Three Reasons To Augment APM/NPM Tools With Internet

12 Pages·2015·1.28 MB·English

Three Reasons
To Augment
APM/NPM Tools
With Internet
Performance
Management
Solutions
WHITEPAPER
Three Reasons To Augment APM/NPM Tools With
Internet Performance Management Solutions
Table Of Contents
02 Introduction: Performance
Equals Money
03 Are You Ready For The Cloud?
04 The Cloud Requires A Fresh
Approach To Performance
Management
05 Understanding The Differences
Between APM, NPM, And IPM
Solutions
08 Three Reasons To Add IPM To Your
Performance Management Arsenal
10 Conclusion: Invest In IPM To
Improve Business Outcomes
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Introduction: Performance Equals Money
Your business runs on the web. Poor website performance—slow page loads, frequent timeouts,
slow images, or sluggish audio—can tarnish your brand and hinder sales. There is a direct
correlation between website performance and business performance. Just ask some of the world’s
largest online brands:
V Walmart realizes a 2% increase in conversions for every second of load time improvement.1
V Amazon loses $6.79M in sales for every millisecond of latency.1
V Yahoo! experiences a 2.8% revenue decrease for every second of latency.1
Website performance is influenced by a number of factors including application design, placement
of servers and content, and Internet latency. When it comes to monitoring Internet performance,
choosing network and cloud service providers, or deciding where to host content or locate data
centers, many IT planners and network operations teams are operating in the dark.
Internet performance can vary widely by service provider and geography. The application
performance management2 (APM) and network performance management (NPM) solutions you
rely on today were designed for use in enterprise networks. APM and NPM tools can identify that
performance problems are associated with Internet connections, but they don’t provide visibility
into critical Internet performance metrics so you can take corrective actions. As you move
applications and services to the cloud, the challenges only become more complex.
Fortunately, help has arrived. New cloud-based Internet performance management3 (IPM)
services provide valuable insights into the dynamics of the Internet so you can make better-
informed network planning and partnering decisions and deliver better customer experiences and
business results.
This whitepaper reviews common performance management challenges and provides three
fundamental reasons to add IPM services to your performance management arsenal.
You will learn:
V Performance management considerations for websites and cloud-based services
V The role APM and NPM solutions can play in optimizing code and enterprise IT infrastructure
V How complementary IPM services can help you make educated cloud and network service
provider partnering decisions to improve user experiences, customer interactions, and
business outcomes
1 Based on public statements from corporate executives
2 APM and NPM are sometimes referred to as application performance monitoring and network performance monitoring.
3 We’ve coined the term Internet performance management to describe a new product category distinct from
conventional APM and NPM solutions
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Are You Ready For The Cloud?
The cloud is transforming IT. All over the world, businesses of every size and industry are migrating
applications from enterprise data centers to the cloud to improve IT agility and contain costs.
By 2018, 78% of all workloads will be processed in the cloud and only 22% will be processed by
traditional data centers.4
The cloud introduces a variety of performance management and service quality challenges for
corporate IT planners and network administrators.
Enterprise Application Implications
Historically, enterprises had full visibility and control over their IT infrastructure. Core business
applications were deployed in centralized data centers and IT services were delivered to employees
over private enterprise data networks. (See Figure 1)
Developers used APM tools to monitor and optimize the performance and health of line-of-business
applications across the corporate data center and enterprise network. IT operations teams used
NPM tools to monitor the performance and health of the enterprise network and the applications
traversing it. By optimizing application and network performance, IT teams could improve the
overall quality of experience for end users.
Web Presence Implications
Traditionally, enterprise IT organizations also had more control over website performance.
Businesses deployed web servers in centralized enterprise data centers connected directly to the
Internet. While the enterprise IT organization did not control the entire path to the web visitor,
they at least owned the NSP relationships and could choose NSPs based on SLA assurances.
