The technological transformation has placed IT leaders in a highly complex scenario: the proliferation of public cloud usage, native applications, more intensive data use, and agile methodologies, all while continuing to utilize on-premises systems, existing applications, and methodologies. Having an efficient IT performance management model that allows for maintaining service quality is an absolute imperative.
Considering the number of processes and transactions that large organizations support daily, with annual increases of up to 80% in transactions, or processed data which can reach 25%, it becomes essential to implement IT performance optimization procedures that facilitate adaptation to the constant requirements of the business. It goes without saying that the problem is magnified when we add the pace at which companies modify or renew their software, where 40% of application components change versions annually to stay updated and offer new services.
Transaction volumes growing by up to 80% annually or data increasing by up to 25% annually make it essential to implement performance optimization procedures to adapt to constant business requirements.
From the perspective of monitoring, optimization, and decision-making focused on improving performance, the cloud presents problems that were previously solved or did not exist. While in the mainframe world—and to some extent in distributed systems—monitoring was end-to-end, timings were well controlled, and predictions were possible, the situation is very different in the cloud.
And since there is no global vision or comprehensive capacity and performance plan, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand what is happening and how much it costs.
What parameters measure IT Performance?
Technological performance should be understood as the best combination of efficiency/costs, and its continuous improvement is imperative for large companies that still face cost overruns in their IT budgets that do not align well with business results.
Performance informs us about how software behaves when it runs. Inefficiencies in both legacy and native cloud applications generate problems, and their dynamic behavior is described based on response time, availability, infrastructure costs, and batch critical paths. By measuring these parameters, we can determine which code performs better or worse and address deficiencies accordingly.
IT Performance informs us about how software behaves when it runs. Its dynamic behavior is described based on:
- Response times
- Stability/availability
- Infrastructure costs
- Batch critical paths
When it comes to measuring, we find that, in previous environments, it is not feasible to do tests with high volumes of information and cases, so it is only possible to do performance tests in production, when the business may be affected. In this context, having an agile and automated procedure to evaluate the software and rapidly detect problems is crucial since it affects end-users and costs.
For development and operations teams, solving the problem is very challenging. They typically have limited detection tools and only achieve partial optimizations. Moreover, their focus is on developing and operating functionalities for the business, not on system efficiency.
While infrastructure, operation, and development are interconnected to support business applications, organizational structures often remain isolated due to technological architectures and partial visions related to development. This results in a lack of global infrastructure capacity plans, no focus on efficiency, and unpredictable, uncontrolled costs.
What solutions does the market offer?
In this context, none of the current APM (Application Performance Management), AIOps, DevOps, or observability solutions can provide a unified response to the needs inherent in monitoring, control, and continuous improvement of factors that directly impact competitiveness (infrastructure costs, user experience, compliance with service level agreements, and efficiency in the development cycle, understood as the objective measurement of software’s dynamic behavior).
They all focus on isolated areas of improvement, lacking the ability to automate the resolution of inefficiencies or measure the benefits in terms of business KPIs.
Proper performance management involves detecting, automating, resolving, and measuring while considering the entire IT infrastructure, without working in isolation. This creates a virtuous circle aimed at achieving faster and better system responsiveness while saving costs.
This is where the success of the Orizon BOA platform (Boost & Optimize Applications) lies, as it is the only platform where proactive, not reactive, monitoring and optimization are unified within it.
The need for a global Performance Operation Center (POC)
Optimized global IT performance management can only be achieved through the right combination of tools, methodology, and expertise.
The solution involves implementing a global Performance management function that orchestrates the entire system in a complete and continuous process, independent of technological environments and focusing on efficiency. This requires having a real capacity plan for all infrastructures, both on-premises and in the public cloud, annual growth forecasts, and measurement of real optimization achieved. It must also ensure global business service levels and operations, taking into account the specific characteristics of each infrastructure, architecture, software, and their interrelationships.
Establishing a Performance Operation Center (POC) will provide a global view of the entire IT infrastructure, identifying elements that impact business goals on a daily basis. This office’s methodology, supported by technology, helps address infrastructure cost, response time, and service level agreement (SLA) issues.
The POC will be composed of a qualified team of experts, the appropriate tool (the BOA platform), and the precise methodology (DevPerOps).
What does a Performance Operations Center (POC) entail?
