The growth in size of data centers – from bandwidth to traffic and beyond – is no secret. However, fewer stakeholders in network management are leveraging application performance monitoring (APM) in consideration of these technological advances.

Your monitoring tools and applications are costly investments, so they must provide you with the troubleshooting and analytical value you expect. But, network performance monitoring tools are incapable of performing their fixes necessary to keep your applications engaged with your network. APM is the means by which you ensure the full function of your applications ­– and, subsequently, your network visibility and security.

Monitoring, as a whole, has become much more difficult now that businesses have increased the amount of network traffic they need to monitor. Superior, comprehensive network management is a function of having real-time awareness of what’s happening on the network. You must be capable of monitoring, analyzing, and reporting physical, virtual, or cloud-based activity to quickly identify and fix problems.

So, how do you manage such a complex collection of tasks?

Managing Your Applications In Modern Network Environments

First and foremost, you must understand the relationship between applications or tools and your network overall. When you do this, you are better equipped to manage and design your network.

APM provides visibility into your application performance by monitoring your user experience, tracing code-level activity and providing big-data analytics. Sound APM solutions warn you of application issues before your network and business bear the brunt of such problems. With greater visibility and proactivity, you significantly cut down on troubleshooting.

In fact, the right APM solution troubleshoots application and network issues 90% faster than traditional troubleshooting methods. With application performance monitoring, troubleshooting an error by recreating it is completely unnecessary. As opposed to network performance monitoring, APM solutions wade through the weeds of your data to quickly pinpoint the root cause and location of applications issues.

Choosing To Safeguard Your Network

The best plan of attack is always the one that starts with the overall goal and breaks it down into smaller initiatives that roll up into the main plan. With complete network visibility, absolute security, and overall profitability at the top of your mind, you must consider how each faction of your network affects these goals and requirements.

Given the importance of your group of applications, APM is critical to your end-goal. If you don’t plan to manage them in a way that ensures they are always active and doing their jobs, you can’t have confidence in your network’s security or your visibility into it. With new environments and faster speeds, application – not network – performance management is your key to ensuring uptime and profitability.

Want to learn more about the many network tools that help you manage your network? Download What Your Network Is Missing: 7 Tools To TAP