THE END USER IS KING

APPLICATION PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

THE ART OF APMApplication performance management, or

APM, is a form of systems management

that focuses on monitoring and managing

the performance and service availability of

Web and non-Web software applications.

Its value is undeniable. In fact, a recent IDG

Research Services survey finds that 59 per-

cent of director level and IT respondents

(128 participants overall) indicate that APM

is “very important” and another 32 percent

report that it is “somewhat important” to

enterprise success. That’s up from IDG’s

2010 study.

Those who use APM say that it provides

an array of benefits, most notably faster

troubleshooting and fewer escalations—

along with less finger-pointing (66 percent),

increased productivity (58 percent), and

higher service quality and ability to meet

SLAs (58 percent). It also produces closer

alignment between IT and business groups

while improving IT value.

“If you look at APM, it’s all about end-user

experience,” says Barr Snyderwine, CIO for

Hargrove Inc., an events management com-

pany. “We have a problem, we need to look

at it and we need to ferret it out.”

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Managing enterprise IT is no simple task. However, when it comes to critical

applications and capabilities that impact end users and influence business re-

sults, the need for visibility into and across IT systems is critical. A key com-

ponent of operating a successful IT infrastructure is application performance

management (APM), for which business transaction management (BTM)

plays an important role in ensuring a positive end-user experience. APM es-

sentially creates a best-practice model that helps organizations focus on end-

to-end monitoring, measuring and resolution of end-user problems. As one IT

leader puts it: “It’s the end-user experience that’s the most important thing.”

Faster troubleshooting/Fewer escalations/Less finger-pointing

Increased productivity

Higher service quality/ability to meet SLAs

Closer alignment between IT and business/improved IT value

Ability to understand end-user experience in virtualized and cloud environments

Improved quality across the application lifecycle – from development to QA to production

Ability to deliver new services more quickly with confidence

Better able to manage costs

Prove SaaS vendors and MSPs are meeting service delivery commitments

Other

None of the aboven 2011 n 2010

66%63%

58%53%

52%58%

49%57%

45%

45%

41%48%

39%

27%

2%

5%5%

CA|CIO E-BOOK 2 THE END USER IS KING

APM BENEFITS FOR IT

CONTENTS

Navigating Today’s Complexity 3

Success Story: Starwood 4

APM and The Development Lifecycle 5

Putting APM to Work 6

Success Story: Qantas 7

Success Story: Sicredi 8

CA|CIO E-BOOK 3 THE END USER IS KING

Best-practice companies rely on APM and,

increasingly, look for a solution that provides

business transaction management (BTM)

support. Together, these tools offer a way

to cut through the technical challenges and

deliver immediate insights and context into

the way applications operate and data flows

across and beyond the enterprise. Today,

that requires more than a dashboard that

indicates whether there’s a problem or not;

the green light, red light model is no longer

adequate. It’s essential to fully understand

how an application performs at all times.

This level of triage—the ability to trouble-

shoot to the component level—generates

bottom-line results.

PUTTING THE “P” IN PRODUCTIVITY

In an ever-more competitive business envi-

ronment, maintaining maximum employee

productivity and customer satisfaction

is paramount. The IDG survey finds that

application performance impacts a number

of key factors. Loss of productivity tops

the list by a huge margin (66 percent of

respondents indicate it is an issue). Other

important issues include: inadequate or

incomplete information for decision mak-

ing, escalating costs of resolving issues

and problems, and business confidence

in launching new services. In addition,

organizations can experience damage to

brand/company reputation, high levels of

customer churn and a potential drop in

revenue. Snyderwine points to speed and

performance: “It affects our ability to serve

our clients and therefore it affects top-line

revenue.”

Infrastructure complexity doesn’t make

it any easier. Many organizations juggle

diverse and disparate tools and technolo-

gies—from mainframes and client/server

systems to managed services and mobile

devices. While virtualization, cloud comput-

ing and SOA capabilities simplify infrastruc-

ture, the reality is that they also add to the

complexity.

Organizations that lack robust APM capabili-

ties around that complexity put organiza-

tional performance at risk, threatening the

end-user experience. On the other hand,

those that connect to customer metrics and

measures through APM are better prepared

to face current challenges.

