What? Quantum Physics…how is it related to the Cloud and more so, Performance Management for Cloud based applications?
Cloud Computing facilitates businesses to dynamically consume & utilize IT resources (hardware, software) based on their needs thereby reducing significant capital expenses. But how does the performance of cloud applications affect the end users of these businesses?
You guessed it right – Quantum Physics is where the answer lies! The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states by precise inequalities that certain pairs of physical properties of sub-atomic particles, such as position and momentum, cannot be simultaneously known to arbitrarily high precision. That is, the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be measured. Oh God, this is too scientific to understand!
In simple terms for you and me to understand, Werner Heisenberg figured out in 1927, that it is impossible to determine simultaneously both the position and the momentum of an electron or any other sub-atomic particle with any great degree of accuracy or certainty. Taking this analogy to the Cloud, the virtualized resources, both hardware and software, are similar to sub-atomic particles & waves in Quantum Physics – it is impossible to precisely know where there position is (a.k.a. location) and how fast or slow their momentum (a.k.a. performance) is from an End User perspective!
What is the problem here?
As we all know, a cloud application may have multiple virtual layers between itself and the hardware that it resides on. It could be clustered across many application servers installed on a bunch of virtual servers spanning multiple physical nodes and spread out across various data centers across the globe! To measure the performance of the various layers in the Cloud Apps, metrics need to be captured on an extended time scale with performance / infrastructure baseline. But, these cloud configurations can dynamically change & reshuffled as the Cloud resources are adjusted based on usage & requirements. So the baseline keeps fluctuating making it near impossible to predict where Performance issues are from an End User perspective!
And how do you measure it?
So as an end user of a Cloud App, the critical metric to look at is YOUR experience of a Transaction for a service that a Cloud vendor delivers. The transaction is the glue that unifies and lays out the key properties that can be used to measure the effectiveness of a Service delivery and also indicate the quantum properties that contribute to the issues.
So what is the future of Application Performance Monitoring (APM)?
Gartner defines Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Solution for 2010 as the integration of the five functional dimensions:
• End User Experience Monitoring
• Discovery & Modeling of Application Runtime Architecture
• User Defined Transaction Profiling
• Application Component Deep Dive Monitoring
• Analysis & Correlation of Data Sets generated by the above 4 dimensions
Gartner goes on to say that by 2015, 50% of the enterprises will need capabilities beyond those delivered by the current APM tools (5 dimensional approach stated above) to manage a complex and dynamic infrastructure & application environment!
Management of Cloud Apps Performance will require newer strategies & approaches as the apps on the public cloud & private cloud integrate & intertwine with each other. These approaches will have to identify slow end user transactions & trace them across the various layers & tiers of hardware & software to deep dive into the root cause. These future strategies & approaches are further elaborated by Gartner in their model for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) 2015 that extends the APM 2010.
What are the BMC Software's Offerings in the APM 2015 space?
BMC is on the leading edge of the Applications Performance Monitoring space for 2015. Key products & solutions are lined up in each of Gartner’s APM 2015 area.
Cloud Computing facilitates businesses to dynamically consume & utilize IT resources (hardware, software) based on their needs thereby reducing significant capital expenses. But how does the performance of cloud applications affect the end users of these businesses?
You guessed it right – Quantum Physics is where the answer lies! The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states by precise inequalities that certain pairs of physical properties of sub-atomic particles, such as position and momentum, cannot be simultaneously known to arbitrarily high precision. That is, the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be measured. Oh God, this is too scientific to understand!
In simple terms for you and me to understand, Werner Heisenberg figured out in 1927, that it is impossible to determine simultaneously both the position and the momentum of an electron or any other sub-atomic particle with any great degree of accuracy or certainty. Taking this analogy to the Cloud, the virtualized resources, both hardware and software, are similar to sub-atomic particles & waves in Quantum Physics – it is impossible to precisely know where there position is (a.k.a. location) and how fast or slow their momentum (a.k.a. performance) is from an End User perspective!
