Did you know businesses lose an average of 27 hours yearly to unplanned downtime due to hardware failures, network issues, and configuration errors? Performance testing, crucial for identifying these issues before deployment, captures only momentary snapshots.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) bridges this gap with continuous, real-time monitoring, swiftly identifying and resolving issues to ensure smooth application operation. APM provides essential insights into user experiences and system health, crucial for optimal performance.
However, using APM effectively poses challenges: complex configurations can lead to irrelevant alerts or overlooked critical issues; inadequate dashboards may delay issue resolution; and some APM solutions might miss parts of the technology stack.
The key lies in choosing the right APM vendor, one that offers deep expertise, precise alerting, customized configuration for specific business needs, and comprehensive, proactive monitoring. This partnership guarantees timely issue resolution and effective application monitoring.
This guide aims to help you select an APM vendor that not only aligns with but also enhances your business objectives, transforming potential setbacks into strategic advantages.
Importance of Selecting Right APM Services Vendor
Selecting the right APM services ensures your enterprise’s business continuity. An expert vendor enables real-time monitoring of application performance and reliability using APM products, covering diverse platforms and technologies.
This choice is more than a short-term fix for performance issues—it’s about ensuring long-term efficiency, growth, and user satisfaction.
Tailored Configuration: The best APM vendor offers customized setups to match your specific application and infrastructure needs. This ensures thorough monitoring and prevents oversight.
Precision Alerting: By fine-tuning APM alerts to meet your business goals, they help your team zero in on real issues, improving response times and operational efficiency.
APM Expertise: With deep knowledge of APM tools, the right vendor transforms data into actionable insights, maximizing your monitoring investment.
Customized Dashboards: Standard dashboards can lack the depth for immediate insights, slowing down problem identification and resolution. An experienced vendor offers dashboards tailored to your specific needs, enabling immediate performance insights for faster decision-making and problem resolution.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Unlike traditional APM solutions that may miss parts of your tech stack, the right vendor offers end-to-end visibility, eliminating blind spots and reducing the risk of performance issues.
Monitoring Complex Applications: They are equipped to handle modern, multifaceted applications and ensure consistent performance across all components.
Proactive Monitoring: More than just monitoring, the right APM partner enables you to anticipate and address issues before they affect users, significantly cutting downtime and boosting user experience.
Now you know the benefits a top-notch APM services vendor brings. But how do you choose the right one?
Here are the key factors to consider that can help you to make an informed decision.
Key Considerations When Selecting an APM Services Vendor
Looking at the challenges of effective APM, such as navigating complex IT architectures like microservices and hybrid clouds, dealing with the overwhelming volume of data, and the difficulty in integrating and monitoring legacy systems, as well as skill inadequacy and inflexible customization options, you essentially need a vendor agnostic to scale, service, software, technology, location, people, and more.
Here’s why.
Scale Agnostic
Scale agostic in APM services ensures that your application’s monitoring needs are met with precision, no matter the size. From compact setups to extensive enterprise ecosystems, a scale-agnostic vendor adapts effortlessly, mirroring the dynamic nature of your projects.
This approach guarantees that as your application grows or evolves from a few to millions of users, your APM strategy scales accordingly, providing consistent, efficient oversight across all stages of growth.
Opt for a vendor with this flexibility to ensure your application’s performance is seamlessly managed, regardless of its current or future scale.
Service Agnostic
An ideal APM services vendor offers a full range of services for thorough application performance monitoring and enhancement:
- Monitoring Services: Provides essential real-time insights into app functionality, user experience, and system health. Covers tool setup and management for any APM product.
- Configuration Services: Customizes tool setups for optimal data collection and performance monitoring tailored to the client’s environment.
- Performance Engineering Services: Enhances app performance by analyzing data, identifying issues, and implementing improvements for better speed and reliability.
- Proactive Monitoring Strategies: Implements strategies for early issue detection through trend analysis and pattern recognition.
- Dashboard Creation: Designs personalized dashboards for real-time visibility into performance, aiding in swift bottleneck identification and remediation.
- Reporting and Analysis: Provides detailed performance reports, root cause analyses, and actionable improvement recommendations.
- Implementation Support: Actively implements recommended improvements for tangible performance enhancements.
