Aternity Launches New Mobile Application Performance Management (APM) Platform for Enterprise App Development

Aternity has released mAPM for Enterprise Apps, a new set of mobile application performance management products that provide enterprises with the capabilities that their app development, IT Ops, and line of business teams need to measure, manage, and improve workforce productivity.

The mAPM capabilities allow enterprises to ensure a quality user experience for their business-critical mobile apps through the following:

The Aternity Workforce APM addresses the full range of mobile APM use cases for developers of mobile enterprise apps, IT Ops that support them, and the line of business that relies on them to ensure customer satisfaction and workforce productivity.

Aternity Workforce APM focuses from the perspective of the end user's device, on the user’s experience of all applications across all devices, to enable the enterprise to measure, manage, and improve workforce productivity.

Application diagnostics are critical for trouble shooting application performance problems, but Aternity Workforce APM also enables the ability to define business activities, user interactions with applications in the context of a business workflow, so enterprises can analyze application performance and workforce productivity in terms that make sense to the line of business.

Aternity dynamically monitors any user interaction, regardless of complexity, within any application running on any type of physical, virtual or mobile device, with no programming required.  Aternity Workforce APM extends across the broadest range of application technologies including thick client, web-based, Rich Internet, Java, .NET, Android and iOS applications.

Aternity Mobile APM for App Developers provides a no-cost, tag-free, SaaS offering to mobile app developers who need to ensure a quality end user experience for their apps.

The Mobile APM offers a full range of diagnostics to ensure an app earns a five star rating. When problems occur, isolate them to the code or the network, and analyze them with code level stack trace. Responses are prioritized by identifying impacted services, users, and devices. The performance of an app  is optimized across device and OS versions, geographies and carriers and the performance of an app is streamlined with analytics of response time, throughput, and data transfer size.

Aternity Mobile Wrapper enables IT Ops, app store and MDM administrators to instrument mobile apps for diagnostics and user interactions without requiring access to the code or an app developer, and with no loss of monitoring functionality.

It can be difficult for enterprises to get access to a development team to instrument an app with an SDK. In many cases, enterprises use third-party apps, or outsource the development of custom apps to third parties. Even when apps are developed in-house, developers have their own roadmap and priorities. 

For these scenarios, the Aternity Mobile Wrapper gives full control to the enterprise IT Ops teams or app store administrators to instrument mobile apps without access to the code, and with no loss of monitoring functionality. This provides a full range of capabilities to app developers, IT Ops, and the line of business to ensure quality user experience for mobile apps, as soon as they are ready to be rolled out. And because there are no code changes, there is no extra development effort or impact on release schedule when apps are updated.

To instrument an app, IT Ops teams or app store administrators add the Aternity Mobile SDK to their Apple .ipa or Android .apk application archive file using the Aternity Mobile Wrapper. This process can be done in minutes, and is as simple as adding content to a .zip file. The new .ipa or .apk file is then signed as needed, and posted to the enterprise app store for distribution. 

When users download the app, it is fully instrumented and ready to be monitored. The Aternity Mobile Wrapper monitors the interactions between the app and the core libraries of the mobile device, to provide both app level diagnostics, such as crash analytics, app error reporting, and service performance metrics; and business analytics, such as SLA monitoring, data plan management, and activity-based costing.

As an alternative approach to the Aternity Mobile Wrapper, app developers can include the no-cost, tag-free Aternity Mobile SDK in their app. There is no loss of functionality between the approaches.

The company has pointed out that analysts are projecting that the market for mAPM may surpass the market size of traditional APM. Describing this market trajectory, Gartner says “driven by the increasing significance of mobile application endpoint and increasingly dynamic Web technologies, end-user-experience monitoring will become even more important to enterprises. In fact, it is likely to shift its center of gravity from monitoring the end user experience of individual applications to monitoring and analyzing end-user behaviors across the entire portfolio of applications available to an end user at any given endpoint.” (From Garnter’s “Prepare for a Changing and Volatile APM Market in 2014”)

Aternity understands the central role of End User Experience Management in ensuring workforce productivity in virtualization, cloud, and mobile environments. Unlike APM products that focus on the performance of web-based applications, one at a time, from the vantage point of the data center, Aternity Workforce APM focuses from the perspective of the end user’s device, on the user’s experience of all applications across all devices, to enable the enterprise to measure, manage, and improve workforce productivity.

Trevor Matz, Aternity president and CEO says, “As enterprises adopt mobile apps to improve customer satisfaction and workforce productivity, they need mAPM solutions that address the needs of all three enterprise teams: app developers, IT Ops, and the line of business. Existing mAPM products primarily provide diagnostic capabilities for app developers. With mAPM for Enterprise Apps, Aternity adds vital capabilities, that for the first time, also enable IT Ops and the line of business to measure, manage, and improve workforce productivity, significantly impacting the bottom line.”

Pricing & Availability

Aternity Workforce APM is available now with a free 30-day product evaluation.

The Aternity Mobile Wrapper is available now at no cost to Aternity Workforce APM customers. 

Aternity Mobile APM for App Developers will be available as a free SaaS offering on May 28th.

New mAPM Whitepaper Downloads

Aternity has also published a series of free new whitepapers which include:

7 mAPM Keys for Driving Workforce Productivity: This paper outlines mobile APM product requirements for enabling excellent enterprise mobile user experience.

Aternity Mobile Wrapper: This publication addresses how enterprise IT Ops, MDM or app store administrators can instrument mobile apps for diagnostics and user interactions without access to the code or a developer.

How End User Experience Management Adds Value to Mobile Device Management: Details the additional benefits of mAPM for Enterprise Apps to enterprises using MDM, MAM, or MADP solutions.

Aternity monitors any application on any physical, virtual, or mobile device, providing a user-centric vantage point that closes the visibility gap existing with network- and server-centric application performance management tools. By transforming every device - physical, virtual, and mobile - into a self-monitoring platform that is user experience aware, enterprises receive IT management capabilities that reduce business disruptions and increase workforce productivity.

The company also sponsors EndUserExperience2Day, a news and blog resource site dedicated to the latest IT trends and technologies focused on End User Experience Management. www.enduserexperience.info. 

lt on an open environment so developers can choose any open source or third party tools and integrate apps, as needed.