This comprehensive guide, written by our experts, will lift the lid on how to optimise your mobile application’s performance, telling you everything you need to know.
Overview
What is Application Performance Monitoring?
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) is an essential practice for monitoring and managing the performance of software applications. In the same vein as IT Performance Management, APM enables performance problems to be detected, diagnosed and resolved, thus ensuring that applications function in the optimal way and meet user expectations. Using advanced tools and monitoring techniques, APM provides a comprehensive view of application health and performance, from front-end to back-end.
Why is APM an important part of application management?
APM is a crucial aspect of application management, enabling companies to maintain high levels of performance and availability. With APM, IT teams can anticipate problems before they affect end-users, optimise resources and improve overall application efficiency. Ultimately, APM helps deliver a smooth, uninterrupted user experience, something that is essential for customer satisfaction and loyalty. This can also be applied to mobile applications.
APM features
Real-time monitoring
Real-time monitoring is a key feature of APM. It enables you to conduct live monitoring of application performance, immediately detecting anomalies and taking corrective action before users are impacted. This proactive monitoring helps you maintain a high level of service and reduce downtime.
Root cause analysis
Root cause analysis helps determine the exact origin of performance problems. By identifying the underlying causes of slowness or errors, teams can apply targeted, sustainable corrective measures. This feature is essential when it comes to resolving incidents quickly and preventing them from reoccurring.
Tracking user transactions
Proactive alerts inform IT teams as soon as a potential problem is detected. These alerts are often customisable, allowing specific thresholds to be defined for different performance indicators. Thanks to these notifications, teams can intervene quickly to resolve problems before they affect end-users.
Tracking user transactions
User Transaction Tracking allows you to monitor the user journey within the application. This feature provides detailed visibility of users’ interactions with the application, helping you to identify friction points and optimise the user experience. By better understanding user behavior, teams can make targeted improvements in order to increase satisfaction and engagement.
The benefits of Application Performance Monitoring
Improving application performance
APM helps identify and resolve bottlenecks and inefficiencies in applications, improving overall performance. By continuously monitoring performance metrics, teams can optimise code, adjust configurations and improve application responsiveness.
Reduced downtime
By quickly detecting and correcting problems, APM helps reduce unplanned downtime. Fewer breakdowns means greater availability of the application, a factor that is crucial when it comes to ongoing business operations and user satisfaction.
Enhanced user experience
Effective APM makes for a smooth, uninterrupted user experience. By monitoring performance and resolving problems quickly, companies can offer a reliable, responsive service, improving user satisfaction and loyalty.
Optimising resources
APM optimises resource utilisation by identifying areas where adjustments can be made in order to improve efficiency. This may include optimising servers, adjusting database configurations or updating software dependencies. This can result in infrastructure cost savings.
How do you choose the right APM solution?
APM solution selection criteria
To ensure you choose the right APM solution, it’s important to consider several criteria, such as ease of use, real-time monitoring capability, root cause analysis features, alert customisation options, technical support, licensing model and costs, and ease of maintenance (when installing or updating agents, for instance). It is also crucial that you assess compatibility with existing infrastructure and technologies.
Comparison of the main APM solutions
There are a lot of APM solutions on the market, each offering specific features and benefits. Among the most popular are New Relic, Dynatrace, AppDynamics and Datadog. A detailed comparison of these solutions can help you identify the one that best matches your company’s specific needs, taking the selection criteria mentioned above into account.
How should you implement APM?
Installation and configuration
Installing and configuring an APM solution is a task that can vary depending on the complexity of the application and the infrastructure. It is important to follow the instructions provided by the solution provider and ensure that all the necessary components are configured correctly. This may include installing agents on servers, configuring monitoring dashboards and defining alert thresholds.
Best practices for optimal use
To get the most out of APM, we recommend following certain best practices, such as:
- Carry out regular tests to verify performance and identify opportunities for improvement.
- Regularly analyse performance reports in order to detect trends and anomalies.
- Work closely with development and operations teams, in order to rapidly resolve any problems identified.
- Regularly update configurations and agents to ensure they remain compatible with changes to the infrastructure and the applications.
By following these recommendations, companies can maximise the benefits of APM and guarantee optimum performance for their applications.
Qim info helps you implement APM at your company
At Qim info, our experts are specialists when it comes to IT performance management and can ensure that your applications perform well and remain stable. For 20 years, our teams have been successfully resolving the issues our clients have experienced with their IT systems. Our mission? To guarantee the stability and performance of your applications at every stage of their lifecycle, throughout a range of different phases, such as testing. Our teams provide custom solutions that are adjusted to suit your needs, so as to guarantee the best possible results. From requirements modelling to software optimisation, our experts provide a full management service, supporting you every step of the way.
Load Testing and Performance
Ensure your application is performing well before it goes live, to guarantee optimal user experience.
Application observability
With Application Performance Observability (APO), integrate performance visibility into your applications for efficient testing, tracking and troubleshooting, regardless of the technology environment you're working in.
Continuous Performance Engineering
Shift left, shift right, and automate processes in order to master performance throughout the software life cycle, thanks to Continuous Performance Engineering (CPE).
Rapid Performance Diagnostics
Identify and quickly resolve performance and stability issues that are affecting your production environment, with Rapid Performance Diagnostic (RPD).
Cloud-Native Performance
Ensure that your application performs well throughout your Cloud migration journey.
Strategy and Governance
Improve your performance maturity with a vision and roadmap that will help your organisation achieve its objectives.
Web and Mobile Performance
Maximise user satisfaction and revenue by improving the design and responsiveness of browsers and mobile applications.
Resilience and
reliability
Ensure your application continues to function even in the event of unforeseen issues.
Discover our Performance & Observability department
Ensure the performance and stability of your IT system applications
FAQs
How can APM be used to detect, diagnose and solve problems?
- Detection: APM tools continuously monitor various performance indicators such as response time, error rate, resource utilisation (CPU, memory) and transaction throughput. For instance, if a Web application starts responding more slowly than usual, the APM tool detects this anomaly in real time and can trigger an alert.
- Diagnosis: Once a problem has been detected, APM helps diagnose the root cause. This includes analysing transaction traces, in order to identify where delays or errors are occurring. For example, if a database query takes longer than expected, the tool can show you that the problem lies in an inefficient SQL query or a table lock.
- Resolution: Having identified the cause of the problem, APM helps to resolve the incident. This may include recommendations on how to optimise the code, adjust server configurations, or increase the resources allocated. If a bottleneck is found in a particular function of the code, for instance, developers can rewrite that function to make it more efficient.
Examples of advanced tools
New Relic: Provides comprehensive monitoring of applications, infrastructures and end-user experiences. It visualizes performance in real time and diagnoses problems quickly with interactive dashboards and customizable alerts.
Dynatrace: Uses artificial intelligence to automate the detection and diagnosis of performance problems. Dynatrace provides in-depth root-cause analysis and proposes solutions to optimize performance.
AppDynamics: Allows you to monitor application and infrastructure performance in real time. It offers root cause analysis capabilities and proactive alerts to prevent problems before they affect users.
Datadog: Integrates application, infrastructure and log monitoring. Datadog correlates performance data with logs and traces to quickly diagnose problems and understand the impact on users.