Technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, raising the expectations of financial clientele for ever more efficient processing of investments and other financial transactions. Government is also demanding reform and higher compliance to Service Level Agreements (SLAs) than ever before. It might seem that the sheer volume of business processes connected with the financial industry would make meeting this challenge near impossible, but once again technology offers a solution that makes focusing on improved financial services attainable.

Source of Transaction Performance Problems

In the typical IT environment, applications have evolved to meet specific needs. Networks, web server farms, application servers, middleware messaging, databases and mainframes all operate within their own silo.

When application management fails to cross-link these separate functions, an overburdened service desk is a common result. When each application is reporting that nothing is wrong with it, how do the separate IT departments stop pointing fingers and get the problem solved? They don’t without expensive problem-solving sessions that may finally resolve one issue, only to waste more time reacting to another.

It clearly isn’t healthy for a financial business to have up to 65% of its problems reach customer-impacting levels. Using the customer to identify the flaws in the IT environment, not only creates customer ill will, it also requires a well-staffed service desk and causes inefficient staff utilization. The needless spending can reach massive levels.

Application Performance Management Concept

So how does application performance management (APM) work within the financial sector? Application performance monitoring as envisioned by Nastel Technologies, Inc. empowers not only the financial industry by integrating the information provided by all the separate IT applications within the business. Often it isn’t the individual applications themselves that have the problem. It is the way they are interacting. AutoPilot M6 delves deeply into these interactions.

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AutoPilot looks at the four primary groups of interdependent information that flow through financial services firms. First, there are the business transactions which are comprised of series of IT transactions. These transactions must be auto discovered and then monitored in real-time for proper execution, performance and compliance with service level agreements (SLAs). This aspect of AutoPilot focuses on business transaction management.

Then there are the applications that invoke the transactions. These also must be auto discovered and then monitored both for proper execution and for speed of execution. This component in AutoPilot addresses application performance management.

Then there is middleware messaging, the component that allows dissimilar applications to communicate with each other. The efficiency of this process must also be monitored. This component in AutoPilot handles middleware management.

Then there are the events taking place outside of the financial institution that have the power to impact the functioning of the system—laws passed by government, natural disasters, and other impacting events. Nastel Technologies has added business activity monitoring to its total application performance management (APM) product, so any financial business that uses their application performance monitoring system will be on the cutting edge of efficient operations.

How Application Performance Management Works

Nastel’s AutoPilot M6 application performance monitoring software correlates the information provided by each IT application using a highly scalable complex event processing (CEP) engine.  Designed to work with both home-grown and commercial IT platforms, AutoPilot performs business transaction performance diagnostics in real-time. Based on performance expectations entered into AutoPilot, it detects early stage abnormalities in transaction processes and issues alerts to the designated departments.

The CEP engine scans transactions constantly for patterns that hint that a “business abnormal” situation is developing. Logic errors or similar “normal accidents” that prevent transactions from executing properly are identified when failure to meet an service level agreement happens the first time, not after it has started generating service calls.

This saves a considerable amount of money. Long, non-productive IT blame-game sessions are eliminated. AutoPilot provides clear visibility into where the problem is, the first step to repairing it. The risk of a mission critical application failing is significantly reduced.

As an application performance management tool, Nastel Technology’s AutoPilot M6 has found recognition within the financial industry worldwide as one of the most effective application performance management technology solutions in the marketplace. It has been recognized by the Gartner Group and Forrester Research, two leading technology and marketing research firms within the financial industry.

With its embrace rather than replace existing IT structures within a financial or trade institution design, AutoPilot M6 is a cost effective solution for staying competitive and compliant within the financial sector. Learn more about using application performance management to maximize the efficiency of your IT environment today.