What is the problem here?
As we all know, a cloud application may have multiple virtual layers between itself and the hardware that it resides on. It could be clustered across many application servers installed on a bunch of virtual servers spanning multiple physical nodes and spread out across various data centers across the globe! To measure the performance of the various layers in the Cloud Apps, metrics need to be captured on an extended time scale with performance / infrastructure baseline. But, these cloud configurations can dynamically change & reshuffled as the Cloud resources are adjusted based on usage & requirements. So the baseline keeps fluctuating making it near impossible to predict where Performance issues are from an End User perspective!
And how do you measure it?
So as an end user of a Cloud App, the critical metric to look at is YOUR experience of a Transaction for a service that a Cloud vendor delivers. The transaction is the glue that unifies and lays out the key properties that can be used to measure the effectiveness of a Service delivery and also indicate the quantum properties that contribute to the issues.
So what is the future of Application Performance Monitoring (APM)?
Gartner defines Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Solution for 2010 as the integration of the five functional dimensions:
• End User Experience Monitoring
• Discovery & Modeling of Application Runtime Architecture
• User Defined Transaction Profiling
• Application Component Deep Dive Monitoring
• Analysis & Correlation of Data Sets generated by the above 4 dimensions
Gartner goes on to say that by 2015, 50% of the enterprises will need capabilities beyond those delivered by the current APM tools (5 dimensional approach stated above) to manage a complex and dynamic infrastructure & application environment!
Management of Cloud Apps Performance will require newer strategies & approaches as the apps on the public cloud & private cloud integrate & intertwine with each other. These approaches will have to identify slow end user transactions & trace them across the various layers & tiers of hardware & software to deep dive into the root cause. These future strategies & approaches are further elaborated by Gartner in their model for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) 2015 that extends the APM 2010.
What are the BMC Software's Offerings in the APM 2015 space?
BMC is on the leading edge of the Applications Performance Monitoring space for 2015. Key products & solutions are lined up in each of Gartner’s APM 2015 area.
- Policy & Orchestration Engine – BMC Atrium Orchestrator bridges people, process, and technology to automate manual, repetitive tasks across IT, enabling better support for business. Defines automated processes that are built on best-practice standards to ensure compliance with policies, Automates routine tasks, Scales automation to the scope and size your business demands, Orchestrates cross functional IT operations activities across internal and third-party solutions environments. This is the glue for the BMC Cloud Solution.
- Application Behavior Learning – BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management solution (BPPM) automates prioritization of events based on predictive service impact analysis, Delivers early warning of impending problems, while eliminating reliance on reactive thresholds and realizing up to a 90% reduction in false events with patented predictive analytics, Automatically pinpoints predictive root cause across infrastructure, applications, and services, Automatically and uniformly maps, monitors and tracks relationships and behavior across physical, virtual and cloud environments.
- Crowdsourcing & Collaboration - Various components of the BMC Product Portfolio contribute to this space dedicated to collaboration and crowdsourcing. BMC Atrium Orchestrator, BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management & BMC Atrium CMDB come together to enable enterprises to capture and apply knowledge to manage a diverse & heterogeneous infrastructure & application environment.
- Cloud Enablement – BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution, which is a fine integration of key BMC solutions using BMC Service Request Management, BMC ITSM, BMC Bladelogic Server Automation, BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management, BMC Atrium CMDB and BMC Atrium Orchestrator provides it a unique advantage in the Cloud Enablement space. This solution supports multiple cloud environments, helps to monitor, manage & administer applications & infrastructure in public, private & hybrid clouds.
- Cost Allocation & Chargeback – With BMC IT Business Management Suite, following capabilities are provided: Demand and Resource Management, Financial Planning and Budgeting, IT Controls Management, Service Cost Management & Supplier Management. This brings in a transaction transparency added with resource usage and associated cost information.
This is a good sign for cloud applications performance management tools & technologies. Thanks.
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