- Expert Insights: Bridges skill gaps with guidance, training, and support, leveraging expertise for smarter APM tool use and data-driven decisions.
Software Agnostic
Selecting a vendor that operates independently across various platforms like Dynatrace, AppDynamics, and New Relic ensures expertise in diverse APM tools. Their services are customized to meet individual client requirements, leveraging the best software available without favoring any specific.
The objective is clear: deliver results by optimizing performance, refining configurations, and implementing proactive monitoring strategies adaptable to any system.
This approach enhances APM effectiveness and assures businesses of a reliable partner to handle challenges using any software.
Industry Agnostic
Each industry has its own regulatory, security, and performance demands. Therefore, it is crucial to select an APM services vendor capable of serving diverse industries.
This versatility allows the vendor to leverage insights and solutions from various sectors. By applying best practices and innovative strategies across different industries, the vendor develops a robust and effective testing approach.
Their adaptability ensures they can quickly align with market trends and technological changes, delivering resilient, dependable, and competitive applications across all industries served.
Methodology Agnostic
To effectively serve clients, an APM services provider must seamlessly adapt to diverse development and deployment methodologies, including Agile, DevOps, Waterfall, and others. This adaptability ensures that APM services align closely with the client’s project management practices, maximizing efficiency throughout the software development lifecycle.
By employing a methodology-agnostic approach, providers can offer tailored solutions that meet specific needs, regardless of the development methodology employed. This flexibility is key to delivering optimal results and fostering successful client partnerships.
Platform Agnostic
Monitoring and optimizing applications across various platforms is crucial in today’s dynamic technological landscape.
A platform-agnostic vendor can seamlessly integrate and operate across diverse environments, including cloud, on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud setups. This ensures that your applications perform optimally regardless of the underlying infrastructure, providing flexibility and adaptability to meet your evolving business needs.
Technology Agnostic
Technology-agnostic vendors have broad skills spanning multiple programming languages, frameworks, and platforms. This expertise enables them to swiftly adapt to any project’s unique technical requirements.
Tool Agnostic
Prioritizing tool agnosticism in vendor selection is crucial. This approach underscores the flexibility to employ various APM tools tailored to specific project requirements. Here’s a breakdown of tools:
- Desktop: Dynatrace, New Relic, AppDynamics
- Web: Pingdom, SolarWinds, Raygun
- Mobile: Firebase Performance Monitoring, Instabug, Crittercism
Framework Agnostic
Embracing framework agnosticism entails deploying suitable tools and techniques. APM service providers must excel in monitoring applications across diverse frameworks without bias or restriction.
Key Frameworks Across Various Development Environments:
- Web: Angular, React, Vue.js, ASP.NET, Django, Ruby on Rails
- Desktop: Electron, WinForms, WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), GTK (GIMP Toolkit), Qt
- Mobile: Flutter, React Native, Xamarin, Ionic, Swift (iOS), Kotlin (Android)
- Java-based Framework: Spring Boot, JavaServer Faces (JSF), Play Framework, Struts, Grails
- Javascript-based Framework: Node.js, Express.js, Meteor.js, Backbone.js, Ember.js, Aurelia
People Agnostic
Effective communication is key for APM services to thrive, especially when teams are spread across the globe. Vendors who adopt a people-agnostic approach enable smooth interactions and skillfully navigate challenges such as accents, dialects, and cultural differences.
This flexibility promotes inclusive collaboration, mitigates biases, and enhances the team with various viewpoints and experiences.
Location Agnostic
As an APM services expert, being location agnostic is crucial. This entails being capable of handling various types of infrastructure setups and operating independently of location.
From traditional data centers in Bangalore to modern cloud-native architectures in North America, the vendor’s proficiency should transcend geographical boundaries. This ensures consistent and reliable performance across diverse locations, regardless of the infrastructure environment in place.
Also read – “Your Ultimate Guide to Select the Best Functional Testing Services Vendor.”
How to Hire Best Application Performance Monitoring Services Vendor – A Questionnaire
Selecting the ideal APM services vendor is key to overcoming the obstacles that can hold back organizations from maximizing their APM investments. This questionnaire is designed to help you thoroughly evaluate potential vendors, honing in on their expertise, methods, and the value they bring to your project.
