How to Measure Application Performance
Metrics are a crucial component of APM systems. It’s important to track multiple components of performance to accurately and quickly pinpoint the root cause of lags. The following buckets of metrics are used by APM systems to measure performance in a user-friendly way:
- Application Performance Index: This index, also called an Apdex score, has become an industry standard. It measures whether performance meets user expectations by bucketing transactions into satisfied, tolerating, too slow, and failed requests.
- Physical and virtual server performance: These metrics analyze both physical and virtual servers for excessive CPU load, low storage, virtual resource allocation, and potential hardware issues.
- Application Traffic: Tracking request rate, or traffic, can provide crucial insight into overall performance health. These metrics correlate request rates with other metrics to give a breakdown of what happens during periods of high usage. Businesses can then shift accordingly to maximize performance as usage goes up.
- Application Dependencies: Application dependency mapping is the process of identifying all the elements of an IT ecosystem and how they work together. A 2016 Forrester report showed that 56% of enterprises were hindered in IT projects because they didn’t have a complete view of dependencies. By comparing multiple dependency metrics, businesses can identify and resolve bottlenecks.
The APM Market Is Expanding Quickly
As service-oriented architecture grows in popularity, many organizations are running hundreds of microservices. It’s impossible to monitor these individually. Furthermore, 77% of application issues take 5+ hours to resolve, and 98% of cloud deployments experience performance issues. The costs from IT downtime will only grow as a result. These dynamics will likely increase APM penetration.
Already, APM was estimated to be a $4 billion market in 2019, growing at a CAGR of 10% to reach $6.2 billion by 2023. With the rise of digital everything during COVID-19, we expect this growth rate to accelerate. Currently, market share is dominated by three companies: Dynatrace, Cisco, and New Relic, though a number of other players are rapidly emerging.