Managing the performance of production applications is critical to the success of those applications and the improvement of the business itself.
Our client, a major Global Bank is dependent on many Java and .NET applications. For over 15 years their strategic platform to monitor Java applications has been Introscope, which has undergone significant product evolution as well as name changes from the original Wily Introscope to CA Introscope and latterly CA then Broadcom DX-APM.
Agenor was requested by the client to provide thought leadership and technical skills through the Application Performance Management (APM) Transformation project to modernise APM within the client's business.
Agenor Project Managers are a valuable asset to our clients. The APM Transformation Project is a great example of where our Project Delivery as a Service capabilities provided value in a dynamic and competitive environment, where projects have become larger and more complex over time, with a high degree of technical and functional integration.
John Allan, Head of Services
Agenor Technology
Due to capacity and resource constraints whilst Introscope has been in use within the client organisation, a wide range of product versions were in use. The majority of these were beyond maintenance and support from the vendor. Multiple server clusters were deployed to collect, store and process metrics from agents. Mapping of agents to the projects/applications that the agent monitored was complex, error prone and required significant manual work.
To monitor an application an agent needs to be installed within the application instance(s) and the Introscope cluster needs to be configured to accept metrics from those agents. The existing agent configuration used , required significant manual effort to update the agent version whilst retaining agent customizations.
There was little internal guidance to allow projects to deploy and configure agents and to configure processing of resulting metrics to raise alerts, thus increasing dependence on the core APM team.
The APM Transformation project objective was to replace all existing agent and server components with the latest versions in order to reduce:
In addition, the project would increase capacity to monitor many more application instances and extend monitoring to other technologies supported by latest DX-APM versions, such as:
A key design criterion was to standardise configuration to enable automation of monitoring configuration for applications. In addition, documentation needed to be developed to lead application teams through the process of getting value from APM and increasing the level of maturity of such monitoring.
A key challenge was to transform APM usage whilst ensuring existing monitoring continued un-interrupted as far as possible. In addition, during the transformation process, the APM environment had to support introduction of monitoring for new applications and expansion of number of monitored instances of existing applications. To meet the above challenge whilst reducing risk from changing all aspects simultaneously, the transformation was divided into phases.
Agenor provided:
The transformation was achieved in two phases:
Phase 1
Phase 2
The APM Transformation Project successfully delivered on its specified outcomes. The engagement of Agenor by the client enabled them to greatly reduce time required to achieve the service improvements and cost savings resulting from the transformation of APM services.
Large-scale technology changes can be complex, risky and costly. Since 2006, Agenor Technology has built a strong reputation as trusted IT delivery partners, with a track record for planning and implementing major digital transformation programmes in some of the world’s largest organisations. As specialists in Programme Delivery, Test Design & Execution, Digital Engineering and IT Service Management, and with a forensic attention to detail, Agenor mobilise the right team rapidly to ensure the delivery of “best fit” technology solutions implemented quickly, safely and at a competitive price. Whether you are ready to start scoping your project or just want to discover more about Agenor, our experts are at hand to help.
