Top 8 Application Performance Management (APM)

DatadogDynatraceNew RelicAzure MonitorAppDynamicsBMC TrueSight Operations ManagementAccedian SkylightITRS Geneos
  1. leader badge
    Datadog provides tracing and logging, whereas Dynatrace focuses on tracing, and Splunk is more of a logging tool. Datadog's advantage is that we don't need two tools.
  2. leader badge
    The most valuable features for me are the dashboard panels because they enable you to monitor multiple applications in one single site.This solution has helped our organization on multiple occasions. The synthetic monitor came in particularly handy.
  3. Buyer's Guide
    Application Performance Management (APM)
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic and others in Application Performance Management (APM). Updated: March 2023.
    690,226 professionals have used our research since 2012.
  4. The feature I found most valuable is being able to design my queries. It's easy to design a query.The most valuable features of New Relic are the reports and ease of use.
  5. The solution has tons of valuable features. It's a Microsoft native tool, so it works well with other Microsoft technologies, which is predominantly what our customer end-user base is.
  6. The most valuable feature of AppDynamics is Proactive Monitoring and Alerting.The solution helps us provide a better user experience to our customers.
  7. What I like best about BMC TrueSight Operations Management is that it allows you to do granular monitoring and improves VM load.The most valuable features of BMC TrueSight Operations Management are the blackouts and event management.
  8. report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Management (APM) solutions are best for your needs.
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  9. The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors.What I like most about Accedian Skylight is that it's a UI application, so using it is easy. I also like that the support for Accedian Skylight is helpful.
  10. It's a very powerful application monitoring tool across the industry. There are many free, open-source tools that are available. There are also paid tools, but ITRS Geneos is a real-time application monitoring tool where the user is able to monitor, self-configure, and manage alerts through their console.

Advice From The Community

Read answers to top Application Performance Management (APM) questions. 690,226 professionals have gotten help from our community of experts.
it_user151011 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Director of Growth at PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)
Below are the rankings. What do you think? Gartner reports these four solutions as Leaders: Cisco (AppDynamics) Dynatrace New Relic Broadcom These are the Visionaries: Splunk (SignalFx) Datadog Only one Challenger: Microsoft Eight Niche Players: Riverbed (Aternity) IBM Ins...
Read More »
Tjeerd Saijoen - PeerSpot reviewer
Tjeerd SaijoenIf you ask what I think of the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant, after more than 30… more »
6 Answers
Rony_Sklar - PeerSpot reviewer
Rony_Sklar
Community Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Hi community members,

I have some questions for you: 

What is ITOM? How does it differ from ITSM? 

Which products would you recommend to make up a fully defined ITOM suite?

Donald Bakels - PeerSpot reviewer
Donald BakelsIT operations management (ITOM) software is intended to represent all the tools… more »
6 Answers
SystemsEngineer234z - PeerSpot reviewer
SystemsEngineer234z
Principal Enterprise Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Hi everyone, I'm looking to purchase an APM solution, and looking for some feedback. I've shortlisted AppDynamics, New Relic, Dynatrace, Datadog, as well as some others like Big Panda and Corelogic that might be used to bolt on as value add. I have experience with AppDynamics, Datadog and Dynat...
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reviewer1352679 - PeerSpot reviewer
reviewer1352679There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org… more »
5 Answers
reviewer1738488 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at Thomson Reuters

Hi peers,

Which solutions are the leaders of Gartner MQ for Application Performance Management in 2021? What do you think of their choice of companies?

Thanks!

Dawid Van Der Merwe - PeerSpot reviewer
Dawid Van Der MerweDynatrace, Cisco/AppDynamics, New Relic & Datadog. A few questions to keep… more »
7 Answers
Rony_Sklar - PeerSpot reviewer
Rony_Sklar
Community Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Hi peers, 

How is synthetic monitoring used in Application Performance Management (APM)? 

