Startup AppDynamics Offers A Free, Lite APM: Page 2 of 2

AppDynamics Lite is designed to provide in-depth application performance management, which Roop says typically costs companies several thousand dollars per CPU. Of course, the free software does not provide all the functionality AppDynamics' standard 2.0 version provides. That software provides an end-to-end view of all the production application servers in a cloud or distributed, service-oriented architecture (SOA). It can dynamically discover all the application tiers and back-end services, and then constantly watches at the application topology and can automatically discover new code, even if the application logic is split amongst a lot of servers in an SOA or cloud environments.

The standard version also provides proactive and predictive analysis capability. For example, it can "learn" the normal, acceptable performance of a transaction on a given day at a specific time using algorithms that automatically and regularly create performance baselines. If at any point the software discovers a deviation from those baselines while monitoring current performance, the software's Performance Pattern Analysis automatically kicks in, which uses advanced heuristics to detect critical performance incidents and capture code-level diagnostics. "The Lite version only retains up to two hours of performance measurements, which makes it very good in a fire fight, but limits it's ability of 24 by 7 predictive or proactive monitoring," Roop says.

AppDynamics' executives expect that for many customers, the Lite edition will provide ample capability. "Ninety percent might be perfectly fine with the free, download version. But 10 percent might need more," Roop says. For those, AppDynamics has built into the free software icons on which customer customers can click to learn more about the standard 2.0 version and how to purchase it. The free edition is gaining traction. In the first two days' of availability, there were nearly 200 downloads. At this point, more than 440 customers have downloaded the software, according to Roop. Of those, at least 15-20 have reached out to AppDynamics to learn more about the standard edition and to begin purchasing it.