Do you want to know how well you are managing the performance of your critical applications? Then benchmark! By benchmarking application performance management (APM) best practices you discover how well you are meeting your own performance objectives and how well you stack up against others. A benchmark score shows on a numerical scale how well you are implementing the four best practices we described on May 29 and 30. Benchmarking allows you to compare your own best practice implementations with the industry norm and with those who are executing well and achieving best results.
NetForecast’s 2007 APM Benchmarking Survey
In 2007 NetForecast surveyed more than 330 enterprises to characterize their current APM practices and assess the results of those practices. Participating enterprises represented more than 20 industries, and were evenly distributed among enterprises with fewer than 500 employees, 500 to 10,000 employees, and more than 10,000 employees. The survey was administered via the Web.
We asked enterprises about their processes and methodologies in each of the four best practice areas. We asked how they defined, organized, measured, and communicated their performance management processes. Note that these questions are about people and process, not technology and tools.
You may recall that in past blogs we made the case that good performance management sits on a three-legged stool, with the legs consisting of people, process, and products. Benchmarking best practices captures how well you are working with what you have–the people and process part. APM benchmarking is not a contest to see how many products your company can afford to buy.
We analyzed each respondent’s answers and formulated an APM benchmark score for each of the four best practices on a 10-point scale–with 10 the best (highly organized and formal approach to performing the best practice) and 0 the poorest (no attempt to perform this best practice). We then aggregated the four individual best practice benchmark scores into an overall best practice score for that enterprise.
APM Benchmark Results
The following figure shows the APM benchmark score distribution across the survey population. The aggregate benchmark score for all respondents is 4.3–just shy of the halfway point between 0 and 10. Overall there is significant room for improvement, however, some enterprises already have relatively strong APM best practices in place, while others have barely started down the APM best practices path.
The survey population segments into three groups: bottom performers with scores of three or less, middle performers with scores between three and five, and top performers with scores greater than five. Each group represents about one-third of the total survey population.
Later this week we will show you how APM best practice benchmark scores correlated to application performance results, and very soon you will have a chance to take part in this year’s survey, the results of which we will share with you.
