Modern applications are becoming increasingly complicated for CTOs and their teams to manage. This happens partly due to new advanced technologies, and elaborate microservice architectures. Also, many businesses nowadays choose to deploy their applications in hybrid cloud environments, which adds to the complexity. All these facts — and probably many more, per case study and instance — make it very difficult to manage web application monitoring effectively, without the right tools and processes in place.
How does Web Application Monitoring work in the Cloud?
Web Application Monitoring is the practice of tracking, tracing, collecting, and analyzing data from cloud applications, and their components, to evaluate their health and performance. How does that work? Among other things, by gauging:
- availability,
- response times,
- memory usage, and
- CPU consumption.
To that end, cloud Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools ensure that the resources and services a company uses to support its cloud environments, perform at optimal levels. Such tools, capture actionable data from the entire infrastructure and aggregate it into a single database. Then, they thoroughly analyze it to detect any suspicious patterns and trends. In this respect, they also provide CTOs with actionable insights.
At the end of the day, these insights can make a world of a difference in preventing issues to reach end-users; thus, greatly contributing to offering a smooth and improved user experience, built upon informed decision making.
The use of metrics and log files makes a huge difference in APM
The good news with Web Application Monitoring is that it’s versatile enough to allow you to track and measure any type of data that composes your applications and their components. And, this versatility mainly stems from the use of metrics, and log files; without which, your monitoring practices wouldn’t bring any meaningful results.
Why do Metrics matter?
Metrics offer a wealth of information about application performance; as well as, user behavior and experience. In fact, when teams notice a change in the metrics they should instantly suspect that there’s probably an underlying issue that they need to address, promptly. Some critical metrics to keep an on, for effective Web Application Monitoring, include:
- Availability (services, system)
- Throughput
- Latency
- Memory usage
- Response time
- MTTR
- Security threats
What does logging bring to the table?
While metrics offer the bigger picture, about tendencies and patterns, log files zoom in on specific events, making troubleshooting — with regard to your apps — much more effective.. Nonetheless, they both have important insights to offer on user behavior and experience.
Now, back to logging, and its contribution to your overall Web Application monitoring process. Commonly, an application generates log files automatically. These files contain important information about your applications and the underlying infrastructure — including your databases.
An application usually generates several types of log files, and this can help CTOs assess applications exhaustively, as they help determine where an event originated; or when and where a metric changed. In other words, each log file contains historical information about a specific event — and user behavior — that occurred within the application. To give you an idea, these files may include information on:
- Application events (network and traffic)
- Access (authorization)
- Server(s)
- System (and threats)
- Changes in the app and/or its components
- Availability and uptime, etc.
How can Cycleops help you take Web Application Monitoring to the next level?
Companies are migrating to the Cloud for a reason: The Cloud offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity to build cost-efficient, scalable applications. Beyond this fact, though, the Cloud also allows companies to speed up time-to-market; that is, get their applications out in the market fast.
However, cloud applications don’t include built-in cloud monitoring capabilities — unless, you, as a CTO, make sure of it. Without Application Performance Monitoring, many issues emerge, in the long haul. This is where Cycleops steps in — a Cloud Management Platform that comes with an application monitoring capability, already built-in.
Cycleops can be integral to your application’s performance, since it allows you to keep a watchful eye on the applications and the components that matter. You may ask, ‘why not use the cloud service provider’s monitoring?’. In essence, CMPs like Cycleops give you insights that most cloud service providers often don’t — at least, not at this level: Near real-time, full-stack monitoring of your entire IT infrastructure and cloud-based applications and services.
What’s more, Cycleops enables you to correlate the performance of your application with the customer journey within the app. Hence, offering actionable insights that can help you optimize the overall user experience. As a result, you can finally align your Web Application Monitoring efforts with important business goals; opening the road for scalability and growth.
Cycleops: Start tracking, before a serious issue arises
In all truthfulness, there are few CTOs, today, who don’t feel like they’re shortsighted — if not completely blind — when it comes to their Web Application Monitoring practices. However, this lack of visibility creates space to create the perfect solution. To put it another way, it offers a unique opportunity to think outside the box, regarding the way your teams develop, monitor, and scale applications in the Cloud.
The most important aspect of application monitoring is to start tracking before a serious issue arises. Proactivity is the alpha and omega here. Web Application Monitoring will allow you to overcome any shortcomings in your monitoring processes and get to application health faster; and, with more visibility than you ever had.
By investing in a Cloud Management Platform that comes with a built-in Application Performance Monitoring, like Cycleops, you’ll have access to the data you need to keep your applications healthy, and robust. This is crucial if you want to offer high-quality services to your clients.
With Cycleops, you can finally nurture and modernize your applications every step of their journey toward the end-users. If you want to know more about how Cycleops can help you get there, book a demo with one of our experts today. We’ll be more than happy to help you out!