Application Performance Management
Application performance management for business critical applications has top priority!
Performance is the criterion for the answering time behaviour and the data throughput of an application.
The risk of failure may only be controlled if the requirements for the performance of an application are defined from the beginning and the implementation of these performance requirements is interwoven with the entire life cycle of this application.
Present situation
Performance is considered to be one of the most important non-functional requirements for the operation of a business critical application. However, the safeguarding of the performance inside a project is often rescheduled until shortly before delivery or dropped completely.
Today, the management view bases their decisions for the development of new applications on "time to market". In the different fields, "best-of-breed“ technologies, like data storage and user interface, are combined with more and more abstract, that is, more efficient, development scenarios.
Without an active APM, the higher level of abstraction may very quickly lead to an "unnoticed" increase of application complexity, resulting in a decline of performance.
This superficial economic point of view has the effect that reflecting the results of this procedure in regards to the application performance is shifted more and more to the background.
If adequate testing scenarios are defined at all, performance problems arise only during the integration and capacity testing phase. To permit the takeover to operation within the given time frame, these problems may only be compensated by an increase of capacity of the hardware.
The performance problems often only arise later during operation, leading to severe interruptions during productive operations.
Finding the actual cause for the interruption and correcting it by adequate measures is generally complex and expensive, since the applications are usually not equipped with adequate interfaces allowing for analysis.
These interruptions may result in considerable loss of business as well as costly bug-fixing measures. Furthermore the costs for fixing performance problems at the end of a project are incalculable.
Objective
It must be a general objective to develop and operate business critical applications of a company in such a way that, on one hand, the defined requirements for the performance are fulfilled and on the other hand, possible interruptions are recognized in such an early stage that correcting measures may be taken before the effects become noticeable by the users.
If performance-related incidents do occur, measures which are able to reduce the impact on the productive operation must have been defined, implemented and tested.
Our added value
Implementation of a consistent concept for application performance management.
Requirements management (performance)
The non-functional requirements for the application in regards to performance as well as the necessary application interfaces for performance analysis and performance analysis during testing and operation are recorded systematically and implemented into the development process.
This applies to new developments as well as analysis and maintenance of existing applications.
It must be considered that the requirements for the answering time behaviour and the data throughput may be conflicting with one another and, especially considering the risks involved, the weight of each should be defined for each case when optimizing.
The definition of the performance requirements has an impact on the definition of the testing scenarios for the application.
Performance engineering
The performance requirements are incorporated with all phases of the application life cycle. The design of the application takes place in such a way that, under the given conditions, a prognosis in respect to the application performance is possible. This prognosis is continuously verified by monitoring during testing and operation. The result of the evaluation of prognosis and analysis is incorporated with future developments.
The capacity of existing applications in regards to performance is checked during an interruption, but also actively during operation by using adequate tools and methods. From the result of the analysis, information is gathered in respect to business risks in various operating scenarios and, if applicable, necessary measures for improvement are deduced.
Performance monitoring
During operation, defined performance indicators are constantly monitored by mechanisms already inserted in the application during the development phase. If threshold values are exceeded, predefined measures are automatically triggered.
Monitoring during operation is required, since there may be changes in the behaviour of an application during time (application / environment / data quantity).
By using this measure and taking into account historical analysis and trend analysis, it is possible to achieve active support.
Performance tuning
Applications which do not fulfil the requirements in regards to performance or the performance prognosis of which is inadequate for certain business scenarios are analysed and optimized under consideration of all requirements and constraints.
Result:
- Existing applications are adapted to the new APM standard.
- The design of new applications includes the mechanism for active APM.
- Interruptions become foreseeable.
- However, if performance problems should occur, these can be controlled by predefined measures.
- Reduction of operating and maintenance costs
NovaTec Portfolio
- Implementation of APM into the processes of the company
- Performance requirements management
- Performance engineering
- „Firefighting“ performance problems. Precise analysis which components of the applications are causing problems and providing of concrete recommendations for actions to solve these problems.
- Analysis and optimization of business-critical applications according to the performance requirements (if applicable, recorded in retrospect), taking into special consideration the economic efficiency of the optimization measures.
- Performance tuning
- Integration of application monitoring into the existing monitoring solution of the company
- Tool- and manufacturer-independent consulting
- Selection and implementation of adequate tools
- Know how transfer