NAVIGATING TODAY’S COMPLEXITY

There’s no question that virtualization and clouds—while solving many IT challenges—create additional complexity. Organizations must find ways to streamline IT in order to get the most out of their infrastructure. A recent IDG Research Services study finds that 70 percent of responding organizations aren’t ready for this next phase of computing—even though they see APM capabilities as important to cloud functionality.

There are several ways to reduce this complexity, including: defining application performance requirements, such as availability and response time; identifying issues at both the physical and virtual layers; correlating infrastructure resources to the applications they support; building a unified, end-user transaction view of performance across private, public and hybrid clouds; and gaining visibility into other factors that impact the end-user experience, such as third-party content delivered via the user’s browser.

WHILE VIRTUALIZATION, CLOUD COMPUTING AND SOA CAPABILITIES SIMPLIFY INFRASTRUCTURE, THE REALITY IS THAT THEY ALSO ADD TO THE COMPLEXITY

CA|CIO E-BOOK 4 THE END USER IS KING

Organizations must focus on five key areas

of APM: end-user experience, deep com-

ponent analysis, transaction profiling that’s

handled by a BTM function, building an

APM transaction model and mapping out

various components. Ultimately, the goal is

to develop robust capabilities that provide

real-time insights into events—so when a

problem occurs, the company can recog-

nize who is affected by it and use sophisti-

cated tools, such as transaction tracing, to

identify a problem and link it to the failing

component in the application infrastructure.

Once an organization understands who’s

affected, how they’re affected and in what

ways they’re affected, it can begin to priori-

tize remediation activities based on logical

priorities. For example, it may be permissible

for customers to experience a slightly longer

wait time for an address change. However,

a painfully slow login process may prompt

the same person to take his or her business

elsewhere. The end goal is to connect the

end-user transaction experience to business

outcomes.

An effective APM system—which incorpo-

rates business transaction management

functionality—allows an organization to

view and map transactions effectively. This

comprehensive capability provides a better

understanding of IT and business require-

ments. An enterprise can then focus opti-

mal resources—hardware, bandwidth and

network capacity—to applications rather

than overprovisioning or underprovision-

ing resources. These organizations require

a smaller hardware footprint for lower IT

costs.

FALLING SHORT WHERE IT COUNTS MOST

Not surprisingly, businesses are attempt-

ing to deal with these IT challenges as

best they can. IDG finds that 82 percent of

respondents believe that their organiza-

tions can meet end-user expectations for

application performance. However, 66 per-

cent of those surveyed have experienced a

loss of productivity as a result of end-user

problems with critical apps—an increase

of 7 percent over 2010. In addition, only 38

percent of respondents say their firms have

100 percent visibility into end-user transac-

tions across IT environments.

[SUCCESS STORY]STARWOOD HOTELS AND RESORTS SAFEGUARDS AVAILABILITY OF RESERVATION SYSTEM FOR MORE THAN 1,000 HOTELS WITH CA INTROSCOPE®

Business: Starwood Hotels and resorts is one of the world’s largest hotel and leisure companies. Its hotel portfolio includes more than 1,000 leased, managed and franchised hotels, with a total of around 285,000 rooms in 100 countries.

Challenge: Starwood’s hotel reservation system is critical to customer satisfaction, and alerts the IT team to any glitches with a room booking, rate quote or reservation change. To safeguard the performance and availability of this SOA-based system, Starwood needs to be aware of any problems before they impact customers or its revenues.

Solution: With CA Introscope®, a key component of the CA Application Performance Management solution, Starwood can monitor its hotel reservation system 24/7. Problems can not only be traced back to the root cause, but also linked to potential business impact, which helps the IT team prioritize its response.

Result: By ensuring its hotel reservation system remains highly available, Starwood has been able to improve customer service levels, safeguard profitability and maintain guest loyalty.

AN EFFECTIVE APM SYSTEM—WHICH

INCORPORATES BUSINESS TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONALITY—ALLOWS AN

ORGANIZATION TO VIEW AND MAP

TRANSACTIONS EFFECTIVELY

APM AND THE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE

Application lifecycle management—using transactional visibility, proactive monitoring, business impact analysis and custom dashboards—helps guide an organization through development, QA, performance checks, staging and production.