The questions provided aim to broaden your assessment of the vendor beyond the basics covered earlier. Each question has an explanation and evaluation criteria, ensuring you make a well-informed decision.
1. Can you provide both APM and Performance Engineering (PE) services?
Purpose: To secure a vendor capable of identifying and solving performance issues and enhancing the overall efficiency and resilience of your applications.
Evaluation Criteria: Seek a vendor with a comprehensive service portfolio that doesn’t limit itself to monitoring. Their approach should be holistic, encompassing both APM for ongoing oversight and PE for structural improvements, ensuring your applications are stable but also streamlined and efficient.
2. Are your solutions flexible across different APM tools and technologies?
Purpose: To determine the vendor’s ability to work with and optimize a broad spectrum of APM tools and technologies.
Evaluation Criteria: The vendor should demonstrate tool and technology agnosticism, with a proven track record of adapting their approach to fit their client’s specific needs and existing infrastructures.
3. How do you support businesses already using APM tools like Dynatrace, AppDynamics, or New Relic?
Purpose: To understand the added value the vendor can provide on top of existing APM solutions.
Evaluation Criteria: Look for a vendor’s strategy to integrate with and enhance existing APM toolsets. The vendor should demonstrate software agnosticism and maximize the utility and insights gained from current deployments.
4. What proactive monitoring strategies do you employ?
Purpose: To evaluate the vendor’s approach to monitoring and how they anticipate and address potential issues before they impact performance.
Evaluation Criteria: The vendor should outline a comprehensive, proactive monitoring strategy that includes early detection, automated alerts, and predictive analytics to minimize downtime and optimize application performance.
5. Can you provide examples of how you’ve optimized APM strategies for other clients and reduced their application downtime?
Purpose: To gauge the vendor’s experience and effectiveness in enhancing APM strategies and outcomes for their clients.
Evaluation Criteria: Look for specific examples demonstrating the vendor’s ability to refine APM approaches, resulting in measurable reductions in downtime and notable improvements in application efficiency and user satisfaction.
6. What does your complete APM service package include?
Purpose: To understand the full range of APM capabilities the vendor offers.
Evaluation Criteria: Ensure the vendor’s services are comprehensive, covering everything from initial setup and continuous monitoring to analysis and reporting. Look for a service-agnostic approach that fits various project needs.
7. What does your onboarding and offboarding process look like?
Purpose: To gauge the ease and efficiency of starting and concluding services.
Evaluation Criteria: A straightforward, streamlined process for both onboarding and offboarding indicates a vendor’s organizational maturity and customer focus.
8. Can you detail your pricing model and any additional costs that may arise?
Purpose: To achieve transparency in costs associated with the APM services.
Evaluation Criteria: Seek a straightforward pricing model with no hidden fees. Understanding all potential costs upfront will help in budget planning and comparison.
9. What are the security and compliance standards you follow?
Purpose: To validate the vendor’s commitment to security and their ability to protect your applications in compliance with industry regulations.
Evaluation Criteria: Prioritize vendors adhering to standards such as ISO/IEC 27001 and SOC 2 Type II, showcasing their commitment to security management.
For projects involving sensitive information, ensure they comply with GDPR for privacy, PCI DSS for payment data, HIPAA for healthcare information, FISMA for federal data security, and SOX for financial integrity.
This comprehensive adherence underscores a vendor’s capability to manage and protect critical data across various regulatory environments.
10. Do you offer any additional support?
Purpose: To identify value-added services that enhance APM outcomes.
Evaluation Criteria: Choosing vendors that offer additional services, such as performance benchmarking, load testing, and performance testing, can provide deeper insights into application performance and user experience.
11. Have you developed anything proprietary over many years of working in the industry?
Purpose: To discover unique solutions or technologies the vendor brings.
Evaluation Criteria: Proprietary tools or methodologies can indicate a vendor’s innovation level and offer competitive advantages in application performance management.
12. What is your USP?
Purpose: To understand what sets the vendor apart from competitors.
Evaluation Criteria: The vendor’s USP should resonate with your project’s specific needs, whether it’s their technology, customer service, pricing model, or expertise in a particular industry.
This streamlined questionnaire sharpens your focus as you assess APM services vendors. It zeros in on their operational prowess, strategy, and alignment with your project’s objectives.
