Top 12 Application Performance Monitoring Tools

On an ongoing basis, business applications are dispersed over additional networks and geographical locations, utilizing a broader choice of platforms. It has been more challenging to ensure that apps achieve the level of efficiency required to offer the greatest possible user experience in such an environment. DevOps teams have to figure out how to make sure the applications they develop run as efficiently as possible. To do this, they require a powerful application performance monitoring tool that can see into every aspect of their apps, independent of their location or the technologies being utilized.

What is APM?

A method of continually monitoring an application's performance to make sure it runs smoothly and provides a positive customer experience is known as application performance monitoring, or APM. DevOps teams are unable to handle performance issues and manage their apps without tracking performance.

An efficient APM strategy is necessary for an organization that sets up and oversees applications in order to collect and measure performance-based information from the parts that facilitate the application delivery process. Application development teams should have easy accessibility to data on CPU usage, memory requirements, disc I/O speeds, and the application's turnaround times. They should also be able to monitor error rates and the frequency with which a program malfunctions or crashes.

As applications become more complex and pervasive, often incorporating multiple cloud services or operating in hybrid clouds, tracking efficiency has become even more important. An APM approach should include the capacity to manage company operations, application connections, and the consumer interaction as a whole in addition to monitoring equipment and application elements. Only then DevOps teams will be able to view the larger context of the software and identify the underlying causes of any problems before they have an impact on the client's satisfaction.

Advice on choosing an APM Tool

Organizations require monitoring systems that can track performance over time and give DevOps teams the data they need to take action on problems with performance in order to carry out their APM approaches. While selecting such a tool can be challenging, an APM tool should have certain fundamental features. Make sure it accomplishes the following:

• Offers complete stack performance tracking at all tiers, including interaction and software levels.
• Supports the systems and coding languages required to create and distribute the apps for the organization.
• Effectively gathers information while supporting components at each level of the application stack, without compromising the overall efficiency of the application as a whole.
• Comprises analytics as well as tracking of the customer's experience.
• Keeps an eye on apps in hybrid, cloud-based, and on-site scenarios.
• Makes efficient problem solving and underlying cause evaluation, testing, and traceability possible.
• Uses sophisticated artificial intelligence and analytics to deliver deeper insights into the information that has been obtained.
• Easily combines with technology and tools from third parties.
• It contains simple to alter advanced alerting and notification features that allow for the identification of aberrant behavior.
• Provides a wealth of monitoring and visualization features that facilitate the understanding and application of the gathered information.
• Offers an infrastructure that is easy to navigate and execute, together with dependable technical assistance; and provides an affordable choice that might aid in lowering the entire expense of application upkeep.

Apart from these functionalities, individuals also need to consider the broader attributes of every platform. Think about the following inquiries:

1. Does the platform come in software as a service (SaaS) or as self-hosted software that may be used either locally or in the cloud?
2. Does the platform provide agentless gathering of information, or does it purely depend on client agents to obtain performance statistics?

Lastly, decision-makers need to assess how scalable the solution is and what safety precautions are in place to safeguard the information being collected.

Top Application Monitoring Tools

Sorting among the vast array of APM tools is no easy feat, and it might be challenging to know where to start. We've included a summary of 12 of the best APM tools available presently to aid with the entire procedure.

1. AppDynamics APM

Part of Cisco, AppDynamics is a full-stack observability platform with powerful APM features that can connect and centralize data regarding performance over the entire application stack. AppDynamics is a software as a service (SaaS) that may be purchased on-premises or via cloud computing. It offers real-time root cause analysis and full insight into the efficiency of applications.

Important characteristics:

• Examine programs at the stage of code implementation.
• Assess the performance of business transactions from start to finish.
• Track each application's and infrastructural node's state of wellness;
• Automatically ascertain the structure of a program and the interdependencies between its parts.
• Obtain notifications according to integrated or customized health guidelines and investigate poor speed of response as well as application faults.

