What is application monitoring?

Application monitoring is the sum of practices and tools that are used to gain detailed visibility into an application's availability, performance, and user experience. Even though dedicated application monitoring tools are often implemented for this task, it is also common to use general monitoring tools capable of monitoring applications.

Application monitoring is not particularly different from other types of monitoring, such as network or cloud monitoring. It is quite specific to the needs of the applications that run on an infrastructure, on-premises or cloud-based. Each application is slightly different, and, depending on where it is based, we may talk about web application monitoring (for web apps), cloud application monitoring (for cloud apps), or application server monitoring (for apps running on, often, internal servers).

Application monitoring is arguably more complex, as applications consist of various parts, and each application component must be monitored to ensure overall efficiency and functionality.

For instance, applications that rely on databases also need their data sources monitored. Otherwise, errors showing on the front side of the application may be mistaken for the application's own issues, when instead it is the database that is temporarily down. As always, and even more so in application monitoring, we advise a holistic approach that takes all the aspects and parts of an infrastructure into consideration—which is best achieved through a unified monitoring platform with robust features.

Given the vast array of applications available, and thus monitorable, there are quite a few types of application monitoring.

Originally called “end-user experience monitoring”, the term has been expanded to include the possibility of non-human components such as robots or software components interacting with an application's user interface. Digital experience monitoring thus monitors the interaction that each user, human and not, has with an application: it gathers performance metrics such as load time, response time, uptime, and downtime to provide real-time insights into how well an application interface performs understand how well an application interface performs and to identify and resolve performance issues before they impact users. Monitoring web applications is often synonymous with digital experience monitoring, as web-based applications focus on the final user experience. However, it is not exclusively for web applications.

Application monitoring tools with digital experience monitoring may use real-user data collected through real-time monitoring of actual users interacting with the web interface or using the application on their computers, or may implement synthetic tests to emulate user requests, thus integrating a form of synthetic monitoring. Both are valuable data that make digital experience monitoring possible.

Availability monitoring is a subtype of application monitoring that focuses on identifying and resolving availability issues affecting an application and its dependencies. This includes the metrics of uptime, downtime and accessibility of all application components.

Resource usage is typically monitored across all areas of monitoring. In this particular case, though, resource monitoring has a more granular approach, worrying about the resource utilization of each application in use. This is not only to identify bottlenecks and optimize application health and performance, but also to ensure efficient resource usage and guarantee that software applications have the necessary resources to run effectively. It is often implemented in capacity planning to reduce costs if unused resources are found, or to guarantee application availability if resources are strained.

From the brief discussion of the types of application monitoring, it is plain to see how important it is to keep track of the applications in your infrastructure. Monitoring web applications, or cloud applications, whatever you have in your company, is a task that should not be ignored by any administrator.

Nowadays, the end-user experience is key to ensure satisfaction and returning customers. E-commerce websites or platforms that involve money transactions are aplenty on the web, and application monitoring tools can help you ensure not only that applications are available or performing, but also that the end-user experience is on point and potentially better than the competition. Web application monitoring means ensuring that the user experience is optimal and that all the parts of the interface are working as intended.

Moreover, application monitoring can help businesses to identify trends in usage of your application. By analyzing user data, businesses can gain invaluable insights in how their applications are being used, gearing it better towards the real needs of end users. This is valid regardless of whether we are talking of application server monitoring or cloud application monitoring: it is only a matter of different stacks and implementation.

In addition to all aspects previously mentioned, application monitoring can be predictive. Application monitoring tools that make use of synthetic monitoring, which is the case for Checkmk, can proactively test and monitor the results of possible application use cases. It is possible to test new UIs, a slightly different positioning of elements on a web app, or if backend changes have a negative effect on the end user's experience. This is called transaction monitoring, and a key element of synthetic monitoring.

Another example is writing synthetic tests to check the effects of a redesigned database schema or cloud assets that have been moved to a new geolocation. Both can be tested with synthetic monitoring before the application is being released, providing insights on whether the change has a negative impact on the final experience. Prevention is better than intervention, and synthetic tests are ideal for this.

Synthetic monitoring opens up a world of possibilities for application monitoring, enabling organizations to move beyond relic tools and embrace modern, integrated solutions. By combining synthetic tests with integrated user experience metrics, companies no longer have to rely solely on real user monitoring data or resort to guesswork when it's unavailable—they can proactively simulate user interactions, test hypothetical scenarios and upcoming changes to their application's user experience. Application monitoring becomes proactive, adding a layer of data that, albeit not real, perfectly mimics what users would see and do.

Application monitoring tools would greatly benefit from the support of synthetic tests in some form. Monitoring companies are aware of the powers of synthetic monitoring, and Checkmk is no exception. The Synthetic Monitoring add-on is ready to let you select and run synthetic tests from the familiar Checkmk UI. The entry barrier has been designed to be low, so everybody can use and understand existing synthetic tests to empower their application monitoring efforts and make the end user experience more satisfying, meeting user expectations.