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The Role of Network Observability in Modern Application Performance Management

Network observability has become an essential aspect of managing and optimizing application performance in today’s increasingly complex and distributed IT environments. As networks span multiple data centers and clouds, and configurations become more dynamic, network observability plays a crucial role in ensuring that applications remain performant and available. In this article, we will explore the importance of network observability in modern application performance management (APM) and how organizations can leverage it to improve user experience and achieve business objectives.

Network Observability and Application Performance: The Connection

Applications rely heavily on the underlying network infrastructure for communication between components and delivering content to end-users. Any disruption or performance degradation in the network can directly impact application performance, leading to a poor user experience and potential revenue loss.

Network observability helps organizations gain insight into the internal state of their networks and understand how network performance affects application performance, enabling them to make informed decisions and optimize both the network and application layers.

Key Components of Network Observability in APM

Integrating network observability into your APM strategy involves several key components that work together to provide a comprehensive view of your network and its impact on application performance.

Telemetry Data

Telemetry data, such as flow logs, routing tables, and application latency metrics, are essential for understanding the network’s internal state and its impact on application performance. By collecting and analyzing telemetry data, organizations can identify network bottlenecks, detect anomalies, and troubleshoot performance issues that may be affecting application performance.

Data Platform

A data platform ingests, contextualizes, and enriches telemetry data to provide actionable insights into the network’s impact on application performance. By mapping network performance data to users, applications, and other business contexts, organizations can better understand the relationship between network performance and application performance, and make data-driven decisions to optimize both.

Actionable Insights and Automation

To fully leverage network observability in APM, organizations must be able to take action based on the insights gained from telemetry data and data platforms. This involves implementing flexible workflows, automations, and integrations that enable teams to quickly remediate network performance issues, collaborate on problem resolution, and optimize network configurations to support application performance.

Benefits of Integrating Network Observability into APM

Incorporating network observability into your APM strategy offers several key benefits:

1. Enhanced Visibility: Network observability provides a holistic view of your network and application performance, enabling organizations to identify and address performance bottlenecks and issues more effectively.
2. Improved Troubleshooting: With detailed insights into the network’s impact on application performance, organizations can quickly identify the root cause of performance issues and implement targeted solutions.
3. Proactive Optimization: Network observability helps organizations proactively monitor and optimize network performance, preventing potential issues before they impact application performance and end-user experience.
4. Better Collaboration: By providing a unified view of network and application performance, network observability enables better collaboration between network and application teams, ensuring that both layers are optimized to support business objectives.

Conclusion

As modern application environments become increasingly complex and distributed, network observability has emerged as a critical component of effective application performance management. By integrating network observability into their APM strategies, organizations can gain deeper insights into the relationship between network and application performance, proactively optimize their network infrastructure, and ultimately deliver a better user experience.

How Network Observability from Kentik Can Help

Kentik is a leading provider of network observability solutions designed to help organizations gain complete visibility into their network infrastructure and its impact on application performance. With Kentik’s powerful platform, organizations can seamlessly integrate network observability into their application performance management strategy and enjoy the following benefits:

1. Unified Telemetry Data Collection: Kentik’s platform supports a wide range of telemetry data sources, including flow logs, routing tables, and application latency metrics, ensuring comprehensive visibility into your network’s internal state.

2. Advanced Data Platform: Kentik’s data platform ingests, contextualizes, and enriches telemetry data, providing actionable insights into the network’s impact on application performance. With its powerful analytics capabilities, organizations can quickly identify and address performance bottlenecks and issues.

3. Proactive Monitoring and Automation: Kentik’s platform offers proactive monitoring and automation features that enable organizations to quickly remediate network performance issues and optimize network configurations to support application performance. By leveraging advanced alerting and automated workflows, teams can ensure that both network and application layers are optimized to meet business objectives.

4. Collaboration and Integration: Kentik’s platform promotes better collaboration between network and application teams by providing a unified view of network and application performance. With support for popular APM tools (such as New Relic) and a rich ecosystem of integrations, organizations can streamline their application performance management processes and ensure seamless alignment between network and application teams.

To learn more about how Kentik can help you integrate network observability into your application performance management strategy and improve your organization’s overall user experience, request a demo or sign up for a free trial today.

Related Kentipedia Articles on Observabilty

• What is Observability? An Overview
• What is Network Observability?
• The Evolution of Network Monitoring: From SNMP to Modern Network Observability

Updated: September 5, 2023