Extending APM earlier into the development lifecycle has clear-cut advantages. It improves application quality, identifies and resolves bugs and problems earlier in the application lifecycle, reduces risks and costs and delivers reliable business services to market more quickly.

Best-practice organizations embed APM into their development workflow and processes in order to design a more streamlined business-IT infrastructure. They also build custom elements into APM to address specific needs and concerns. The result is a more focused approach to application management—including an ability to build, test and deploy systems faster and with fewer problems and disruptions.

In fact, the numbers point to a significant gap

between the capabilities respondents deem

important and their reported ability to meet

these objectives and maximize the returns

from APM. The greatest gaps include: an abil-

ity to proactively detect issues, an ability to

trace business transactions end-to-end, 100

percent visibility into all transactions and the

tools to monitor a variety of applications. In

fact, more than half of all respondents indi-

cate that their organizations consistently fall

short in these categories.

Contributing to the problem is the fact that

walls frequently exist between different

groups and teams within IT, including appli-

cation support staff, database administrators,

virtualization teams and desktop support

teams. These islands make it difficult, if not

impossible, to build more comprehensive and

widespread visibility into systems spanning a

network and sometimes business partners.

Consequently, organizations cannot proac-

tively detect application issues and prob-

lems, and prioritize them based on impact—

a goal of 98 percent of organizations sur-

veyed. Nor are they able to perform fast root

cause analysis to resolve problems before

they affect users, map transaction issues to

failing components and back-end systems,

or eliminate finger pointing between IT

teams in order to improve productivity and

accelerate problem resolution.

Organizations lacking in these categories

often find themselves struggling to cope

with today’s harsh realities. Performance and

quality measures lag and service levels fail

to meet objectives. And today, that simply

isn’t good enough. Growth and, in some

cases, survival, require a more thorough and

comprehensive approach.

ADDRESSING GAPS AND EMBRACING BEST PRACTICES

Although many organizations understand

the importance of monitoring and measure-

ment capabilities, many lack the systems,

processes and tools to tie objectives to

outcomes. Fortunately, the IDG study finds

that many respondents are ready to invest in

tools and solutions that help them achieve

a more holistic approach to APM. Over the

next 18 months, 38 percent indicate that

they plan to increase spending, growing

CA|CIO E-BOOK 5 THE END USER IS KING

IDG Research Services conducted in-depth interviews with senior business and IT executives, detailing information and insights into how companies are approaching and using APM to manage activities centering on business and IT per-formance. Here’s what these executives had to say as they integrate APM into various processes and systems in order to achieve maximum results and improved ROI.

IDENTIFYING THE VALUE OF APM AND BUILDING A STRATEGY

In today’s business environment, it’s impossible to put any IT initiative in place without a focused strategy. APM is no excep-tion. Typically, there’s a strong need to test and validate a sys-tem in a preproduction environment before rolling it out to the entire enterprise. As a result, a growing number of CIOs and other IT executives are approaching APM as an important tool that requires up-front planning and ongoing attention.

For example, an IT leader at a large food manufacturing com-pany believes that APM is a core requirement and a long-term commitment. The ability to measure application performance starts in a preproduction environment. “These tools provide predictive capabilities before we move into production,” he says. “They allow us to validate systems and I/O performance before we make major investments in equipment and resourc-es, including new CPUs, more memory, a bigger network or storage spread across more disk spindles.”

Additional visibility into systems is the foundation of APM. The senior vice president of a large financial services firm says that while his organization already has a basic APM tool in place, there’s an urgent need for deeper transaction-level monitoring. “We require an additional level of granularity,” he notes. “Right now we can only tell that there’s a general performance problem. We need to know if the problem is on the network side or the database side, or SQL or application code that’s running amuck.” The organization is gravitating toward a more holistic approach that includes infrastructure monitoring, network monitoring and APM tools, he says. “By blending them together, we’re able to get a much more complete picture of what’s going on.”

Yet, the challenges of monitoring an IT infrastructure continue to grow. Not only must organizations achieve visibility into cloud environments, the growing use of mobile technology—including tablets and smartphones—is further ratcheting up the stakes. “There are a lot of challenges we’re still trying to figure out,” the SVP admits. However, “APM is part of the equa-tion because it ultimately defines the end-user experience.”

