5 Questions To Ask APM Solution Providers During Evaluation
When evaluating application performance monitoring (APM) tools, be sure to ask these five critical questions to potential solution providers.
An application performance monitoring solution helps your business ensure that its critical applications are performing at satisfactory levels. APM vendors offer tools that track application performance metrics over time to provide a full account of how your applications are behaving. Each APM provider brings its own unique capabilities to the table when it comes to monitoring application performance. That means when it comes time for your business to evaluate solutions, it can be difficult to know which tool is right for you.
To help businesses narrow down solution providers, we listed five critical questions to ask APM vendors during the evaluation process. By asking these questions, your company can ensure a potential solution provider is a good fit for its application performance needs.
How easy is it to deploy your application performance monitoring solution?
As with any piece of software, your APM solution will need to be successfully integrated alongside the rest of your tools and work with your entire application infrastructure. As such, ease of deployment is something every company will need to keep in mind when determining which APM tool is right for them. Asking potential providers about the deployment and integration process can help you decide which solution will be the best fit for your business.
What performance statistics and metrics does your solution report on?
Not all APM solutions are built the same; many are designed with specific application performance statistics and metrics in mind. While some provide deep dives on security metrics and protecting application security breaches, others focus more on end-user experience or the strain of applications on IT systems. It’s crucial to understand what features the APM vendors you’re considering place at the forefront and where they may lag behind compared to other providers.
Does your solution deliver intelligent alerts for application performance problems?
Discovering application performance problems is only one aspect of an APM tool. Your APM solution must also deliver intelligent alerts to your IT team regarding the performance problem, where it’s located, how much performance degradation is occurring, and what potential fixes should be applied. Giving your engineers as much critical information as possible is important in developing a course of action to prevent more application performance issues.
Where can you monitor applications — on-premise, in the cloud, etc.?
Companies are creating, running, and deploying applications in several different places. For your APM solution to be truly effective, you need to monitor all your applications regardless of where they are. Some APM vendors focus exclusively on either on-premise apps or cloud apps. Others can monitor applications that are located anywhere; if your apps are distributed in multiple locations, you must ensure a vendor can handle all your apps.
What cloud environments can your solution natively integrate with?
Some APM solutions are designed specifically to integrate with a cloud environment like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform. If your company deploys apps in any cloud environment, it would be beneficial to look for solutions that can natively integrate with the cloud platforms you deploy applications in. This way, you can ensure your APM vendor has knowledge and expertise in delivering APM features tailored to those cloud environments.
Looking for a solution to help you improve your network performance? Our Network Monitoring Buyer’s Guide contains profiles on the top network performance monitor vendors, as well as questions you should ask providers and yourself before buying.
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