The POC provides an integrated measurement and monitoring model that controls 100% of technical components in line with business processes. It analyzes software, identifies inefficiencies, establishes KPIs aligned with their business impact, proposes improvements, resolves issues, and measures results, creating a continuous learning and improvement cycle.
- Identification-Diagnosis
- Monitors and detects inefficiencies in software running in production environments, zOS, and midrange. It performs a triage task to determine the root cause of the problem, eliminates false positives, and provides a solution to be implemented (even at the code level).
- Management, Measurement, and Governance
- Leads the change management and reporting process.
- Culture and Collaboration
- Gradual implementation of a performance culture across all organizational levels and environments.
The POC implements an 8-phase methodological approach that involves monitoring, data extraction and processing for measuring KPIs, applying procedures based on values and their variations, designing improvement recommendations, supporting implementation, and measuring results.
Tools, Methodology, and Expertise
The Performance Operations Center works to improve efficiency and infrastructure costs, as well as ANS and data delivery, acting both on new developments – monitoring new versions of elements in production – and on existing ones, analyzing the more consumer components.
In this comprehensive combination of expertise, methodology, and tools, BOA is the ideal support to POC. It allows for centralized management of objectives, offering full project control through dashboard generation and tracking reports.
With BOA, it is possible to understand what is happening while ensuring continuous improvement and informed decision-making to achieve the best performance levels, which is also the goal of the DevPerOps methodology, the second component to keep POC running smoothly.
The DevPerOps methodology introduces the concept of performance into the DevOps cycle, extends its culture throughout the organization and its suppliers, and provides a business perspective to IT development and operations.
Benefits of a Performance Operations Center (POC)
The implementation and continued operation of an POC will yield multiple benefits.
Tangible Benefits:
- Service Quality: Improved application response times, availability, and SLA delivery.
- • Reduced consumption of IT infrastructure components affecting the budget: process cost reduction.
Intangible Benefits:
- Production Area: Continuous, daily, and objective performance monitoring process implementation.
- Development Area:
- Development cycle continuous improvement, using POC information for technical design improvements.
- Ability to measure the performance of suppliers, applications, etc.
- Software quality process based on objective data.
- Architecture Area: Ability to measure the correctness of architectural decisions, evaluating strategies adopted.
- Business: Availability of information regarding potential operational issues, costs, and development suppliers.
Performance and quality culture
The afore mentioned benefits directly contribute to creating a culture of performance and quality in organizations, providing:
✓ A tool for continuous evaluation, management, and reporting mechanisms for software’s dynamic behavior.
✓ Organizational cohesion around the concept of performance.
✓ Global improvement in operation: cost and time reduction.
✓ A continuous improvement cycle: improving development and identifying best technological practices.
The successful implementation and performance of the POC are also defined by strong support from the organizations’ leadership, including investments in training, tools, and teams.
A qualified team of experts
The third essential component for establishing the Performance Operations Center is expertise. A team of professionals trained and experienced in performance optimization is crucial to successfully carry out the project.
What skills define a performance team? In today’s market, there is not a single performance analyst profile that encompasses all the necessary skills and expertise. Building a multidisciplinary team with high qualifications is essential, requiring expertise in monitoring across various architectures and a deep understanding of business (technology/business traceability), massive data processing, advanced KPIs, optimization techniques in code, databases and architecture, and development cycle management to provide comprehensive coverage.
In summary, a well-prepared team is essential to orchestrate the complex scenario that technological transformation is posing to IT leaders. Their ultimate goal is to improve business efficiency and effectiveness by optimizing the performance of their technological infrastructure, all while improving the user experience and reducing IT costs without compromising service quality.
Conclusions
When we talk about performance, we talk about the efficiency and effectiveness of technological infrastructures with an impact on customer satisfaction, profitability and competitiveness.
The complexity of technological transformation, with the adoption of the public cloud and new methodologies, together with the enormous annual increase in processes and transactions, increases the need to optimize performance.
To achieve global performance management, it is essential to have a Technical Performance Office (OTR), also known as Performance Operation Center (POC), with tools, methodology and expertise. The benefits of an OTR include improvements in service quality, cost reduction and a culture of performance. The benefits of an OTR include improvements in service quality, cost reduction and a culture of performance.
Definitely, technological performance directly impacts the business, and a comprehensive performance management strategy is essential to successfully address digital transformation. Orizon can help you reduce costs by up to 35% and improve service times by 25% to 40%.
