Performance issues are no longer the exclusive purview of IT. Application performance is directly tied to revenue, the user experience, employee productivity, and brand reputation, among many others.
Users will generally blame all of these aspects of a business when application performance declines or becomes non-existent.
Today’s enterprises operate on huge, complex networks. The use of cloud platforms, SaaS services, application programming interfaces (APIs), remote users accessing applications, and third-party integrations are all dependent upon the performance of the underlying network.
This article provides insights into how the effective management of the network helps organizations achieve improved application performance, how the various traditional application performance management tools used by organizations have fallen short, and how organizations are successfully managing the performance of their applications under an ever-increasingly distributed and rapidly changing environment.
How does network management help achieve good application performance?
Applications do not operate independently of one another. Every request made by a user, each piece of data exchanged between a user and an application, and each request for service made to an application is done through the use of the network.
Responses produced by an application depend on the speed at which the application responds to the user’s request.
In on-ground environments, organizations have been able to control these additional elements that affect the application’s performance.
As traffic carries over many different network, cloud-region, and security-layer routes before arriving at its destination in today’s environments, organizations will likely experience additional application performance degradation.
Gartner has determined that over 70 percent of the reported issues with the application are related to either the infrastructure or the network and not to the actual code of the application.
Modern network management offers organizations visibility to network performance as a service,
While traditional network management has provided information related to the status of the network devices and provided some elementary performance metrics, they have not always provided enough context to enable companies to manage modern applications effectively.
For example, having information about the link being used to connect two or more devices is not sufficient to determine why an application has been slow to provide a response.
This information does not provide insight into which end-users are impacted, does not provide insight into which traffic is traveling the path to the application, does not provide insight into whether the performance issue is transient or systemic in nature.
In addition, the use of this type of manual troubleshooting will result in organizations experiencing longer (mean) time-to-resolution and increased frustration of both users and other stakeholders due to the reliance upon this type of reactive troubleshooting completion.
Consistent performance across remote users
Remote users are changing how we view application access. Users access applications using home networks and smartphones, and communicate from around the world when connecting remotely.
The inherent variability of these connections adds a new complexity that isn’t addressed by traditional network design.
Network management can help lessen this complexity. By monitoring remote access network paths, VPN gateways, and secure access services, it finds out where performance delays occur, as well as if any delays are caused by issues inside or outside of the enterprise network.
With this information, network management teams are able to optimize remote access methods, improve routing, and change security controls to make a trade-off between security and performance.
Providing consistent application performance to remote users is now a requirement of running a successful business, not just a “nice to have.”
How network management is aligned with application priorities
Not all applications are created equal; some directly generate revenue, and some support internal operations.
Network management that maximizes value for its customers considers these differences when prioritizing resources and aligning policies.
For example, applications that directly impact customers may have priority during busy times, while applications that support business operations are lower priority.
Understanding the criticality of applications helps network managers make informed trade-off choices during periods of high network congestion or during incidents.
Aligning network management decisions with application priorities ensures that network management supports the enterprise’s business outcomes rather than only technical metrics.
How automation & predictive analysis play an important role in network management
As the business world plays an increasingly dynamic role in how networks are being utilized, automation is one avenue that is growing in importance.
Network management is not able to continue to maintain pace with the speed of change through manual adjustment.
Automated alerts and remediation provide a level of assurance that application performance will remain consistent; predictive analytics provides insight into network performance to identify problems before they develop or escalate.
For example, gradually increasing latency or increasing bandwidth usage is an indicator of a need to upgrade a network’s architecture or capacity.
Taking proactive steps based upon predictive analytics enables organizations to avoid performance degradation that would otherwise adversely affect users.
By automating the alert and remediation functions of network management, organizations can empower the network management team to focus more time on improving the performance of the network rather than putting out fires.
Network Management Effectiveness–Measuring the Business Results
For senior management to be motivated by a network management initiative, they will want to see tangible results from their investment.
Network management is one way to improve application performance in a measurable and meaningful way for senior leadership.
Network management can improve user satisfaction through an increase in productivity and significant reductions in loss of revenue and support costs due to outages.
Lost revenue from downtime and the time needed to resolve issues are significant contributors to reduced profitability.
Forrester research indicates that organizations that have invested in advanced network management will see substantial increases in both the availability of applications and the customer experience.
To conclude, modern network management provides organizations with the visibility, control, and intelligence required to manage network performance on a large scale. Strong, modern network management will help keep applications successful in the future as enterprises continue to grow and develop.