APM DRIVES TOP-LINE BUSINESS OUTCOMES

APM provides the engine for performance gains that transcend IT. In fact, in many instances, it helps an organization trans-form IT into a strategic asset that drives business performance gains, including faster and better development of new prod-ucts and services. In the end, an organization can achieve rev-enue growth and a competitive advantage.

Case in point: The SVP of the financial services organization reports that the organization continues to look for ways to improve the company’s APM capabilities because of the enor-mous returns associated with it. “The technology is a strategic

asset,” he says. “We want to ensure that we are delivering quality products. We cannot afford to have negative percep-tions or goodwill. Unless we realize the full potential of our IT systems, we are unable to deliver the desired level of business value.”

Another company in the financial services industry reports an entirely different but equally compelling story. The business leader of enterprise architecture says that the primary benefit of APM is greater agility in the development process and in managing IT assets. Although the institution doesn’t view APM as a revenue-growth generator, it does see it as a key strategic tool. “We are able to capture information that can be convert-ed into business intelligence. The technology helps us guide development activities.” Ultimately, he says, “It’s all about vis-ibility into systems. With robust diagnostics and traceability, we can design better systems.”

APM BECOMES A FOUNDATION FOR SUCCESS

A growing number of organizations recognize that APM fits a best-practice approach to IT. The ability to track and moni-tor transactions end-to-end, proactively detect problems and monitor various applications—including those residing in the cloud—is a significant step forward.

The CIO of an event planning firm notes that the ability to trace transactions throughout their lifecycle leads to a more proactive approach to resolving IT and business issues. Business transaction management is particularly important because the firm operates a complex online ordering system. “We have a wide variety of applications facing several cus-tomer databases, and APM offers the opportunity to recognize problems early and fix them promptly,” he says.

At the international food manufacturing company, meanwhile, there’s a growing realization that APM ties neatly into global operations. With a goal of doubling growth every seven years, there’s a need to understand everything from transactional activity to network performance across geographic regions. “Clearly, we don’t want to overbuy capacity, infrastructure and bandwidth that we don’t need,” explains the IT team lead. “The goal is to anticipate capacity and do predictive buying so we’re not late adding systems.”

Still another financial services firm—this one in the equities business—views APM as an enabler of new application capa-bilities. “Without it we would take much longer to deploy new code and enhancements,” points out the vice president and chief technology officer. He also notes that it would be far more difficult to manage preproduction development environ-ments and validate application code and its full impact prior to deployment in a production environment.

The firm’s CTO also uses APM to manage fixes and new releas-es. By taking a comprehensive approach to APM the company has trimmed downtime, improved system performance and slashed costs. In fact, the use of APM has improved IT systems productivity by approximately 25 percent and delivered an ROI in the neighborhood of 20 percent, he reports. He is now looking at integrating APM with cloud-based systems. “These tools help us minimize business risk and the associated finan-cial impact,” he concludes.

PUTTING APM TO WORK

CA|CIO E-BOOK 6 THE END USER IS KING

CA|CIO E-BOOK 7 THE END USER IS KING

investments by 50 percent (compared with

only 29 percent in 2010).

Best-practice organizations focus on several

key issues. First, they understand that the

transaction is at the center of APM. It’s the

great equalizer because it’s the common

element in the service model—it spans appli-

cations, delivery models, partner business

processes, workflows and more. Whether a

service is offered from the cloud, through a

managed provider or via internal servers, a

transaction is the basic currency for under-

standing performance.

Second, best-practice organizations under-

stand that the more control they have over

all the various transactional pieces, the

easier it is to pinpoint and fix problems. It’s

critical to deploy a solution that provides

comprehensive APM capabilities and iden-

tifies slowdowns and emerging problems

before they grow out of control. As prepro-

duction development gets pushed closer

to actual deployment—rapid turns mean

compressed development cycles—organiza-

tions must find ways to find and address

problems faster, and in a less costly way.