2. Datadog APM

SaaS-based Datadog is a visibility platform with robust APM features. It provides end-to-end automated tracking over specific sections of code, databases, smartphone applications, and websites. Datadog APM monitors health indicators and service dependencies by comparing distributed traces with front-end and back-end data, which helps to cut down on delay and remove faults.

Important characteristics:

• Obtain awareness of the whole environment of continual integration.
• Link dispersed traces to telecommunications calls, infrastructure measurements, and running activities.
• Watch over service and terminal information collection.
• Using machine learning analytics to find errors and delay anomalies immediately.
• To find productivity regressions, analyze code profiles and utilize performance visualizations that are outside the box to obtain profound understandings.
• Users can combine all of their information into one location with Datadog log analytics and dashboarding, and then utilize tag-based filtering to dig down to a specific consumer, assistance, or other area.

3. Dynatrace

Dynatrace is an observability platform that can be used as an on-premises or cloud-based software as a service. Advanced APM features on the platform provide intelligent observability at scale for operations that are cloud-native and enterprise applications alike. In addition to automated processes, Dynatrace has an AI causation engine that offers deep understanding into the foundational structures and applications.

Important characteristics:

• Watch over server-side services, applications for mobile devices, virtual machines, containers, and cloud platforms.
• Find and keep an eye on containerized dynamic microservice workloads.
• Observe the queue of messages in order to observe micro services interactions.
• Keep records of transactions at all levels, even the code level.
• Acquire knowledge about the DevOps process for each build and deployment and identify and keep an eye on NoSQL and SQL databases.

4. Instana

The IBM subsidiary Instana provides self-hosted or SaaS-based Enterprise observation system and performance evaluation platform. The platform has completely automated application and service monitoring and observation (APM) features. With each release, deployment, and version of its applications, Instana provides instant feedback by utilizing stream processing to gather and analyze data in real time.

Important characteristics:

• Identify and map every dependency between services and applications.
• Observe in actual time entity modelling and abnormal events.
• Rationally describe and consider each application separately.
• View root cause analysis that establishes a correlation between related events.
• Analyse cause-and-effect reports with links to further material in-depth; and examine profiler and trace data to find resource conflicts and bottlenecks.

5. Gibraltar Software Loupe

Loupe is a privately hosted or software-as-a-service system for log gathering and monitoring. With the help of this platform, businesses may collect information about Java and.NET apps from a range of platforms, including cloud-based and smartphone settings. Loupe can collect events unique to the framework as well as system metrics in addition to log data.

Important characteristics:

• See information regarding the metrics, stack traces, and actions before errors.
• Obtain information from outside logging frameworks like Serilog and NLog. Monitor application users to determine use trends and possible issues.
• Examine log data to find, clarify, and fix application faults.
• Monitor information regarding the operating systems and associated equipment and put-up notifications to notify important participants immediately when something goes wrong.
• Loupe Desktop examines sessions from several programs. All of the data for the chosen session is visible through the session's viewer.

6. ManageEngine Applications Manager

Applications Manager is an APM software solution that provides additional insights through infrastructure monitoring and provides visibility into application performance and user experience. The platform finds and fixes problems all the way down to the code level, spanning the application stack. Applications written in PHP, Ruby, Node.js, Java, and.NET are supported by Applications Manager.

Important characteristics:

• Solve problems in settings for testing, creation, and deployment.
• Keep an eye on front-end functionality depending on consumer volume.
• Monitor the environments of servers, databases, containers, websites, and multi-clouds.
• Observe interdependence maps of entities and relationships in actual time.
• Visualize data with dynamic dashboards and more than 500 pre-built reports.

7. New Relic APM

One of the main features of the SaaS-based visibility system New Relic is APM. Dependents across distributed systems can be identified by organizations to identify anomalies, fix problems, enhance client satisfaction, and optimize productivity. The service provides insight into the entire application stack, including user gadgets and back-end APIs.