How does it differ from real user monitoring?

NetworkOb0a3 - PeerSpot reviewer
NetworkOb0a3I think different shops may use the term differently. In regards to an industry… more »
10 Answers
Rony_Sklar - PeerSpot reviewer
Rony_Sklar
Community Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Hi peers,

With so many APM tools available, it can be hard for businesses to choose the right one for their needs. 

With this in mind, what is your favorite APM tool that you would happily recommend to others? 

What makes it your tool of choice?

Hani Khalil - PeerSpot reviewer
Hani KhalilI have tested a lot of APM tools and most of it are doing the same job in… more »
11 Answers
Ariel Lindenfeld - PeerSpot reviewer
Ariel Lindenfeld
Sr. Director of Community
PeerSpot
Let the community know what you think. Share your opinions now!
it_user342780 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user342780Speed to get data into the platform is one of our most important metrics. We… more »
105 Answers

Application Performance Management (APM) Articles

Evgeny Belenky - PeerSpot reviewer
Evgeny Belenky
PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)
Hi community members, As usual, this new Community Spotlight shares with you the latest articles, questions and trending discussions from your peers. Trending See what is trending at the moment and chime in to discuss! Top 8 Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Tools 2022 Would you reco...
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Ravi Suvvari - PeerSpot reviewer
Ravi SuvvariGood very informative
2 Comments
Janet Staver - PeerSpot reviewer
Janet Staver
Tech Blogger
If you are considering DevOps tools for your business, you want to be sure you choose the right solution. DevOps software is a rapidly growing market, and while it can be hard to know which tools you really need, researching all of your options and making the right choice does not have to be a da...
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Evgeny Belenky - PeerSpot reviewer
Evgeny Belenky
PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)
Hi PeerSpot community members, This is a fresh-from-the-oven Community Spotlight for you. Here, we've summarized and selected the latest posts (professional questions, articles and discussions) by PeerSpot community members. Check them out! Also, please share with us your feedback and suggestio...
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Deena Nouril - PeerSpot reviewer
Deena Nouril
Tech Blogger
PeerSpot’s crowdsourced user review platform helps technology decision-makers around the world to better connect with peers and other independent experts who provide advice without vendor bias. Our users have ranked these solutions according to their valuable features, and discuss which features...
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Shibu Babuchandran - PeerSpot reviewer
Shibu Babuchandran
Regional Manager/ Service Delivery Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
What Is AIOps? AIOps is the practice of applying analytics and machine learning to big data to automate and improve IT operations. These new learning systems can analyze massive amounts of network and machine data to find patterns not always identified by human operators. These patterns can bo...
Read More »
Jairo Willian Pereira - PeerSpot reviewer
Jairo Willian PereiraI always like this order a lot: "Consider People and Process" and only after… more »
Evgeny Belenky - PeerSpot reviewer
Evgeny BelenkyGreat article, @Shibu Babuchandran! Thank you for sharing your knowledge with… more »
2 Comments
Tjeerd Saijoen - PeerSpot reviewer
Tjeerd Saijoen
CEO at Rufusforyou
ICT is getting more and more complex: today I have several systems in Chicago, several more in Amsterdam and if you need to protect your environment you will need to check on-premises, the cloud at Amazon, and the cloud at Microsoft Azure.  Why is Performance related to security? For the foll...
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Shibu Babuchandran - PeerSpot reviewer
Shibu BabuchandranVery good insights about correlation for security with performance.
Johann Delaunay - PeerSpot reviewer
Johann DelaunayInteresting positioning and way of thinking, thank you very much for the… more »
2 Comments
Tjeerd Saijoen - PeerSpot reviewer
Tjeerd Saijoen
CEO at Rufusforyou
How are security and performance related to each other? Today a lot of monitor vendors are on the market, most of the time they focus on a particular area, for example, APM (Application Performance Monitoring) or Infrastructure monitoring. Is this enough to detect and fix all problems? Now our ...
Read More »
Caleb Miller - PeerSpot reviewer
Caleb MillerGood article, but the spelling and grammatical errors are pretty blatant.
1 Comment

Application Performance Management (APM) Topics

Why is application performance management important?

