Five reasons AANPM matters to your business

IT is full of acronyms – so why should you care about this one? Put simply, because it can save your organisation time and money, helping you manage your network, applications and services more effectively and minimise downtime.

Here are five reasons why Application Aware Network and Performance Management (AANPM) matters in today's enterprise networks.

1. Faster problem solving, less finger pointing
An AANPM solution brings together all key data points from network and applications across the WAN, LAN and wireless network. You get a single dashboard showing both applications and the network infrastructure they’re running on. When there’s a problem, all the engineers can ‘see’ what is going on in their network, who is using what, where they are connected and the path from ‘here’ to ‘there’. Instead of different teams using different systems and debating where the problem may be – which quickly creates a blame culture – everyone sees the same information and can work together using common tools to find the solution

2. Fix the most important problem first
An AANPM solution means you don’t need multiple tools – which is an immediate cost saving.
Additionally, Gartner advise that, because poor network and application performance impact infrastructure costs as well as productivity, organisations need to focus on the user experience and capture data that enables them to fix the “right” problem first. For example, if two routers are performing badly – one at a remote office and one supporting a critical business application – engineers need to fix the one that has the biggest business impact (i.e. cost) first. They can only do this if they can identify the location of the problems – which AANPM helps them to do.

Our research among approx. 3,000 network professionals found that 82% of respondents ranked network and application performance problems as a concern or critical issue. They need tools that help them solve problems faster. According to the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of data centre downtime is $5,600 per minute, and with the average incident lasting 90 minutes, anything that can reduce this time will bring an immediate cost saving.

3. Identify improvements and make the business case for upgrades
An AANPM system enables engineers to identify where applications or servers are running slowly, so that the most critical paths can be addressed. It gives them the data to make the business case for projects such as server upgrades, confirm that changes have actually improved performance and show the benefit of major projects such as virtualisation, WAN optimisation and data centre consolidation. It also provides data to support capacity planning, helping engineers identify where and why more bandwidth is needed.

4. Track KPIs and device use
An AANPM solution provides very granular reporting, helping the IT team to monitor KPIs and track device performance and usage. This is particularly useful in understanding the performance of virtualised equipment and in monitoring supplier performance.

5. Explain critical dependencies to the business
An AANPM system helps IT and business executives understand the cost of running critical applications and the impact if they go offline for maintenance or due to problems. It also makes it easier for them to understand the relationships and dependencies between critical applications and the infrastructure which supports them.

If that hasn’t convinced you, ask the experts at Gartner. Earlier this year they published the first Magic Quadrant on the Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics (NPMD) market, which is also referred to as Application-aware Network Performance Management (AANPM). This emphasised the need for a single integrated solution to monitor, troubleshoot and analyse networks and—even more important—the applications and services they carry. Fluke Networks was named as a Leader in the NPMD Magic Quadrant.