In Part 1 of this blog and Part 2, I discussed my ongoing work on EMA's first Radar dedicated to Advanced Performance Analytics (APA). In this blog I will cover APA differentiators.
Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the more advanced APA capabilities leverage a wide range of advanced heuristics — most classically algorithms for anomaly detection, optimization, and predictive trending, along with advanced forms of correlation — but EMA has also seen everything from Chaos Theory to Fuzzy Logic, to DNA resequencing applied. Many of these capabilities may also utilize warehousing, OLAP, and even data mining for advanced historical analysis and a complementary form of predictive trending through integration, although a few offer these capabilities internally.
In looking across the 22 participating vendors, and while still totaling the data, I would say that their APA solutions, on average, harvest about six or seven heuristic approaches. After all, this a focus on analytics, not just basic monitoring. And, in fact, this research is “source neutral” — vendors are not awarded extra points for providing the monitoring themselves, which nonetheless most still do.
But this is, for instance, one critical area of differentiation — Do you primarily want an overlay analytic capability to harvest existing monitoring investments, or do you want a solution that can start you fresh from the ground up? This APA Radar can accommodate both of these choice options equitably.
There is also a unique kind of Big Data capability associated with APA, as some of these solutions can harvest and analyze multiple tens of millions of events, metrics and other data sources in near real time. Some, in fact, can process more than 50 million KPIs within five minutes! So scalability can also be a differentiator.
This of course is especially relevant based on the size of your organization or company. And in some cases scalability can come at some very attractive price points — in part thanks to the advent of Cloud options for accommodating added processing volumes on demand.
This is the third in a 3-part blog series providing an insider's look into EMA's upcoming Radar for APA.
Click here to read Part 1 of the blog series
Click here to read Part 2 of the blog series
Dennis Drogseth is VP at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).
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