Cloud, firewalls, and even SDN are all some of the most well-known technologies currently in use. For the next part of our 2020 series, however, we're going to take a look under the hood at application performance management (APM).

This technology is the underpinning of massive networks that serve big-name applications (Facebook, Twitter, Google, and so on) to millions of people per day, without suffering so much as a hiccup. What does the future hold for APM?

In the near term, the astonishing rise in mobile traffic means that in order to compete, enterprises need to build highly-responsive mobile applications that deliver an excellent customer experience. Concordantly, mobile APM is about to become a huge priority for network engineers.

Alongside the rise in mobile, we’re also seeing a dramatic sea change in the way that applications themselves are configured, installed, and served. We’re talking about Docker, a program that meshes with all of an application’s inputs in order to allow it to run, with no change in performance, on any kind of computing substrate. Docker adoption grew 8x from 2014 to 2015, based on a survey of 7,000 companies, and even if that specific solution doesn’t take over, something very like it will be running applications on most datacenters by the end of the decade.

With programs like Docker imposing an additional layer of abstraction between network engineers and the applications they monitor, APM providers will need to offer solutions that simplify an increasingly complex world. This may include offloading APM in its entirety, and treating it as a managed service, similar to an MSSP. Alternatively, one may turn to SaaS-based APM. According to research from Gartner, 35 percent of expenditures on APM will take the form of SaaS-based offerings by 2020.

Moving to SaaS-based APM will have some strong positive ramifications for the enterprise. Deploying APM on premise is costly, and moving to a SaaS-based solution mitigates that cost. SaaS deployments are also more inherently scalable—increasing the scope of APM in order to compensate for an influx of users is almost as easy as turning a dial. Lastly, the process of upgrading and patching SaaS-based APM is handled entirely by the service provider, which equates to a dramatic savings in terms of time, effort, and money.

Whether you choose a SaaS or on premise variant of APM, and no matter whether you’re monitoring mobile applications, Docker containers, or a combination of both, Garland Technologies will support your APM deployment. As an example of our close integration with APM, look to our partnership with Riverbed.

Riverbed offers a suite of APM products designed to deliver granular application monitoring and control for both network and cloud-based apps, and then accumulate these metrics into a single pane of glass. In order to achieve this functionality, Garland network TAPS deliver every bit, byte, and packet® of application performance data to this central hub via passive fiber, copper, aggregation, filtering, regeneration/SPAN, and bypass. With Garland Technology supporting your APM deployment, you’ll be able to monitor and control the performance of your applications with the peace of mind knowing your APM is seeing all the data.