Defending the Network from Applications

I just finished the third post in a series about application performance and its impact on the network, see Defending the Network from Application Performance Problems (part III), Defending the Network from Application Performance problems (part II), and The Impact of Network Problems on Application Performance.

One of the most valuable and interesting things about Application Performance Management is that it breaks down the barriers between the networking team and the applications/systems team. It is easy to blame the network for application performance problems and let the network team figure it out. But with an easy-to-use tool, the network team and the applications team can work together to determine whether the network is the culprit of whether something else should be examined. Using an APM tool turns the problem into a discussion of the facts presented by the APM tool and away from opinion and emotion. The relationship between the two teams then becomes more cooperative and less stressful.

The result is that performance problems get examined and addressed sooner and the real source of the performance problem is identified, whether it is something in the application or in the network. That’s the real value of APM: quickly and efficiently arriving at solutions to application performance problems.

-Terry