Important characteristics:

• Dig down on mistakes and slow traces to identify the source of an issue.
• Establishing notifications for particular networks and statistics.
• Combine machine learning and integrated pattern identification to comprehend data more quickly.
• Monitoring productivity and deployment indicators that are linked.
• Connect with industry-leading frameworks, dialects, and cloud service vendors and use the automap tool to resolve situations that are spreading through associated amenities.

8. Raygun APM

A SaaS server-side performance monitoring platform called Raygun APM offers actual time and trending application and customer experience information. Application programs written in Ruby, Node.js, and.NET are supported on the system. It detects and notifies the performance problems in an anticipatory way. A list of the most pressing performance issues is also kept up to date by a computerized problem generation mechanism.

Important characteristics:

• Examine performance information in tables and graphs to spot problems immediately.
• Establish unique procedures to detect problems when performance benchmarks are met.
• Obtain code-level diagnoses and the traces that go along with them asynchronous thread analysis with expanding trace views.
• Employ code screening to get rid of unnecessary URLs and function catches and track the results of any optimizations made to a particular application.
• DevOps teams may track many environments from a single location with the help of Raygun dashboards, which visually represent important error and achievement metrics.

9. Scout APM

Scout APM is an interface for tracking performance that offers immediate application environmental insights and actionable alerts. Scout APM, available as Software as a Service, offers simple application monitoring along with mistakes, database, and third-party tracking. Deployment tracking, and background task management are further capabilities.

Important characteristics:

• Observe the resource consumption and efficiency of an application along with associated endpoint activities.
• Obtain information about backdrop job workers and certain supervisor actions.
• Analyse information about SQL queries by drilling into transaction traces.
• Set up notifications for the entire application, specific end points, and background jobs.
• Evaluate the efficiency of an application over various time periods and calculate the latency between a request and an application farther upstream.

10. Site24x7 APM Insight

APM Insight is a continuous performance evaluation system driven by artificial intelligence that tracks the behavior of applications and how it affects consumers. As a software as a service (SaaS) solution, APM Insight can track the complete application stack, from the URL to the database. It can track and optimize each transaction and supports platforms such as Java,.NET, PHP, Ruby, Python, and Node.js.

Important characteristics:

• Track the efficiency of the applications on tangible, digital, and cloud servers.
• Examine performance concerns, application logs, and operational data from a single console.
• Track every transaction in distributed systems and services.
• Monitor key business-related activities and outcomes.
• Use the anomaly detection engine to identify odd behaviour or performance increases and track and evaluate specific metrics and components' effectiveness.

11. SolarWinds AppOptics

SaaS-based AppOptics is a platform and APM appliance for cloud-native and hybrid information technology settings. Organisations can visualise and troubleshoot application bottlenecks with AppOptics. The system supports capabilities like dispersed tracking, live coding analysis, and event monitoring and comes with more than 150 pre-configured plugins and integrations for monitoring servers, virtual hosts, and containers.

Important characteristics:

• Examine specifics regarding the functionality and state of the underlying infrastructure and apps.
• Track metrics for both applications and infrastructure simultaneously.
• Provide indicators of efficiency that enable the automation of services and application monitoring.
• Get alerts in a proactive manner when specified thresholds are exceeded by infrastructure capabilities.
• Depict the connections between services and the interdependence between them and obtain an overview of all exceptions that take place in a particular service's context.

12. Stackify Retrace

A SaaS platform for application performance management and observability is called Stackify Retrace. The system provides integrated monitoring and insights into preliminary production and manufacturing settings by aggregating performance, log, error, and metric data. Improved drill-down and search capabilities into server and application logs are included in Retrace, along with the option to design unique log searches.

Important characteristics:

• Contrast log and exception data side by side to expedite problem solving.
• Observe information regarding SQL queries, HTTP calls, code-level traces, and hidden exceptions.
• Make personalized displays with reports, notifications, and warnings that are sent automatically.
• Combine server-side and client-side traces to produce an all-encompassing picture of user interactions.

Monitoring updates to important application code and configuration files, as well as deployments and find legacy code, poorly performing connections, and concealed warnings.