Third, APM tools must span all enterprise

environments. It’s not enough to switch on a

diagnostic tool after a problem has popped

up. The cost of fixing a problem can spiral

upward once an organization has deployed

an application or system. What’s more, in

many instances, the time and resources

devoted to the task can result in frustrated

customers and employees. A best-practice

APM solution watches over all transactions

all the time. It displays real-time informa-

tion about events, linking the transaction to

the underlying infrastructure and business

value. This linkage also helps IT prioritize

which problems to address first. For instance,

the business value of a user attempting to

execute a securities trade is higher than that

same customer printing a monthly statement.

Together, these capabilities allow an organi-

zation to become more proactive and better

equipped to deal with the competitive pres-

sures of today’s business environment. This

leads to happier and more satisfied customers

and employees. Best-practice APM organiza-

tions also divert fewer resources to putting

out fires and devote more resources toward

developing new applications and offerings

that make the organization more competi-

tive. Development teams become devoted to

developing rather than fixing things.

QANTAS GUARANTEES ONLINE AVAILABILITY, IMPROVING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND PROTECTING REVENUE

Business:Qantas is one of the world’s leading long-distance airlines. Now in its 90th year of operation, the airline flies to 182 destinations in 44 countries and operates 970 international flights a week. The company has a reputation for excellence in safety, operational reliability, engineering and customer service.

Challenge:To provide a reliable global online service, Qantas has 34 international websites, which are underpinned by a wide range of applications. After experiencing significant website outages, Qantas realized that it needed to protect this vital online revenue stream by ensuring the availability and performance of its Internet applications.

Solution:Using CA Application Performance Management Qantas can monitor its Web applications and underlying infrastructure to identify issues before they cause outages. The solution has also helped the airline create a site that can cope with spikes in online traffic of more than 20 million page views a week.

Result:Qantas has been able to reduce website downtime, with faults now identified five times faster than previously. Higher availability has enabled Qantas to enhance the online experience for millions of customers. The airline has also increased its competitive advantage by deploying new online applications faster.

[SUCCESS STORY]

THE RESULT IS AN AGILE ENVIRONMENT THAT ALLOWS AN ENTERPRISE TO BREAK DOWN SILOS AND BRIDGE IT ISLANDS

CONCLUSION: UPPING THE BUSINESS ANTE

A comprehensive APM system offers tan-

gible and measurable benefits. The result is

an agile environment—and a new application

lifecycle paradigm—that allows an enterprise

to break down silos and bridge IT islands.

It’s no secret that high-performing organiza-

tions spend more time enhancing and inno-

vating than they do fixing things. And APM

is at the heart of it all, accelerating problem

identification and resolution with a consis-

tent methodology across the entire applica-

tion lifecycle.

In the end, IDG respondents report that the

right approach to APM delivers significant

benefits, including improved end-user sat-

isfaction, increased productivity and better

support of business goals. It also unleashes

more effective cost-control measures.

Nothing’s more telling than that. n

SICREDI IMPROVES IT SERVICES MANAGEMENT WITH CA SERVICE ASSURANCE

Business: Sicredi is one of Brazil’s largest cooperative credit systems, with 1.8 million members. Profits of the credit union are passed on to its members and are reinvested in the place where they live, thereby strengthening the region’s economy.

Challenge:The credit union is increasingly dependent on technology to serve its members and Sicredi has invested heavily in its IT applications and infrastructure in recent years. However, disparate IT management tools made detecting, diagnosing and resolving problems increasingly difficult.

Solution:Sicredi created a consolidated IT management platform based on CA Spectrum Infrastructure Manager, CA eHealth Performance Manager and CA Virtual Performance Management, and CA NetQoS Reporter Analyzer.

Result:Using the CA Technologies platform, Sicredi can handle problems impacting the IT infrastructure in a more agile and proactive manner, which enables it to maintain business continuity and end-user satisfaction.

[SUCCESS STORY]

n 2011 n 2010

Improved end user/customer satisfaction

Increased productivity

Better ability to support plans for business growth

Cost control/savings

Increased confidence in ability to deliver new services quickly

Revenue protection and growth

Competitive advantage

Other

None of the above

66%69%

59%47%

53%50%

52%55%

41%42%

36%35%

35%35%

1%

5%3%

CA|CIO E-BOOK 8 THE END USER IS KING

APM BENEFITS FOR NON-IT STAKEHOLDERS