Application Portfolio Optimization is a paramount consideration for large enterprises with complex business and technology landscapes. Large companies have advantages and disadvantages that come with their size. While they often have the budget to use high-level tools and cutting-edge technology, an enterprise is also likely to deal with a complex system and disjointed departments. To stay organized and improve efficiency, application performance optimization (APO)becomes a necessity for large businesses.

What is Application Portfolio Optimization and How Does it Benefit the Enterprise?

Technology is great—until it’s not. You can’t always see what is impacting your app performance. What do you do when an app runs sluggishly or gets glitchy? Do you try to press on and return to the application the next time, or do you move on?

Research has shown that users tend to have no tolerance for poor app performance. And, people have less patience now than they did just a few years ago, expecting their apps to run seamlessly. The response is typically to delete apps, download the competition, and then spread negative reviews to peers, followers, and friends alike.

• 55% said performance (slow loading) was their biggest frustration with digital services
• 66% say they avoid choosing apps or brands that offer poorly performing digital experiences
• 49% switched companies after a poor digital experience (up from 32% in 2017)
• 63% actively warn others of the service or brand they’ve experienced performance issues with
• 70% say they are less tolerant of issues than they were just two years ago

APO and APM products are monitoring the app code that you have written to provide a seamless end-user experience. The Application Portfolio Optimization should catch issues before they become real problems that interrupt performance or cause notable loss. They are typically used for important apps that might offer key services, like banking, eCommerce, managing appointments, and more.

The APP/APM is a diagnosis tool that measures the infrastructure and assesses risk to keep things running smoothly.

Applications are no longer an added benefit—they are often the very face of the enterprise itself. Users fully expect the apps to work and slow loading, failure to load, or lost data are things that can lead to lost sales and tarnished brand reputations. Users expect their apps to work at any time, in any location, and on any device. The performance of apps has become a crucial part of running a competitive business.

Types of Application Portfolio Optimization Tools for the Enterprise

According to Garter, around 50% of cloud-native application performance monitoring options are going to be open-sourced and not vendor-specific by 2025. The average APM measures key aspects of app behavior and activity, including metrics like:

• CPU usage
• Response time or MTTR (mean-time-to-resolution)
• Error Rates
• Request Rates
• Number of server or app instances running
• User experience (UX) and user satisfaction
• Garbage collection (CG)

There are three kinds of APM monitoring tools you are likely to see when you are looking for a tool to support your app:

App Metrics Based

Some tools call themselves APM but only show certain metrics—like your request rates or which pages are running slow. These kinds of tools won’t give you a detailed report of what is causing slow speeds or internal issues.

Code Level Performance

The majority of APM are based on code profiling—tracing transactions and monitoring behavior.

Network-Based

Some APM are looking at performance based on the network traffic. While some tools monitoring this will call themselves APM, most will call themselves NPM (network performance monitoring) tools.

Is it Worth Building Your Own?

One big question might be whether your company should build its own ARM rather than stick with a pre-existing solution. While many enterprises look for the tool that best fits their needs, others choose to create their own. This is typically the route that technology companies might choose to take since their work is already in IT and software development.

For the majority of businesses, it would be expensive and excessive to hire professionals for a custom-built APM. Enterprise systems that use a lot of different technologies will require more complex APM tools that will be more expensive.

For some companies, app downtime could mean complete ruin for their business. Choosing the right fit is crucial to handle the variety of complex infrastructure details and potential performance issues.

Application Portfolio Optimization Best Practices

When choosing the ideal APM, several things should help one monitoring solution stand out from another. As you choose your APM, keep these things in mind to support an effective infrastructure monitoring strategy.

Covers all the Bases

You need a tool that is going to watch your app from every level. This should include an APM that will work in real-time, using AI and machine learning to monitor the:

• Entire infrastructure stack
• Code-level performance
• IT environment analysis
• App performance and business outcome correlation

Combines Monitoring Methods

Don’t depend on just one metric to help you catch potential issues before they become serious problems. The best APO/APM will use more than just traditional monitoring methods, creating a comprehensive plan for monitoring performance. This should include synthetic transactions, manual performance monitoring, and end-user feedback.

Implements Effective Rules and App Strategy

To find an effective Application Portfolio Optimization strategy, you need rules and strategies in place to define a properly working app. Clear rules have to be in place to define what is deviating from the SLA. You should have clear prioritization within your app to hold business-critical apps or segments above other pieces when push comes to shove. It can be helpful to define typical challenges your app is likely to run into (like slow run times with excessive garbage collection), but it’s important to stay prepared for all threats.

At the end of the day, the right team is going to be important for an APO you can count on. There are a lot of options out there. Some of the best-performing APM you may want to start with include Cisco’s AppDynamics, New Relic, Microsoft Azure, Dynatrace, and Broadcom. Determining your strategy and needs will be the first step in choosing the right Application Portfolio Optimization for your company.

Pricing should come down to how crucial the app is for your business. For enterprise solutions that are money-makers, the budget is understandably higher than apps that aren’t a large part of the business plan. For some companies, however, apps can be crucial to their business without being directly tied to sales. If your customers rely on your app to work without interruption, you will need to choose an APO path that is going to offer top-level support.