Mobile Application Performance Management, or mAPM for short, is a solution that can be used pre and post launch to monitor the health of one’s mobile app. It provides key diagnostics across device, operating system, app version, and network activity.
The typical process for installing an mAPM solution is as easy as dropping a few lines of code into your app. Most solutions take less than 5 minutes to install.
What Does mAPM Stand For?
Mobile Application Performance Management.
What Is It?
mAPM gives developers, operations, and business executives the ability to monitor the health of an app, prioritize bugs, and trend diagnostic data.
What Does It Cover?
We can break mAPM down into five main sections.
Operating System
Each mobile platform has numerous versions of OS. Apple has improved their process to the point where ~90% of their user base is on iOS7. Android on the other hand still has some major fragmentation issues.
Device
Motorola, HTC, Samsung, Sony, Apple, Windows … there are thousands of different manufacturer models that all vary in screen size, resolution, battery life, and memory.
App Version
Is your latest point release running better than the previous version? Did the user even update to the latest app version or are they still on that buggy build?
3rd Party Services
The average app depends on 6 cloud services. Could an API be slowing your app?
Carrier and Connectivity
Could AT&T be causing your app to crash in San Francisco? Can your app gracefully jump between various network types?
What Options Do I Have?
Crittercism started off as a crash reporting service. They were the original “mobile-first” player to the scene and have now evolved to include a full mAPM service.
Bugsense, like Crittercism, started out as a crash reporting service and has since evolved into a platform that covers crash and performance metrics. Splunk recently acquired Bugsense to give their clients a competitive mobile offering.
New Relic was originally a SaaS platform that monitored web applications. In early 2013 they expanded their offering to monitor native mobile applications on iOS and Android. New Relic is does not cover crash reporting like Crittercism or Bugsense, but they are a viable option for Network Monitoring.
How Do I Get Started?
Most mAPM platforms have a simple installation process which only requires a few lines of code be dropped into your app. A trained monkey can have this installed within five minutes.
Once you decide on a solution, just shoot an email to sales@(companyname).com. You will get a response within a half hour tops.
