Windows Azure gets real-time application performance monitoring

Summary: New Relic?s commitment to Windows Azure is an important step in making Microsoft?s cloud platform a viable alternative.

Regardless of the benefits that cloud computing can bring to your production environments, a key to delivering applications to your end-users is assuring that the applications are performing the way they should be. And no web services platform can be successful without the tools for developers and IT to look into running applications that can report on the behavior of application components and the progress of data through the application.

That?s why the announcement that New Relic?s web application performance monitoring tool will be available on the Windows Azure platform is important. The New Relic tool allows a view into the depths of running applications which is really the only way that developers or IT managers can find the bottlenecks that impact the end user experience that can?t be attributed to much more easily solved, and identified, external problems.

When the performance of the physical server or storage takes a hit due to hardware issues, it is fairly simple to diagnose the hardware problem and address them even in a brute force manner (replace the offending part). Network issues can become more complicated, but the tools for monitoring and following the flow of network traffic are well established and rerouting network traffic around identified network bottlenecks is an operational process that all network administrators are very familiar with.

While the news is that New Relic will be running on Windows Azure, the monitoring software is from a well-established company that already has more than 20,000 customers and a history of delivering on the promise of real-time web application monitoring. For Azure to be a successful platform, vendors such as new Relic need to be convinced to come on-board. The cloud implies a broad variety of services from the user?s choice of vendors, and Microsoft will need to continue to prove that they will not be simply their own Microsoft-centric walled garden.

With more than 20 years of published writings about technology, as well as industry stints as everything from a database developer to CTO, David Chernicoff has earned the term "veteran" in the technology world.

Disclosure

David Chernicoff

David does not invest in the technology he covers. As a freelance author and technologist he has had contract work with many vendors in the industry. Beyond the term of these short-term contracts there is no business or fiduciary arrangement with any technology vendor. David does not enter into contracts that would limit his freedom of expression in any way, nor is he remunerated for discussing any vendor. All comments in his blog writings are solely the opinions of David Chernicoff.

Biography

David Chernicoff

With more than 20 years of published writings about technology, as well as industry stints as everything from a database developer to CTO, David Chernicoff has earned the term "veteran" in the technology world. Currently the principal of an independent consulting business and an active freelance writer, David has most recently been a Senior Contributing Editor for Windows IT Pro magazine, having also been the Lab Director for Windows NT Magazine, Technical Director of PC Week Labs, the author or co-author of a number of books on different versions of Windows, a plethora of eBooks on various technology topics, and of approximately 3000 magazine articles in print and on the web.

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