Application environments can be complex, but users will always expect apps to work regardless of time, which device they are using, or where they are located. Thus, monitoring the performance of business-critical apps is crucial to helping your business thrive and remain competitive. APM is an important solution used to ensure your applications can continue to meet your end-users expectations.

How does application performance monitoring work?

Application performance monitoring tools analyze how applications perform in order to determine if they are behaving correctly. If an app is not working appropriately, data and metadata are collected on the source of the issue. That data is then analyzed to observe its impact on the business and the information is then used for troubleshooting issues and optimizing performance levels. To do this, various types of instrumentation are used (such as distributed tracing of end-to-end transactions, agents for tracing Java or .NET code, APIs for observability, cloud or other platforms, etc.). The conclusive data and application performance metrics are usually visualized via intuitive dashboards. If and when performance levels exceed automatically-defined baselines, organizations can resolve issues by tracing transaction performance across their distributed infrastructure and can also utilize application mapping visualizations to clearly understand the dynamic and complex relationships between relevant components.

What are application performance metrics?

Measuring the performance of your applications involves the following metrics:

  • User satisfaction/Apdex Scores: Apdex (application performance index) score helps specify goals for how long a specific transaction of web request should take. The transactions are then categorized into fast, sluggish, slow, or failed requests and scored from 0 to 1.
  • Response time: Average response times are useful to track application performance.
  • Error rates: This is a critical app performance metric that helps you monitor errors before they affect your end-users. Error rates can be tracked via HTTP error %, logged exceptions, and thrown exceptions.
  • Application instances: Having a count of how many application instances are running is important if your application scales up or down in the cloud. This can save money for your organization during off-peak times, and can also ensure your application scales appropriately to meet demand.
  • Request rates: Knowing how much traffic your application receives can impact the success of your application. Request rates can help you understand the dynamics of your application’s scalability. By monitoring the request rate, you can also detect spikes or inactivity.
  • CPU usage: Application and server CPU usage is a critical performance metric. Observing CPU usage will alert your teams of performance monitoring issues. It is especially important to them per server, but also to track them as an aggregate across individually deployed instances of your application.
  • Application availability: This form of monitoring is a useful method to measure uptime for service level agreements (SLA). For web applications, this can be done via a scheduled HTTP check, which can monitor status codes and response times, and can search for specific content on web pages.
  • Garbage collection: For applications written in C#, .NET, or other programming languages that utilize garbage collection, it can create performance problems such as causing your process to suspend or using a lot of CPU.
How do you test application performance?

It is important to test your application performance to prevent bottlenecks and ensure a seamless end-user experience. To test your application performance you need to:

  • Identify the testing environment: Identify software, hardware, and network configurations.
  • Identify performance metrics: Beyond response time, throughput, and constraint metrics, determine the other success criteria for your performance testing.
  • Design your performance tests: Plan different performance test scenarios while keeping in mind account user variabilities, testing data, and target metrics.
  • Configuration: Configure the test environment and the instruments necessary to monitor your resources.
  • Implement your test design: After you have created your test model, implement your test design and develop the tests.
  • Execute: When you run the performance tests, make sure to monitor and capture the data generated.
  • Retest: Analyze, report, and then retest the data. Run performance tests again using the original defined parameters as well as different parameters. Then, share the results.
Application Performance Monitoring Solutions

The best application performance monitoring solutions (APM) are important for proactively monitoring and managing a software application’s performance and availability. APM’s scope further includes performance measurement for virtually any IT asset that affects end user experience. The sign of the best APM tools are that they detect application performance issues in order to adhere to an agreed-upon service level. In particular, APM is focused on app response times under various load conditions. As part of this, APM also measures the compute resources required to support a given level of load.

