Application performance monitoring (APM) solutions are essential for any business looking to manage its operations efficiently.
By providing real-time insights into the performance of your applications, APM solutions can help you quickly identify areas that need improvement and prevent costly mistakes from occurring in the future.
But with so many different types of APM solutions on the market today, how do you know which one is right for your company?
The answer lies in choosing an integrated APM solution that can monitor both the performance and cost of your application.
What is an integrated APM, and why is it so important for your business? We’ll dive deep into both topics today, and by the end of this article, you’ll understand APM solutions and how they can help you save money at a deep level.
Let’s get started!
What is an integrated APM solution?
Traditional APM solutions are modular and siloed – meaning that each component reports on separate aspects of application performance. This can be beneficial for pinpointing specific issues, but it doesn’t provide an overall view of the cost associated with those issues.
Enter integrated APM solutions. These solutions are designed to give you a holistic view of your applications by monitoring performance, cost, and your code base simultaneously, allowing you to make better decisions about optimizing operations and saving money.
By integrating seamlessly between modular data sources in your application, an integrated APM solution can measure a wide range of performance metrics like response time, throughput, and resource utilization. It can also provide detailed insights into the cost of certain infrastructural choices by letting you see exactly where in your codebase resources are being allocated with production-safe code profiling.
This combination of performance and code monitoring enables you to identify bottlenecks quickly, as well as pinpoint areas in your code that may be unnecessarily expensive. It’s a useful blend of both visibility and control, allowing you to make informed decisions about how best to optimize your application.
Why is an integrated APM important for cost savings?
An integrated APM solution can help you save money in two different ways. The first is by providing insights into areas of your codebase that may be unnecessarily expensive. By seeing exactly how each piece of code contributes to the overall application performance, you’ll be able to identify areas where optimization is needed and reduce costs as a result.
The second way is through predictive analytics capabilities. An integrated APM solution can analyze data from your application in real time and help you make predictions about future performance under a specified load. This allows you to make smarter decisions about resource allocation and ensure that costs are kept in check; i.e, maybe you’ll purchase infrastructure X instead of infrastructure Y.
Additionally, integrated APMs confers the following benefits:
Reducing troubleshoot time
Troubleshooting is a time-consuming and often expensive process. By providing real-time insights into performance issues, an integrated APM solution can help you quickly identify problem areas and take corrective measures to address them – saving both time and money in the long run.
Increased visibility
With an integrated APM solution, you’ll get a comprehensive view of your application performance in real time. Old-school, siloed APMs often can’t provide this level of visibility because of the way they structure data. Second-order metrics are often inaccurate or missing because of these limitations, making it difficult to get an accurate understanding of application performance.
An integrated APM solution weaves together different data sources to provide a more comprehensive view of the performance landscape and lets you see their interdependency in real-time. This helps you identify bottlenecks quickly and make better decisions about resource allocation from an operational point of view that isn’t merely academic.
Reduced overhead costs
An integrated APM solution can also reduce the costs associated with manual monitoring and optimization. For example, you won’t have to manually check your codebase for unnecessary resource usage or spend hours troubleshooting issues that could have been identified much earlier by an automated system; sometimes, code looks perfectly fine on the surface but can be incredibly expensive when it comes to execution.
An integrated APM solution will automate much of this process for you and significantly reduce your overhead costs in the long run.
How to choose the right integrated APM solution
When choosing an integrated APM solution, there are a few key considerations you’ll need to make.
First, consider your budget and the types of features you’d like in an APM. Some solutions may offer more sophisticated analytics capabilities than others; it’s important to evaluate each product carefully and choose one that meets both your needs and budget requirements.
For instance, not all APM solutions profile your codebase (like ScoutAPM does). If you want granular insight into the way your code is affecting both performance and cost, you’ll need to keep an eye out for products that offer production-safe code profiling.
Second, you’ll want to look for an integrated APM solution with easy setup and integration. A good APM should be able to quickly connect with your application and provide clear insights into its performance without requiring too much manual configuration or time investment from your team. It’ll never be “one-click”, but it should be as close to it as possible.
Finally, consider the vendor’s customer support policies. If you’re ever stuck with a problem or need help understanding the insights your integrated APM is providing, having access to knowledgeable and friendly customer service representatives will make all the difference in resolving your issue quickly. Some APMs look great on the surface – but when push comes to shove, their customer service is lacking. Always research the vendor’s support policies, and dutifully look through reviews, before committing to a product.
ScoutAPM: the leading integrated APM for cost savings
ScoutAPM is an integrated APM solution that provides real-time insights into performance and cost. It’s designed to help you optimize your applications quickly and reduce costs associated with manual monitoring and optimization.
What sets ScoutAPM apart from other solutions on the market is its ability to track second-order metrics, like memory usage or database queries, in addition to traditional siloed performance measurements like response time or throughput. This helps you get a better understanding of your application’s performance and pinpoint areas where you can make optimizations.
ScoutAPM also provides detailed insights into the cost of certain infrastructural choices by letting you see exactly where in your codebase resources are being allocated with production-safe code profiling. This helps you identify opportunities for improvement quickly and reduce costs associated with wasteful resource usage.
We’re affordable and extremely intuitive and have been helping companies save time and money for over 10 years. If you’re looking for an integrated APM solution that can help you maximize cost savings, give ScoutAPM a try with our 14-day free trial today!