Why Monitoring Your Application is Important?

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Ideally, apps should load within 2 seconds. 70% of mobile app users leave apps that take longer than that. This is why most app developers value application monitoring.  

The app monitoring process offers unified tracking, analytics, and surveillance of an app’s performance. It helps locate and fix bugs and other issues to improve user experience.

Continue reading to know why application monitoring is important and see the best tools you can use. 

🔑  Key Takeaways

  • Application monitoring helps prevent system outages by providing data on CPU, network traffic, and responses.
  • The process aids in addressing issues in complex systems like ERP by identifying problems in various layers and dependencies.
  • It also promptly points out security issues, reducing the risk of cyberattacks and addressing vulnerabilities.
  • Monitoring optimizes resource usage, leading to faster application performance and a better user experience.
  • Tools like Datadog APM and Site24x7 automate app monitoring, making it easier to formulate insights. 

Reasons Why Application Monitoring is Important

Application monitoring is a fundamental process since it helps detect critical problems and performance issues. It lets you develop a solution before anything affects your app operations. 

To put it simply, application monitoring ensures your system works well. Here are some reasons why this process is important:

5 Reasons why Application Monitoring is Important

Prevent System Outages

Application monitoring shows your system’s performance. This information includes CPU usage, network traffic, application responses, etc.

The insights from this process can notify you when to have downtime to prevent an outage.

You can find issues like slow responses or errors with real-user monitoring. This way, you can know the problem before affecting end users.

Address ERP Issues

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a complex system with many layers. Check out the video below to get a basic idea of how ERP works.

An issue with a single layer in ERP can affect the rest. With application monitoring, you can see the entire system and check particular layers with problems.

Besides ERP, you can also check on application dependencies using this process.

Locate Blockages for Better Efficiency

Application monitoring shows the entire performance of your applications. It can find jams or blockages with tracing, metrics, tracking, and more to improve your system’s efficiency.

Strengthens Your Security

Every system is always prone to cyberattacks. These attacks usually happen when you have unresolved security issues. 

However, if addressed on time, you can avoid those problems. With application monitoring, you can detect any security issues and address them right away. 

Helps Improve System Performance

Application monitoring will help you prevent your app users from turning to another. With this process, you can check your CPU, disk space, bandwidth, etc. 

As a result, you can find any issue that slows your application down. Fixing these issues on time can lead to fast performance and better user experience.

Understanding App Monitoring and How It Works

App monitoring provides insights into your application’s availability, end-user experience, and overall system performance. It ensures that your app works fast, efficiently, and error-free.

Real-time input-output data is necessary for application monitoring. This data is gathered from transmission and undergoes analysis and correlation. 

To automate the process, app monitoring tools are employed. These tools generate reports that IT experts and app developers use.

Most app monitoring tools have a dashboard with data and stats on your app performance. It shows response time, errors, and throughput. The tools also display event logs that you can use to fix bugs in codes or queries. 

As an example of how app monitoring tools work, take a look at Cisco’s AppDynamics processing: 

Best App Performance Monitoring Systems

Below are five of the best app performance monitoring systems you can use:

Datadog APM

Datadog APM Dashboard

Key Features

  • Code-level distributed tracing for finding issues
  • All telemetry in context to improve performance
  • Automated deployment tracking
  • Watchdog AI for fixing incidents faster
  • Datadog and OpenTelemetry for getting data 

Pricing: Starts at $31 per month

Datadog APM is an efficient APM tool that can easily detect application bugs or issues. It works as a cloud-based system with a fast process to see any problem within seconds.

This tool offers real-time monitoring of apps, infrastructure, and event logs. It also works with hybrid, cloud-based, and on-premises system types.

Datadog
ProsCons
Fast bug or issue discoveryNeeds more documentation in some aspects
Real-time app performance monitoringNeeds improvement in managing resources
Support for different systemsNavigation can be complex for some
Control over cost and retention through distributed tracking
Real-time performance issue notification

Site24x7

Site24x7 Application Monitoring Tool Photo from Site24x7

Key Features

  • Distributed tracing to improve user experience
  • App topology visualization for better contextual debugging
  • Custom component monitoring for getting key metrics
  • AI-powered alerting and reporting for anomaly detection and error troubleshooting
  • Comprehensive and real-time viewing 

Pricing: Starts at $35 per month

Site24x7 is another excellent APM tool that can work on several platforms like PHP, Node, Ruby, NET, and Java.