Look for vendors that meet your technical specifications and show a robust commitment to quality, innovation, and a partnership mindset throughout the selection phase.
Also read – “How to Select the Perfect Test Automation Services Vendor?”
What Sets Avekshaa Apart as Your APM Services Partner
Avekshaa Technologies showcases a remarkable ability to deliver outcomes over mere promises.
Imagine a leading private sector bank grappling with a monumental challenge: a fivefold surge in transaction volume through Asia’s largest payment gateway, accompanied by persistent performance hurdles. Avekshaa didn’t just lend a hand; it drove transformative results, significantly boosting the bank’s operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
By embracing an agnostic approach toward software, services, technology, location, and industry, Avekshaa emerged as the unequivocal solution, not merely another choice. It revolutionized the bank’s performance and scalability, eliminated unplanned reboots, and improved user experience. The benefits reaped by the customer were both clear and profound.
Avekshaa’s distinction lies in its sterling track record of excellence, particularly within the NBFC and banking sector. Achieving over a 150% average performance improvement across projects, it has earned the trust of customers for over 12 years.
Here are the compelling reasons to choose Avekshaa for APM Services:
- Comprehensive Service Offering: Avekshaa offers a wide array of services, including Application Performance Management (APM), performance engineering, monitoring, configuration, and proactive strategy development, tailored to meet all your APM requirements.
- Expertise in Performance Engineering: With deep expertise in performance engineering, Avekshaa excels in optimizing configurations, capacity planning, and vertical scaling solutions, ensuring optimal system performance.
- Innovative Micro-tools: Developed in-house, Avekshaa’s micro-tools amplify the diagnostic capabilities of APM solutions, facilitating granular analysis of performance data for precise issue identification and resolution. Key tools include the AWR Parser for SQL optimization and the Thread Dump Analyzer for resolving application thread deadlocks.
- Robust Knowledge Base: With a repository of over 5,000+ resolved issues across 60 industries, Avekshaa’s rich experience enables quick and practical solutions to complex performance, availability, and scalability challenges.
- P-A-S-S Assurance Platform: Avekshaa’s proprietary Performance, Availability, Scalability, and Security (P-A-S-S) Platform leverages unique intellectual properties to provide a cutting-edge, holistic solution for comprehensive application performance management.
- High Customer Retention Rate: Demonstrating a remarkable 70% repeat business rate, Avekshaa’s dedication to quality and long-term client relationships is evident, building trust and delivering consistent value.
- Comprehensive Full-Stack Observability: Emphasizing full-stack observability, Avekshaa ensures meticulous monitoring and optimization of every technology stack layer, significantly improving system availability and performance while positively impacting the bottom line.
- Focus on ROI and Business Outcomes: Avekshaa emphasizes creating value for their clients by focusing on ROI and tangible improvements in system performance and user satisfaction.
- Trusted by Global Enterprises: With endorsements from leading companies like Vodafone, HDFC Bank, TATA CAPITAL, NSE, MAGMA, Indiabulls, and HSBC, Avekshaa’s reputation for credibility, reliability, and meeting high global standards is well-established.
Experience the Avekshaa advantage today. Transform your application performance while aligning technology with your business objectives. Take the first step by filling out our “Contact Us” form.
Let’s embark on a journey toward unparalleled technological excellence together!
FAQs
1. What is an APM service?
APM, or Application Performance Monitoring, involves using specialized software tools and telemetry data to track the performance of critical business applications and ensure they run smoothly and efficiently.
2. Who uses application performance monitoring?
Organizations keen on maintaining high service levels and delivering a superior application experience to their customers employ APM tools. These tools offer immediate data and insights, enabling real-time tracking and optimization of application performance.
3. Which is the best APM tool available in the market?
Considering various contenders like Datadog, New Relic APM, AppDynamics, and Dynatrace, New Relic APM stands out as the premier choice for its comprehensive monitoring capabilities.
4. Who is the best APM services provider in India?
Avekshaa Technologies has emerged as the leading APM service provider in India, focusing on Performance, Availability, and Scalability (P-A-S) engineering. Their advanced AI-powered testing solutions are tailored to meet the needs of different sectors, ensuring top-tier, effective service delivery. Their proven track record of successful partnerships with multinational corporations affirms their reputation as the preferred choice for comprehensive APM service needs.