Figure 1: Traditional IT environment with applications deployed in corporate data center
EMPLOYEES
DATA
CENTERS
Key CONNECTION MADE CONNECTION STRUGGLING CONNECTION FAILED
4 Cisco Global Cloud Index, 2014
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The Cloud Requires A Fresh Approach To Performance Management
The cloud changes everything. When you move applications to the cloud, you lose visibility and
control over your IT infrastructure and the Internet connectivity for your website and customer-
facing applications. Conventional APM and NPM tools, designed for use in enterprise networks,
can’t see into the cloud provider’s environment and can’t provide a complete view of network or
application behavior. Worse still, the performance of your website and web-based applications is
at the mercy of the cloud provider or website provider who owns the Internet connectivity and NSP
relationships. (See Figure 2)
Figure 2: The cloud introduces complex performance management challenges
SAAS
CLOUD
SERVICES
DATA CENTERS
CLOUD
PROVIDER
HOSTING
SITE DATA CENTERS
EMPLOYEES
Key CONNECTION MADE CONNECTION STRUGGLING CONNECTION FAILED
Internet performance varies widely by service provider and geography. The Internet is a complex
web of network service providers—Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Internet backbone providers
and Internet Exchange Carriers (IXCs)—that maintain diverse peering and transit relationships. (See
Figure 3) The path any given end-to-end session may traverse across the Internet is dynamic and
unpredictable. A typical Internet session spans four distinct networks and 20 hops. Each network
and hop adds latency and degrades application performance.
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Figure 3: Paths from customers to servers might not take the shortest or fastest routes
customer here
connection
(peering) here
server here
As you make the move to the cloud, you’ll need new tools to gain visibility into Internet dynamics
so you can choose the optimal cloud partners and identify the cloud partner locations that best
meet your web-based application performance needs. Cloud-based IPM services provide insight into
the global health, routing, and performance characteristics of the Internet. With this insight, you
can make educated network engineering and partnering decisions and take full control over how
your business connects to the cloud and how customers connect to your brand.
Understanding The Differences Between APM, NPM, And IPM Solutions
Application Performance Management (APM) Solutions
As the name implies, APM solutions help software developers and IT administrators monitor and
optimize application performance. They are used to isolate hardware and software dependencies,
track application topologies and transactions, and execute code traces and diagnostics to identify
and remove performance bottlenecks.
APM solutions are focused on code optimization. They are useful for analyzing application
components and their relationships, and for tracking end-to-end availability and latency from
the application perspective. They do not provide visibility into the underlying enterprise network
infrastructure or into the cloud.
Network Performance Management (NPM) Solutions
NPM tools help IT operations teams monitor the health and performance of enterprise networks.
They are used to detect networking issues that impair application performance, to identify root
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causes, and to plan capacity. Most NPM solutions rely on special-purpose probes that capture and
analyze traffic at Layers 2 through 4 of the OSI model, measuring round-trip times, packet loss,
retransmissions, and other network performance metrics.
NPM probes are typically deployed in the enterprise network and are useful for monitoring the
performance of the corporate network infrastructure. They don’t provide visibility into the service
provider’s network or expose the inner workings of the Internet.
Internet Performance Management (IPM) Solutions
APM and NPM solutions can help improve the performance of applications and enterprise IT
infrastructure, but they don’t provide visibility outside the private network or virtual private
network controlled by the enterprise.
Cloud-based IPM services provide insight into the global health, routing, and performance of the
Internet. They monitor, analyze, and correlate key Internet performance metrics—connectivity,
availability, latency—using intelligent sensors strategically distributed across your enterprise
network and the Internet. Because they are cloud-based, IPM services are easy to deploy and
non-intrusive. You gain immediate visibility into critical performance data without impacting your
existing application or network infrastructure.
Best-of-breed Internet performance management solutions connect directly to all major network
and cloud service providers and distill raw data into timely, easy-to-understand and, actionable
information so IT planners and network operation teams can measure performance, identify and
isolate bottlenecks, and determine which service providers best serve a particular market.
The perfect complement to APM and NPM solutions, IPM services let you:
V See and correct how the world views your Internet presence in terms of advertised
Autonomous System Numbers5 (ASNs) and IP addresses
V Gain global visibility into the current state of the Internet to spot performance bottlenecks
and detect unusual Internet behavior such as outages and route hijacks
V Compare network and cloud service performance to and from your customers by route, by
data center, by region, and by market
V Use existing network and cloud provider sensors to proactively monitor, alert, and analyze
Internet-based connections to detect, isolate, and resolve Internet performance and
connectivity issues
V Add your own sensors to monitor, alert, and analyze Internet performance from your own
data centers
5 ASNs are used to uniquely identify networks on the Internet. For example, ASN #0001 is owned by
Level 3 Communications.
