Why Application Availability

Matters

And how to achieve increased availability through the use of AppMetrics®

www.xtremesoft.com+1 781-759-1220

Current Trends in Application Development

In order to remain competitive, organizations must build new, mission critical applications that automate and enhance their business processes Consequently, a shift is underway from ‘stovepipe’ internal

applications, to web enabled, transaction-based applications

Today off-the-shelf technologies are being used for this custom application development Transaction based application servers for business logic:

Microsoft COM+ and Microsoft .NET Serviced Components IBM WebSphere (J2EE) and BEA WebLogic (J2EE)

XML Messaging servers for EAI/B2B document interchange: Microsoft BizTalk Server webMethods and IBM MQ Series

The Evolution of the Application Services Stack

Over the years, the application stack has evolved considerably Application developers can now rely on standardized, off the shelf technologies

instead of painstakingly developing each supporting layer

But application availability continues to remain an issue…

Platform Evolution : Mainframe Client/Server Web EAI/B2B Web Services Platform Evolution : Mainframe Client/Server Web EAI/B2B Web Services

Application

Application

System SW

ApplicationApplication

Application

System SW

DBMS

Application

Application

System SW

DBMS

ApplicationServer

Application

System SW

DBMS

ApplicationServer

IntegrationServer

Application

System SWSystem SW

DBMSDBMS

ApplicationServer

ApplicationServer

IntegrationServer

IntegrationServer

Web ServicesWeb Services

Application

Why Does Application Availability Even Matter?

“As business becomes increasingly dependent on technology and information, availability is a universal concern for every business, in every industry… And globalization means there are no more periods of ‘acceptable’ downtime. At any time of the day or night, somewhere in the world, customers and vendors need access to your corporate information. If they can't get it, they'll go elsewhere – creating an opportunity for your competition.”

Application Availability: An Approach to MeasurementDavid M. Fishman, Sun Microsystems

http://www.nextslm.org

An Unavailable Application Negatively Impacts the Business

Lost Revenue Poor service leads them to

switch to other vendors

Lost profit Increased operational costs

Lower revenues and profits leads to cost and headcount reductions

Leading to fewer resources, increased job pressure, career stagnation

IT DevelopersIT DevelopersAre responsible for ensuring the application supports the business plan

IT OperationsIT OperationsAre responsible for ensuring availability of the application

EmployeesEmployeesRely on the application to process and monitor customer transactions, or facilitate day-to-day operations

What’s the Impact of Down-Time?Quantitative & Qualitative

Customers and PartnersCustomers and PartnersDirectly use the application or rely on applications used by your employees to submit or modify business transactions with your organization

The Impact of Down-TimeAn Internal Business Application Example

Industry Financial Services ▪ Insurance

Application Description Claims Processing Application This application moves and synchronizes data between Microsoft

SQL Server, a 3rd party claims package, and a 3rd party check writing application.

Use Characteristics Application Users: 100 to 1,000 Transactions Processed per Day: 1,000 to 10,000 Value per Transaction: $26 to $100 (profit per claim)

A Five Hour ApplicationOutage and Its Ripple Effect

Claims Department Employees: 250Average Claims per Hour: 2Employee Cost per Hour: $17.00

Average Lost Profit per Claim: $43.00Lost Productivity During Outage: $21,250

Delayed Profits from Claims: $107,500

Government penalties directly impact bottom line profitability and stock valueNegative press begins to hurt company's reputation and undermine its ability to hold onto long term, profitable customers and underwrite new ones.

EmployeesEmployeesDuring the outage, claims cannot be processed by the employees – Unfortunately, this is a routine occurrence.

1

CustomersCustomersAs outages continue to occur, customers notice that claims are taking longer to resolve. They are becoming increasingly frustrated, and gradually begin switching to better insurers.

3

Other PartiesOther PartiesAnd, the government starts to assess penalties for the repeated, disproportionate number of claims that do not meet processing deadlines.

4

IT IT Operations/DevelopmentOperations/DevelopmentThe outage is quickly discovered, but it takes several hours to identify the root cause before the application can be restored for use.

2 IT Employees Tasked: 4Average Cost per Hour: $33.00

Lost Productivity During Outage: $660

Other, unaccountable loss from impact of scheduled work or project delays.

Late claims spark increased number of customer inquires, impacting call centerIt takes 3 years of paid premiums before breaking even on a new customer. Profitability is severely impacted by higher customer acquisition costs as the company tries to offset the loss of established customers.

