Real value of APM by JenniferSoft (1)
From “a good product if you have one,” to “must have one”
While the type of internet service became varied in the early 2000s, one area was sharply on the rise. It was called APM. (Application Performance Management) The APM was getting attention particularly from finance and IT industry.
A foreign-based vendor introduced the APM for the first time in Korea. During the early 2000s, a global vendor such as Wylie and Veritas got much attention for its technology, however, local solution including JENNIFER soon took the lead on the market. While imported solutions were relatively heavy to use and were focusing on analytic features, JENNIFER emphasized its mission-critical features with real-time performance analysis. JENNIFER started taking the lead by responding to picky local clients. With its strengths, JENNIFER is well recognized in Japan and China. Its APM slightly appeals to Asian market.
The outlook on APM market was not always optimistic back then. Although there are slight differences by market research firms, it was expected that the APM market would reach saturation point in 2010, and its market size would remain rather than increasing. Because it was expected that only a certain industry would feel the need to monitor and control the performance of application. Namely, APM was recognized as ‘a good product if you have one.’
Unlike the previous forecast, the APM market has continued to grow up. According to Korea IDC research, the market has increased every year since 2010. Gartner estimated that the market size of APM would be recorded at $2.6 billion in 2014, increasing 15.8% compared with the year of 2013. Such increasing rate was the highest growth rate in ITOM (IT operations management) area.
The APM market is expected to grow further down the road. What is really going on? Why more companies would like to adopt the monitoring solution, which was recognized as ‘a good product if you have one.’ How APM became ‘must have one product?’ Given companies are tightening their budget due to economic downturn, it is difficult to understand their behavior.
Why do you need to invest on APM during the economic downturn?
The web service was mainly used in internal system. However, as the web service has been widely used in almost every area of business, it becomes much important. As a result, investing APM has been on the rise. Ironically, APM market continues to increase not only in Korea, but across the globe over the past couple of years even after the global financial crisis broke out. Let’s find out reasons behind such decision.
Stable operation under complicated IT environment
As IT environment becomes much complicated, more companies started adopting the APM. Especially, finance firms took the lead during the initial stage of APM market. Companies in general started adopting or expanding IT infrastructure as a way of getting competitiveness. As IT environment became complicated, companies having multiple systems felt difficult to control their systems.
These trend influenced on APM industry in general. These days, APM is required to couple with multiple systems running web applications, program elements in order to secure stability due to complicated IT environment. Accordingly, it became important to work with various system platform such as OS, Web Application Server, DB, and numerous application framework without causing errors. For this reason, a software that its stability and compatibility has already been proved under client’s OS is getting recognized on the market. The need for APM started expanding from companies vulnerable to system errors.
Response to change triggered by mobile, and cloud
Technical advent including mobile, cloud plays a huge part in expanding APM industry. The advent of various mobile devices and internet usage regardless of time or place triggered unprecedented change in terms of types and numbers of transaction. The cloud allows users to expand their system in response to sudden increase of transaction. Such change makes companies control more service and requests seamlessly. Namely, there is a growing need to adopt the APM. Given the expansion of mobile and cloud is related with technical issue, it is likely to influence on the growth of APM for a long time.
High rates of return on your investment
When financial crisis hit the global economy in the year of 2008, APM market was ironically on the rise. It was clear that investing on APM is beneficial. By monitoring the performance of web application server located between the client and server (company infrastructure), users are able to measure the performance of all the requests by their clients. In other words, if a company adopts the APM, it will be able to identify all the issues related with using web service. Ultimately, the company can enhance the stability of its core business.
Moreover, APM help minimize the need for managing IT infrastructure and related cost. When the number of IT service increases, accompanying tasks including the management of server, application and network are inevitably increasing. However, the number of human resources or other resources remains as it is or decreases.
APM help effectively monitor the operating system with a limited manpower, allowing companies to respond in a timely manner. Although APM needs to be built with convenience of management and maintenance in mind. It is important to note that adopting the monitoring solution to control could lead to increase of workload.
Improved response time in related department
Companies these days heavily depend on IT service throughout their overall business. They keep their eyes on the status of IT service in various sectors such as sales, accounting, marketing, and customer service. APM allows both a person in charge of IT and other departments to check the status of their system and service. For instance, responding to an error by a call center employee would lead to differentiated service in terms of customer service, rather than only by IT department. To utilize APM on the ground, it must be initiated in real-time and needs to include visualization, and must be easy to use.
To be continued…
