APM solutions AppDynamics AM-BITS

How to Attain High Efficiency with APM Solutions from AppDynamics: An Interview with AM-BITS’ Expert

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) is one of the most promising services offered by AM-BITS on the Ukrainian market.

In times of the pandemic, when most employees work remotely, APM solutions are in critical demand. This given, the result of a survey of more than 1000 IT specialists from all over the world showed that 80% of respondents lack reliable information about the progress of services and applications. The importance of understanding business processes for the effective workflow of individual teams and the enterprise as a whole was also noted.

What is Application Performance Monitoring?

Application Performance Monitoring is a set of tools that allow your enterprise’s IT professionals to receive complete and timely information about the performance of all business applications and related processes.

APM systems ensure that the applications that users interact with meet performance standards and functional requirements, thereby providing the desired level of user experience (UX).

End-to-end Application Performance Monitoring

Benefits of APM solutions from AppDynamics

Having studied the variety of APM products in the global IT services market, AM-BITS made a choice in favor of AppDynamics solutions. Today AppDynamics is part of Cisco, the industry leader.

In order to understand the reasons for this choice, let’s turn for answers to Alexander Tsybulin, a leading engineer at AM-BITS, a certified Cisco specialist (CCNP Security, Networking) and AppDynamics.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Solutions: Why Do Businesses Need Them?

Today, software is increasingly being introduced into our daily life. Previously, many processes had to be performed manually and required the personal presence of an appropriate IT specialist to complete them. Nowadays, most business tasks can be performed remotely by simply interacting with a PC, tablet or smartphone. More and more companies provide various services through mobile and desktop applications.

For example, no one is surprised by the services of calling a taxi, food delivery, Internet banking, etc. It should be noted that customer loyalty to the brand directly depends on the quality of business applications and interaction experience (UX, user experience). If, for example, a user decided to order a taxi using a mobile application, but his application closed spontaneously with an error, then with a high degree of probability he will use a competitor’s service. And if this happens oftentimes, then the company will permanently lose this client.

Therefore, the main goal of APM solutions is end-to-end monitoring of business applications. The right APM tool can help you identify and pinpoint the source of the problem, move from a reactive to a proactive approach to problem solving, and show the user how application problems affect the business.

What is AppDynamics known for?

AppDynamics is the market leader in APM solutions for business since 2012, according to Gartner. In 2020, the company, being already a part of Cisco, confirmed its status as the best provider in the APM services market for the eighth time in a row. SaaS and on-premises APM solutions have been successfully implemented in enterprises around the world, including large international companies such as Vodafone, BMW, Nasdaq, Cisco and many others.

Gartner’s Leaders Quadrant 2020
for Application Performance Monitoring and Ability to Execute

AppDynamics Gartner 2020
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring, Charley Rich, Federico De Silva, 22 April 2020.

What can AppDynamics offer business users?

The main advantage of AppDynamics’ APM solutions is that they enable users to see what is happening inside the application. APM tools can track every request, from the user interface (browser or mobile app) to classes / methods, database calls and third-party services.

Application monitoring tools help build an interactive interaction map that is always up to date and updated in real time.

In addition, the APM solution sets baselines (baselines) for each collected or configured metric, and also tracks deviations from them. This helps to track possible problems with a particular application that could affect the quality of the system users.

A characteristic feature of AppDynamics solutions is the anomaly analysis function, which greatly simplifies the diagnosis of most issues that arise.

What is the value of AppDynamics APM solutions?

Due to the fact that AppDynamics aggregates information obtained from various sources (Databases, Application Servers, Logs, Browsers and Mobile Applications), it is a single source of truth (SSOT) for all teams that develop and maintain applications. As a result, users receive a number of undeniable benefits:

  • Deep granularity of information, while indicating the slowest parts of the application, can significantly reduce the time required to find the cause of the problem, and can reduce the number of personnel required for diagnostics.
  • IT service managers see how the infrastructure affects the application, and can immediately understand which team can solve the problem without involving other options.
  • Developers spend way less time troubleshooting and diagnosing application problems, thus gaining much more free time to develop new functionality.
  • Ease of use of analytics for application management, which allows you to correlate business KPI metrics, taking into account the state of an application.
  • Comparison of various metrics (both business and technical) in different releases allows to understand how much the application has improved with the release of the new version.

What versions of AppDynamics APM solutions are available?

Today, AppDynamics offers on the market two options for monitoring application performance – in the form of SaaS and On-Premises versions. In the case of the SaaS version, all questions regarding the deployment, maintenance and scaling of the AppDynamics platform are taken over by the vendor. At the same time, the prices for SaaS and On-Prem licenses are exactly the same for both deployment options.

What business processes can be monitored with AppDynamics?

APM solutions offered by AppDynamics in the IT services market are almost universal. They are able to provide end-to-end monitoring of any business applications that are written in Java, .NET, Python, C / C ++, Node.js and many others. The platform compatibility of these monitoring tools is also encouraging. These are mobile applications for IOS and Android, various databases, and most modern browsers.

What is Business Intelligence in AppDynamics for?

AppDynamics APM solutions have the ability to extract the required application performance directly from executable classes and methods. This makes it possible to build various dashboards – the dashboards that show the state of application performance in real time. For a better understanding, I will give you the following example:

The eCommerce company has its own online shopping app. With the help of an APM solution, we extract information from the application code for paid goods that were purchased by users through this application. Based on the information received, we can build a dashboard that will show the revenue for the desired period of time. Next, you can link and analyze revenue figures by comparing them with the technical state of the application, a particular release version, a certain time of year, etc.

What experience of APM-solutions integration does AM-BITS have?

Since 2019, AM-BITS has had the status of a direct partner of AppDynamics, which allows us to receive more extensive interaction with AppDynamics teams. If necessary, we can bring up for joint discussion issues that require an extraordinary solution. For example, one of the AM-BITS customers required the development of an additional program – an application performance monitoring agent, which was not originally included in the project plan. At our request, AppDynamics specialists managed to develop the agent needed for the customer within six months. Such results of our partnership with a solutions vendor were highly appreciated by our customers.

If we talk about the overall experience of our team in integrating solutions for monitoring application performance, I would like to note that AM-BITS started working in the APM direction long before it became a direct partner of AppDynamics. We began to implement similar projects at Ukrainian enterprises since the end of 2017. At the moment, we can rightfully be proud of the full-fledged team of in-house certified specialists. The AM-BITS team is able to implement not only individual AppDynamics solutions, but also to solve more complex problems associated with all kinds of integrations with any other systems at the enterprise.

Can I learn more about your experience in implementing AppDynamics APM solutions?

Sure. To date, AM-BITS specialists have already successfully completed integration with a number of customers – market leaders in the banking, financial, insurance, and telecommunications sectors. You can receive some of our completed cases by e-mail by simply requesting on our website, or by writing to our manager.

In addition to integration solutions, AM-BITS also offers and provides comprehensive technical support for implemented systems. Thus, we are always ready to help our clients to solve any issues that may arise during operation.

About our expert

Olexander Tsybulin currently works for AM-BITS. He rightfully occupies an interesting, but extremely responsible position of the leading engineer of the company. Olexander is a certified specialist who has successfully confirmed his experience and qualifications with a number of the most reputable IT companies in the world – Cisco (CCNP Security, Networking), AppDynamics, Radware and others. His main areas of work include software monitoring and cybersecurity. Olexander Tsybulin prefers to spend his free time brightly and actively, doing snowboarding, running, and traveling.

Oleksandr Tsybulin AM-BITS