The acronym APM, conventionally, was referred to as Application Performance Management. But, in recent years, it is also used to refer to Application Performance Monitoring.
While the former could be reckoned to being more proactive on matters pertinent to your application’s performance, the latter rather applies to being just reactive about the same.
Regardless, APM in general is an extremely vital tool to monitor and improve the performance of your application.
What is APM?
By definition, an application performance management software enables business organizations to monitor the performance of their applications, perform routine performance analysis and receive reports for the same, and also obtain prompt notifications when there are performance issues.
Why is it Important?
APM software is capable of collecting metrics about all the elements of your business critical applications, thus enabling you to identify issues if any before they actually arise.
But, it doesn’t end there; in addition to this monitoring process, an APM tool also offers a whole lot of other benefits to businesses.
Some of the prominent features offered by APM software are:
+ insight into application performance metrics
+ customer experience monitoring
+ SLA compliance, business-relevant metrics tracking
+ infrastructure monitoring
Business Benefits of APM
If you are wondering why your business needs an APM solution, take a look at some of the real benefits you will enjoy from it:
✓ Improved End User Experience/Satisfaction
One of the huge benefits any business can gain from using an APM tool is improved end user experience. When your customers or end users are not satisfied with your products or services, they often leave without telling you, and there is every chance of them to go with your competitors.
When the quality of your application improved with the use of an APM tool, you get to achieve improved user satisfaction, as well as make your business interactions more productive.
This is because, the tool will give you deep insight on the performance of your app and its various facets, thereby helping make sure productivity and satisfaction.
✓ Increased Revenue
Of course, this is undeniably the most straightforward and prominent benefit for businesses using APM software.
In most companies, applications are their business; therefore, if an app becomes slow or is down, it has an immediate adverse impact on the overall business.
And when you don’t have any idea about such issues, you cannot deal with the same beforehand, as a result of which your business starts to lose revenue.
With APM software, you get to proactively identify such issues and take the necessary steps to make sure that your business applications are back on track and are meeting all your goals.
✓ Lowered Operational Costs
As mentioned before, using an APM solution allows you to identify potential problems beforehand and prevent the same, which thus gives you a huge opportunity to reduce costs and use the saved money on the development of new products and services to fuel business growth.
It allows you to tweak your business constantly, thereby enabling you to reduce the impact it will otherwise face due to poor performance.
In addition, you will also be able to identify unknown efficiencies that can help lower operational costs.
✓ Better Productivity
An APM monitoring tool makes you aware of what is going on in your business environment, and one of its amazing features is that it notifies you beforehand about things that need to be fixed ASAP, allowing you to make necessary adjustments before anyone gets affected, including your customers or clients.
When business operations run properly, everyone involved will naturally become more productive.
✓ Increased Innovation
Yet another amazing benefit for businesses from using an APM tool is increased innovation.
When your business applications are managed properly, minimizing or eliminating any potential issues or impacts, your teams get more time to spend on performing more innovations required for your business to grow further.
✓ Cost
One factor that is as important as the features you should look for in an APM tool is its cost.
In the past, application performance management solutions were really expensive, and were affordable only for large business enterprises.
Of course, there are still several APM vendors that charge thousands of dollars a year for one server, catering to larger businesses.
On the other hand, in recent years, a lot of providers have started offering more affordable plans to cater the needs of small- and medium-sized businesses.
Therefore, you shouldn’t have any problem finding an APM solution that meets your budget.