Top Application Performance Monitoring Trends 2021

Performance metrics are a vital component to the success of any application. We will outline some of the top performance monitoring trends for 2021 and how will this affect future businesses.

What is Application Performance Monitoring?

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) is the process of monitoring, analyzing, and reporting on how applications are performing in real-time.

It provides deep insight into everything from user experience to backend data processing metrics.

The goal of APM is to improve application performance by highlighting issues that may be causing decreased end-user satisfaction or other problems within an app.

Once these issues have been identified, businesses can resolve them before they become widespread business-critical issues with far more significant costs attached to them.

Businesses can monitor their application performance with API management platforms.

An API management platform is a valuable tool for any company that requires access, distribution, and control of APIs. It centralizes your business's integrations while ensuring high standards like heightened security, consistent governance, and fast performance.

Performance monitoring is critical more than ever

As the world becomes more reliant on apps, the need for robust performance management will increase exponentially.

By 2030, it is expected that there will be 50 billion connected devices worldwide. These could range from smartphones and tablets to smart cars or even physical wearables such as watches or glasses.

These devices are powered by software at their core, meaning they can all suffer application issues if not appropriately monitored.

The rise of microservices and containers

Apps have become far more complex in recent years. What was once a single monolithic app is now often split across many micro-services or containers.

This can result in several problems when it comes to performance monitoring because the system becomes difficult for businesses to understand and pinpoint root issues within.

These new challenges will probably lead companies to seek APM tools with more excellent capabilities than ever before, so they don't fall behind their competition.

Virtualization in performance monitoring

Virtualization has become a crucial part of many organizations' strategies and will continue to play an essential role in the future.

This lets companies scale horizontally across multiple containers or servers without requiring expensive physical hardware upgrades, saving time and money while improving application performance.

New technologies: AI, Machine Learning, and Automation

As new technologies emerge, businesses need to make sure their performance management tools are keeping up.

AI and machine learning can play a massive role in identifying potential problems before they happen, and automation helps alleviate the load on IT staff when scaling out applications.

Additional ways AI and machine learning are helping with performance monitoring:

• Monitoring the health of virtualized servers to reduce downtime
• Creating alerts based on user behavior
• Helping to pinpoint and eliminate potential problems before they become widespread issues
• Identifying the root cause of application errors in real-time without requiring human intervention

Additional ways automation is helping with performance monitoring:

• Automatically scaling infrastructure based on real-time information
• Allowing performance monitoring tools to scale with the increased demands of modern applications
• Enabling businesses to handle sudden spikes in demand without requiring extra staffing or other changes to their IT departments

Trends in APM, by industry

As the use of APM increases, so, too, will its importance in various industries.

The following are some examples of where performance monitoring is essential today and how it could drive business success into the future.

Financial services

Financial institutions need better visibility over their infrastructure to ensure uptime.

Tighter regulations from both national governments and global governing bodies such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) make this even more critical going forward.

Benefits for financial services that monitor application performance:

• Improved ability to meet compliance standards
• Faster detection of security breaches, system outages, and other problems via improved visibility into their IT environment
• Agility when it comes to responding in an emergency so they can stay ahead of potential issues before they become actual ones.

Healthcare

GDPR compliance across Europe means patient data must remain secure at all costs, making robust application performance management tools essential if issues arise.

Healthcare providers also rely on apps running ideally 24/365 because downtime can negatively impact patient health.

Benefits for healthcare providers that monitor application performance:

• Increased uptime, so care continues uninterrupted by issues outside the hospital's control, such as downtime in another part of their infrastructure.
• Improved ability to keep patient data secure

E-commerce

Customers expect fast page load times and no errors when shopping online, which is why e-commerce businesses need to have clear visibility over their entire stack.

This will also help them avoid revenue loss from abandoned carts due to slow loading speeds or error messages while browsing.

Benefits for eCommerce businesses that monitor application performance:

• Higher conversion rates because customers are more likely to complete their purchases on fast, reliable sites.
• An improved user experience that keeps customers coming back for more
• The ability to quickly resolve any issues that arise without risking revenue losses

Industrial IoT

With the expansion of autonomous vehicle use, smart factories, and more connected devices in general, application performance monitoring becomes vital to know if something goes wrong with one device and how it could affect other areas across the network.

Benefits for industrial IoT that monitor application performance:

• The ability to quickly pinpoint problems before they become widespread issues
• Early detection of emerging security threats, especially as more devices across the network are connected to the cloud.

Automotive & transportation

Vehicles are becoming increasingly reliant on software as new features such as self-parking become available.

Being able to monitor the performance of these apps while on the road is therefore essential for safety reasons.

If an issue arises, it could cause a severe accident, making perfect uptime even more critical than ever before.

Benefits for automotive & transportation businesses that monitor application performance:

• Improved safety because drivers can trust the software they're using is working as it should
• Improved uptime means on-the-road performance remains optimal

Monitoring is moving to the cloud

As the number of applications being monitored increases, owning all that data can become complex.

Keeping track of alerts and ensuring users are notified in real-time becomes harder to keep up with as more tools come online.

Moving APM solutions to the cloud will give teams access to this information wherever they may be and make it easier for multiple people across an organization to collaborate on resolving issues since every piece of relevant data is readily available.

Reactive to proactive performance monitoring

Even though APMs monitor existing applications, their importance will shift towards predicting issues before they happen.

With machine learning and artificial intelligence becoming more prevalent in the future of IT, this means that tools can anticipate problems based on past user behavior.

Virtualization, containerization, and automation tools will play a pivotal role in performance management solutions going forward as more complex applications are developed with microservices at their core.

APM companies should be looking ahead towards AI-powered software designed to anticipate problems rather than simply reporting on what has already occurred.

Marketers must look for these features if they want to stay competitive within the industry.

If your business is looking for application performance solutions, feel free to reach us. We would love to help you find a performance monitoring solution that fits best with your project.