As the Application Stack Evolves, So Must Its ManageabilityManagement Products Must Keep Pace With Evolving Requirements

Platform Evolution : Mainframe Client/Server Web EAI/B2B Web Services Platform Evolution : Mainframe Client/Server Web EAI/B2B Web Services

Application

Application

System SW

ApplicationApplication

Application

System SW

DBMS

Application

Application

System SW

DBMS

ApplicationServer

Application

System SW

DBMS

ApplicationServer

IntegrationServer

Application

System SWSystem SW

DBMSDBMS

ApplicationServer

ApplicationServer

IntegrationServer

IntegrationServer

Web ServicesWeb Services

Application

Memory Management

Operating System

Management

Database and Network Management

Application Server

Management

B2B Control and

Business Process

Management

Web Services

Management

What Role Do Management Frameworks and Consoles Play?

Their key strength is gathering a broad array of events and metrics (a distributed event manager) from: Operating Systems

Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2003 Server, Windows 2008 Server, UNIX, Linux

Network Protocols DHCP, DNS, RAS, WINS

Microsoft Technologies Active Directory, IIS, Terminal Services, MSCS, MSMQ

They are also geared towards managing packaged applications: Microsoft Exchange Server & Lotus Notes Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle 8i, IBM DB2 Siebel CRM, PeopleSoft HR, etc…

How Do You Manage CustomDeveloped Business Applications?

You need to know what’s going on underneath your application, in the operating system Management frameworks and consoles do this well

Microsoft Operations Manager, BMC Patrol, Tivoli Enterprise, Computer Associates UniCenter TNG, Hewlett-Packard OpenView, NetIQ AppManager

But you really need to know whether or not your custom code is successfully transacting the business as intended This is outside their realm of expertise!

Even Microsoft is relying on other vendors to provide ‘expert knowledge’ and tools for complex management problems Which is why, when it comes to managing custom developed business

applications, Xtremesoft’s AppMetrics is the solution

Microsoft’s View on Systems Management

MicrosoftServer

Operating Sytems

StorageMgmt

SecurityManagement

HostingMgmt

NetworkMgmt

ChangeMgmt

Base servermanagementprovided byMicrosoft

Value added andother ‘expert’ managementprovided by ISVs(like Xtremesoft)

Xtremesoft’s AppMetricsis a Focused Solution

A solution geared towards explicitly managing: COM+ and .NET Serviced Components

AppMetrics collects detailed, application specific events and metrics for your custom business applications Aggregates events from multiple underlying technologies Collates them from the perspective of your application Gives you a view that corresponds to your businesses Enables you to measure and maximize a specific custom

application’s effectiveness and availability

Technologies

Packaged Apps

System

AppMetrics does Events & Metrics for Custom Applications

Mission-Critical Management

Terminal Svcs Active Directory MSMQ IIS MSDTC DHCP

CPU Memory Disk Network File System Print

Exchange SQLServer

Management Tools typically do Events & Metrics for Operating Systems

Management Tools typically do Events & Metrics for Technologies

Some Management Tools do Events & Metrics for Packaged Applications

Custom Developed AppsCustom Developed AppsCustom Developed Applications

Your B2CRetail PurchasingWeb Site & App

(COM+)

Your TradingPartner Supply

Chain App(BizTalk Server)

What Does This Mean?

Traditional management tools are general practitioners They provide cursory information on your application server Information that can tell you that a single server the application is

hosted on is non-functional The server’s CPU is thrashing, server memory use exceeding 80%, or a

server and its application has crashed

Often too late, and unable to answer the real question, “Why?”

Xtremesoft AppMetrics is the specialist It can diagnose and pinpoint “Why?” and do so proactively

An application’s CPU or memory use exceeding threshold, a designated kind of transaction taking too long, a particular component is aborting, a components method accessing a database repeatedly hangs

And on a per application basis, across a server farm, not just per server And give you detailed reporting for capacity planning and analysis

Custom ApplicationKey Business Events & Metrics

Traditional management tools and frameworks won’t tell you about business transactions: Shopping cart transaction count? Purchase order approval duration? Credit card approval abort count? Invoice transmission failed? (Show it be automatically

resubmitted?)

These are your front office business transactions, and represent real dollars and opportunities Not your back office infrastructure!

You need to manage both!

Business Value

$$$

What’s the Value to You?

System System Operating

System

Management tools typically tell you that disks are spinning, CPU’s aren’t pegged, network packets are flowing… System

System Technology

Management tools typically tell you DHCP, DNS, Active Directory, WINS, and MSMQ, are up and running…

System System Packaged

Applications

Some kinds of management tools let you know SQL Server database records are being written and Exchange Server e-mail works…

System System Custom

Applications

AppMetrics lets you know that the ‘business’ process logic implemented in your custom application is transacting successfully… (or not!)

How Does that ValueTranslate into Real Money?

“By using AppMetrics, the availability of the application has increased by a few percentage points. Considering for every one percentage point of additional availability a thousand man-hours of down-time is saved and hence results in millions of dollars in improved efficiency throughout the organization.”

www.xtremesoft.com

+1 781-759-1220

“Maximize the availability of your applications on the Microsoft platform”