According to members of the IT Central Station (soon to be Peerspot) community, the best APM vendors serve multiple masters. Developers need to understand app performance characteristics in order to ensure an optimal software experience for end users. Business managers and IT department leaders use APM data to help make decisions about infrastructure and architecture.

As applications grow more complex and interdependent, application performance monitoring users express high expectations for potential APM toolsets. Accessibility, manageability and scalability are essential. Users argue that an effective APM tool must give business stakeholders accurate, understandable data while allowing developers to dive deeply into stored data over the long term.

DevOps users want app performance management tools to measure the deep internal transactions that take place inside an application or between integrated system elements. They want APM data in real time, across multiple application tiers, with transparency along the entire application process chain. Some refer to this as “full stack tracing.”

Ideally, APM data should be measured against user experience as a key performance indicator. For example, if a bottleneck is being caused by database latency, users want to understand the root cause so they can fix it immediately. This might require an alerting based on patterns and “baselining.”

Some expect APM tools to enable the discovery of complex distributed application architecture or even microservices and containers. After all, not all application architecture is known at the outset, and it certainly changes over time. Users need APM tools to be proactive whether they are used in dev, test, QA or production environments.

The APM toolset itself should have low impact on application performance. The measurements it takes have to be easy to interpret and place into a business-friendly reporting output. For instance, IT Central Station members suggest that APM tools should offer a predefined customizable reporting capability, with high visibility and a capacity to export and report on large quantities of raw data.

Benefits of Application Performance Management Tools

Application performance management tools include a long list of benefits. Below are some of the most reputable ones:

  • Visibility: With APM tools, you gain visibility across your entire application stack. You have access to the complete infrastructure, front-end, and back-end, and cloud components to ensure your application can perform at its best.
  • Performance insights: When you implement an APM solution, you are alerted when performance deviates from its typical normal behavior, or when anomalies are detected so you can quickly remediate any issues.
  • Root-cause analysis: A good APM tool will allow you to identify what caused an issue and where it is coming from.
  • Early prediction: Application performance management tools will equip your IT teams with the information they need to tackle potential performance issues ahead of time so that they can be proactively prevented. An APM tool will use a combination of historical data and advanced metrics to highlight vulnerabilities, root causes, and trouble areas before they evolve into bigger, more significant problems.
  • Monitor third-party applications: Ensure that service level agreements (SLAs) are being met. Through the use of advanced analytics, APM can alert you when a third-party service is identified as the root cause of a performance issue. With this information at hand, you can react with a faster response time and modify or remove any problematic assets.
  • Deeper understanding of user experiences: Synthetic and real-user monitoring help predict user behavior paths so you can identify areas in need of optimization to improve a user’s experience.
Features of Application Performance Management Tools

A great application performance management tool will include features that will help you optimize the success of your organization.

  • Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML): When an APM tool uses AI and ML to monitor your application’s performance, it allows you to be proactive in resolving issues before they emerge into major problems.
  • Automatic business transaction identification: This feature should not be overlooked. Without being able to identify and display application transactions, you lack the ability to prioritize problems and risk flying blind in alert storms.
  • Customer interaction information: For customer-facing applications, this feature will provide access to the customer numbers or locations via easy data queries, customized dashboards, or report creation capabilities.
  • Automated issue remediation: A good APM feature to have is the facilitation of automated issue remediations which can help your organization automatically run defined actions to help resolve issues before they negatively impact your business. An APM tool can mitigate the impact of a problem using features that facilitate extra capacity where needed when auto-scaling in the cloud.

Other critical features to consider are easy deployment, a user-friendly interface, privacy regulations support, and real-time analysis.

Buyer's Guide
Application Performance Management (APM)
March 2023
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic and others in Application Performance Management (APM). Updated: March 2023.
690,226 professionals have used our research since 2012.