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Table 1: APM, NPM, and IPM comparison
FUNCTION APM NPM IPM
INSTRUMENTATION
Software or SaaS based monitoring ✓
Enterprise network probes or sensors ✓ ✓
Internet-based sensors ✓
CAPABILITIES
Monitor application hardware and software dependencies ✓
Track application topologies and transactions ✓
Inspect application components ✓
Perform code traces and application diagnostics ✓
Monitor/diagnose enterprise network endpoints (servers, VMs) ✓
Monitor/diagnose enterprise network elements (switches, routers) ✓
Monitor/diagnose enterprise network links ✓
Monitor enterprise network flows and analyze packets ✓
Gain visibility into the current state of the Internet ✓
Spot Internet performance bottlenecks ✓
Detect unusual Internet behavior (outages, route hijacks) ✓
Proactively monitor and analyze Internet connections ✓
Evaluate cloud, Internet, and CDN service provider performance ✓
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Three Reasons To Add IPM To Your Performance Management Arsenal
Reason #1: To Optimize Website Performance
Today’s websites are increasingly large and complex. Your website may contain a mix of dynamic
and static content including text, images, animation, audio files, and bandwidth-intensive video.
Some content might be hosted in your data center, some of it may be distributed across content
delivery networks, and some of it may reside in the cloud.
A variety of factors can influence the overall performance of your website including:
V The placement and capacity of your web servers (memory, processors, etc.)
V The efficiency of your application code (HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc.)
V The design of your website (including the way various components connect to each other)
V The performance of your enterprise network (that interconnects your IT infrastructure)
V Domain Name System (DNS) latency
V The performance of the Internet (the connections between your IT infrastructure, external
elements of your website, and web visitors)
You need to take all these factors into account when designing applications and engineering
your website.
APM and NPM solutions can help you improve the performance of your corporate IT infrastructure
and applications, but they don’t provide visibility into the Internet. Even if you optimize your
website code, content, and data flows, and minimize program calls over the Internet, slow Internet
performance, network configuration errors, or malicious Internet activity can still impair the user
experience and impact your business.
Cloud-based Internet performance management services provide global visibility into the health,
routing, and performance of the Internet so you can make educated network engineering and
sourcing decisions, detect anomalous Internet activity, and take full control over how users connect
to your brand.
Internet performance management solutions can help you make well-informed,
geo-based networking engineering and sourcing decisions such as:
V Where to host content and locate data centers to optimize web performance
V How your website partners connect to your site and the impact they have on your
web performance
V Best network, cloud, and content delivery network service providers for your
target geographies
You can also use IPM solutions to measure and track service provider performance and ensure your
providers are honoring their SLAs.
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Reason #2: To Analyze Cloud Provider Performance
The cloud introduces a variety of network engineering and performance management challenges
for IT planners and network architects. When you move applications to the cloud, you often lose
visibility and control over your IT infrastructure and the Internet connectivity for your internal and
customer-facing applications.
Choosing the best cloud vendor for a particular market is a challenge. Cloud vendor performance
varies widely from vendor to vendor and region to region. The performance characteristics of any
given vendor in any given market can vacillate markedly over time. Worse still, geography is not
always a good indicator of cloud performance. Sometimes, hubbing services from 500 miles away
from your target market can actually yield better performance than leveraging an in-market cloud
provider because of the providers’ NSP relationships.
Conventional APM and NPM tools can’t see into the cloud provider’s environment or provide
visibility into Internet performance characteristics. As you relocate applications to the cloud,
IPM solutions can provide an invaluable tool for monitoring and analyzing your cloud partner’s
Internet performance. IPM solutions show you how networks connect to your cloud-based services
so you can evaluate, counsel, and influence your cloud partners and make educated cloud-
partnering decisions.
Reason #3: To Optimize SaaS Performance
Many enterprises are turning to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers—CRM solutions, payroll
applications, office productivity and communications suites—to contain costs, improve service
agility, and focus valuable IT resources on line-of-business applications and strategic initiatives. A
2014 Gigaom Research/North Bridge report reveals 74% of businesses are already leveraging SaaS
solutions.5
These cloud-based applications fundamentally reshape enterprise traffic flows and introduce
capacity planning and traffic engineering challenges. Many enterprises are geographically
distributed, with regional sites and branch offices scattered across countries or continents.
Corporate headquarters and large campuses are often connected to the cloud via private lines that
can be managed using conventional NPM tools, but other corporate locations link to the cloud over
less-expensive Internet connections that are beyond the purview of APM and NPM solutions.
Internet latency can impede SaaS performance, impairing worker productivity and customer
satisfaction. IPM services provide insight into how your employees are accessing your chosen SaaS
services. Most SaaS vendors offer a variety of access location and connection choices. IPM can help
to identify the optimal solutions for your combination of SaaS vendors and employee locations. By
improving connection performance, you can improve user productivity, make the most of your SaaS
investments, and maximize business results.
6 2014 Gigaom Research/North Bridge Venture Partners Future of Cloud Computing Survey
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