With this tool, you can check all applications running on cloud and mobile devices. You can also get insights into your app activities. 

Site24x7
ProsCons
Performance monitoring compatibility with several platformsUnderstanding the entire set of functions can take time
Continuous application tracking on mobile and cloudComplex interface navigation for some users
Individual transaction tracking through an entire architecture
Quick identification and troubleshooting
AI-powered alert option for better user experience

AppDynamics

AppDynamics Application Availability Monitoring 
Photo from AppDynamics

Key Features

  • Allows connection of business results to IT teams
  • Cognition Engine with machine learning for real-time anomaly and bug fixing
  • Hybrid environment management through hybrid cloud monitoring

Pricing: Starts at $60 per month

AppDynamics is an APM tool trusted by many users. It lets you see the entire application infrastructure to check for issues that affect user experience.

This tool is also best for apps dealing with high traffic. It has database monitoring that can keep track of high-volume production. 

AppDynamics 
ProsCons
Efficient application infrastructure visualization for issue detectionComplicated troubleshooting for network systems
Improves user’s digital experience through a fast bug-fixing processComplex data configuration when visuals get lost
Compatible with cloud-based and on-premises applications
JMX monitoring and controlling support
JVM dependency mapping
Detailed environment testing and development

Dynatrace

Dynatrace Dashboard

Key Features

  • Full-stack monitoring with various techs for transactions and separate tools for components
  • Combines real-user and synthetic transaction checking with session replay for a full view
  • Offers code-level observability to support cloud-based, on-premise, or hybrid apps monitoring
  • Automated infrastructure and cloud platform monitoring
  • Stack component monitoring, mapping, and discovering

Pricing: Starts at $0.08 per hour (Less than $60 per month)

Dynatrace is an APM tool that most DevOps teams use. This tool allows you to see the performance of an application from various angles. 

Another thing worth noting is that Dynatrace offers a customizable user dashboard, making it easy to check app performance based on preference.

Dynatrace
ProsCons
Network and app monitoring from any locationImprovements are necessary for documentation
Customizable dashboard for real-time statusNeeds better illustration on the displayed graphs
App behavior, metrics, logs, and vulnerability monitoring 
Workload monitoring for everything inside Dynatrace containers
Real-time bug and issue diagnosis and troubleshooting

AppOptics APM

AppOptics APM Dashboard

Key Features

  • Offers a topology map for auto-instrumented app service
  • Performance issue detection
  • Real-time application performance monitoring
  • Full-stack viewing for diagnosis 
  • Modern infrastructure and AWS monitoring

Pricing: Starts at $9.99 per month

AppOptics APM is an APM tool under SolarWinds that many companies use. This tool is famous for being an affordable option for app scaling. 

This tool is often used for resource usage tracking. It’s a crowd-favorite option due to its compatibility with languages like Node, Python, Java, and NET.

AppOptics APM
ProsCons
Critical system tracking and continuous health status updatingNot compatible with Oracle, ServiceNow, and GCP
In-depth analysis for a faster bug or issue diagnosticsPoor alerting functions and downstream service checking
Request tracing using high-tech filters and insights
Uses automated instrumentation 
Request latency checking through heat map support

Conclusion

Application monitoring plays a crucial role in your business. With APM, you can detect issues or bugs and fix them before they even affect your operations. It also helps you improve security and user experience.

To make app monitoring easier, get an APM tool. The app monitoring tools listed above have features guaranteed to improve efficiency and security. Select the one that best fits your needs and budget. 

FAQ

How can you improve your application monitoring?

Choose the right software. Use one that provides real-time data. You can also set proper metrics and build a specific team to address any issue.

What are the key signals of application monitoring?

The key signals of application monitoring are traffic, saturation, latency, and errors.

What are the factors to consider in app monitoring?

There are many factors to consider in-app monitoring. Some are web performance, response time, resource usage, availability, uptime, request, and error rates.

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