APPLICATION

PERFORMANCE
MANAGEMENT

THE END
USER IS KING
CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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

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
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.”

THE ART OF APM
Application 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.”

Faster troubleshooting/Fewer 66%

escalations/Less finger-pointing 63%

Increased productivity
58%
53%

Higher service quality/ability to meet SLAs 52%

58%
Closer alignment between IT and 49%
business/improved IT value 57%
Ability to understand end-user experience
in virtualized and cloud environments 45%
Improved quality across the application lifecycle –
from development to QA to production 45%
Ability to deliver new services 41%
more quickly with confidence 48%
Better able to manage costs 39%
Prove SaaS vendors and MSPs are meeting
service delivery commitments 27%
Other 2%
APM BENEFITS
5% FOR IT
None of the above
5% n 2011 n 2010

CA|CIO E-BOOK 2 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 NAVIGATING TODAY’S COMPLEXITY

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.”
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.

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-
WHILE VIRTUALIZATION,
ing and SOA capabilities simplify infrastruc- CLOUD COMPUTING AND
ture, the reality is that they also add to the SOA CAPABILITIES SIMPLIFY
complexity.
INFRASTRUCTURE, THE
Organizations that lack robust APM capabili- REALITY IS THAT THEY ALSO
ties around that complexity put organiza- ADD TO THE COMPLEXITY
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.

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

[ SUCCESS STORY ] Organizations must focus on five key areas
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.
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
AN EFFECTIVE APM
Not surprisingly, businesses are attempt-
SYSTEM—WHICH ing to deal with these IT challenges as
INCORPORATES BUSINESS best they can. IDG finds that 82 percent of
TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT respondents believe that their organiza-
tions can meet end-user expectations for
FUNCTIONALITY—ALLOWS AN application performance. However, 66 per-
ORGANIZATION TO cent of those surveyed have experienced a
VIEW AND MAP loss of productivity as a result of end-user
TRANSACTIONS EFFECTIVELY 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.

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

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
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.

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

PUTTING APM TO WORK
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
CA|CIO E-BOOK
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.
6 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.
CA|CIO E-BOOK
[ SUCCESS STORY ]
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.
THE RESULT IS AN AGILE
ENVIRONMENT THAT
ALLOWS AN ENTERPRISE
TO BREAK DOWN SILOS
AND BRIDGE IT ISLANDS
7 THE END USER IS KING
[ SUCCESS STORY ] CONCLUSION:
UPPING THE
BUSINESS ANTE
SICREDI IMPROVES IT SERVICES A comprehensive APM system offers tan-
MANAGEMENT WITH CA SERVICE ASSURANCE gible and measurable benefits. The result is
an agile environment—and a new application
Business:
lifecycle paradigm—that allows an enterprise
Sicredi is one of Brazil’s largest cooperative credit systems,
to break down silos and bridge IT islands.
with 1.8 million members. Profits of the credit union are
It’s no secret that high-performing organiza-
passed on to its members and are reinvested in the place
tions spend more time enhancing and inno-
where they live, thereby strengthening the region’s economy.
vating than they do fixing things. And APM
is at the heart of it all, accelerating problem
Challenge:
identification and resolution with a consis-
The credit union is increasingly dependent on technology
tent methodology across the entire applica-
to serve its members and Sicredi has invested heavily in its
tion lifecycle.
IT applications and infrastructure in recent years. However,
disparate IT management tools made detecting, diagnosing
In the end, IDG respondents report that the
and resolving problems increasingly difficult.
right approach to APM delivers significant
benefits, including improved end-user sat-
Solution:
isfaction, increased productivity and better
Sicredi created a consolidated IT management platform
support of business goals. It also unleashes
based on CA Spectrum Infrastructure Manager, CA eHealth
more effective cost-control measures.
Performance Manager and CA Virtual Performance
Nothing’s more telling than that. n
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.

Improved end user/customer satisfaction 66%

69%

Increased productivity 59%

47%

Better ability to support plans 53%

for business growth 50%

Cost control/savings
52%
55%
Increased confidence in ability to 41%
deliver new services quickly 42%

Revenue protection and growth

36%
35%

Competitive advantage 35%

35%
APM BENEFITS
Other 1% FOR NON-IT
5% STAKEHOLDERS
None of the above
3% n 2011 n 2010

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