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  5. Six Questions To Ask Before Buying End-To-End APM: Page 2 of 2
Data Centers

Six Questions To Ask Before Buying End-To-End APM: Page 2 of 2

While the market for end-to-end APM is heating up, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered before plunking down your hard fought IT budget on new tools. With several dozen APM vendors in the market, it can be confusing to weed through the marketing hype and determine what capabilities you really need. While good overall requirements will guide your decisions, be sure to ask the right questions before getting too far down the path with a vendor. I've summarized six key questions to
MICHAEL BIDDICK
June 21, 2010

5. Will it show the numbers? A lot of information will come from baselining, and organizations struggle to understand what is a good performance metric or a bad one. Out-of-the-box reports should provide a good gauge of the types of things you are looking for, but your architecture and volume of use will dictate goodness in your shop. Be sure reports that can compare baselines to actual and show trending for the items that you want to see are included in the product.

6. Is a degree from MIT required for support? Some of the APM tools are very complex. Tuning them and keeping them going can be a full-time job. Be sure you right fit the solution for your environment and even consider compromising some functionality if the solution is too complex. An elegant solution that provides core functionality will be much more beneficial than one that is not deployed fully or is unable to be updated without expensive help.

I'm a big fan of proof-of-concepts for APM, as you
will quickly see the level of complexity required around the tool and
well as if the solution is really providing value to your organization. 

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