The "Butterfly Effect" theoretically describes a hurricane's formation being
contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings weeks
before. This highlights a sensitive dependence on environmental conditions
where a small change at one place (Dev Env) can result in large differences
to a later state (Production).
Consider the possibility that a small innocuous code change could go
undetected, promoted through Development & QA, and then have catastrophic
effects on performance once it reaches production. The environmental variants
need to be minimized and closely monitored to prevent the anomalous behavior.
Depending on transaction volume and performance characteristics there will be
a certain level of noise that will need to be squelched to a volume level
that can be analyzed. This is the precipice where APM intersects Capacity
Management and a... (more)
By embracing End-User-Experience (EUE) measurements as a key vehicle for
demonstrating productivity, you build trust with your constituents in a very
tangible way. The translation of IT metrics into business meaning (value)
is what APM is all about.
The goal here is to simplify a complicated technology space by walking
through a high-level view within each core element. I'm suggesting that the
success factors in APM adoption center around the EUE and the integration
touch points with the ITIL / ITSM processes.
When looking at APM at 20,000 feet, four foundational elements come ... (more)
Can event management help foster a curiosity for innovative possibilities to
make application performance better? Blue-sky thinkers may not want to deal
with the myriad of details on how to manage the events being generated
operationally, but could learn something from this exercise.
Consider the major system failures in your organization over the last 12 to
18 months. What if you had a system or process in place to capture those
failures and mitigate them from a proactive standpoint preventing them from
reoccurring? How much better off would you be if you could avoid the
prover... (more)
This article is the corollary to “The Anatomy of APM” which outlines four
foundational elements of a successful APM strategy: Top Down Monitoring,
Bottom Up Monitoring, Reporting & Analytics, and ITIL / ITSM Processes.
Here I provide a deeper context on how the event-to-incident flow is
structured.
It is the correlation of events and the amalgamation of metrics that bring
value to the business by way of dashboards and trending reports, and it’s
in the way the business interprets the accuracy of those metrics that
determines the success of the implementation. If an event occur... (more)
APM is entering into a period of intense competition of technology and
strategy with a multiplicity of vendors and viewpoints. While the
nomenclature used within its space has five distinct dimensions that
elucidate its meaning, the very acronym of APM is in question: Application
Performance ... Monitoring vs. Management.
It's strange to think that we would not normally use monitoring and
management synonymously, but when used in the APM vernacular they seem to be
interchangeable. This may be a visceral response, but I see the APM idiom
converging on itself and becoming a matter... (more)