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AANPM, or Application-aware Network Performance Management, is a method of monitoring, analysing and troubleshooting both networks and applications. It takes an application-centric view of everything happening across the network, providing end-to-end visibility of the network, the applications and their interdependencies. It allows engineers to monitor and optimise the end user experience.

An AANPM implementation offers a range of benefits including, a reduction of blame, faster and prioritised problem solving, the business case for upgrades, KPI and device use tracking, and an understanding of business critical dependencies.

Reduce finger pointing. With network responsibility diverging, an AANPM solution can drastically reduce the time wasted pointing fingers at colleagues. Arguing that "it's your applications, not my network" or indeed vice versa, can be quickly undermined with facts.

When things go wrong, the first thing you need to do is establish root cause, but often this process can take longer than fixing the problem. By bringing together key data points from network and applications across the WAN, LAN and wireless network, a single dashboard provides an end-to-end view of what is going on. Engineers can finally see what's happening and where, who is using what application and where they are connected. By merging your monitoring system you cut out all of the time on wasted finger pointing and put the focus back on problem solving.

Business comes first. Making sure that you prioritise problems based on business criticality is essential but not always obvious; for the engineer, attending to the most time sensitive and costly business blockage is the priority. For example, if two routers are performing badly, one at a remote office and one supporting a critical business application, engineers need to focus on fixing the problem that is costing the business the most money. This can only be achieved if the engineer can identify the location of the problems and prioritise the remedial work. AANPM facilitates this using a single tool.

Identify, update, and improve. Using AANPM, engineers can identify where applications or servers are slowing down or hitting roadblocks, allowing them to address the issue quickly and efficiently. According to a survey by Aberdeen Group, 34 per cent of respondents said that they lack visibility into network activities whilst 35 per cent said they have a deficit of tools to resolve network events.

Business driven upgrades. AANPM provides the data to make a case for server upgrades and then confirms that the changes have actually improved performance, confirming the planned benefits of major projects including virtualisation, WAN optimisation and data centre consolidation. It also provides data to support capacity planning, allowing engineers to identify where and why more bandwidth is needed, creating an informed business case.

Performance and use. Once deployed, an AANPM solution provides very detailed reporting and this will assist the IT team in monitoring KPIs and tracking device performance and usage. This is particularly useful in understanding the performance of virtualised equipment and in monitoring supplier performance against KPIs.

Critical business dependencies. If both IT and business executives understand the cost of running critical applications and the impact if they go offline for maintenance or due to problems, then a common language is established and once again, AANPM can help. It also makes it easier to understand the relationships and dependencies between critical applications and the infrastructure supporting them.

Organisations are increasingly dependent on the performance of their business applications, which, in turn, depend on the performance of their network. The increasing interdependency of applications and networks means that organisations need an integrated solution like AANPM if they are to identify the source of any performance problems quickly and solve them before incurring costly downtime and business risk. NC