to-end solution, a monitoring tool also needs to generate real time alerts so that optimum application performance can be ensured at all times. IT managers can know the performance of all applications through the real-time alerts related to application availability and their response times. Such a monitoring system generally allows managers to establish certain thresholds. When these set thresholds are crossed, the system generates an alert so that IT managers can stop end users from being affected by any problem in the applications. This technique, along with performance testing, can ensure that application performance is up to the par.

The monitoring tool also needs to be consistent and proactive for successfully measuring application performance. Such proactive measures will ensure that any issues with the application can be resolved as soon as possible. Proactive monitoring also means that small problems can be prevented from becoming huge issues, and application performance is optimized. This way, all business-critical applications can function 24/7 without a problem.

Having a monitoring tool which gauges application performance in all the above-mentioned ways helps IT and network managers in making sure that they reduce the number of irate calls from end users about application downtime.

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