Application Management

What is Application Management?

Application Management (AM) is the lifecycle process for software applications, covering how an application operates, its maintenance, version control, and upgrades from cradle to grave. Application management services are an enterprise-wide endeavor providing governance designed to ensure applications run at peak performance and as efficiently as possible, from the end-user experience to integration with enterprise back office functions such as database, ERP, and SaaS cloud functions such as CRM.

In this manner, AM acts as a service operation function that manages and supports applications and key stakeholders who provide operational proficiency or technical expertise through the lifecycle.

Some AM processes include Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Application Performance Management (APM).

There are several stakeholder groups in AM, who should work as a team to reach critical decisions such as build or buy, whether an application should be modernized or replaced, or where the application should be hosted.

Some key stakeholders in AM are:

• Application Manager/Application Analyst: Owns the AM process and thus manages the overall application lifecycle. Typically, there would be one Application Analyst or a team of Application Analysts for each major application. Also responsible for performing skills gap analysis and acquiring needed skills or staff.
• Business Unit Owners: Business-level staff members who view applications and AM in terms of bottom-line benefits, increased productivity, impact on revenue, and improved competitive stance.
• Developers/DevOps/DevSecOps: This group of IT professionals are charged with the design, development, deployment, integration, security, and maintenance of applications.
• Application users: Users provide feedback on productivity and performance, and key concerns for users include privacy, and security of the applications.

The ultimate goal of AM is to implement efficient, reliable, and cost-effective code that enables an enterprise to meet its business objectives by ensuring that the required capabilities – both management and technical – are in place, and to further ensure that any technical issues are rapidly diagnosed and resolved.

How does Application Management Work?

Traditionally, AM was part of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes, specifically as part of the ITIL Process Map as outlined in the process overview of ITIL Application Management.

Once the build-vs-buy decision for a given application is made, AM stakeholders collaborate with technical teams including DevSecOps to ensure the requisite skills to design, test, manage, and improve the application’s services are on hand or acquired and constantly refined to meet changing environment and needs. Note that the exact functions of an application management system are constantly evolving, just as application development methodologies have evolved from waterfall to agile to cloud-native.

What are application management Services?

Since not every organization has the capability of staffing full time AM positions, or is already dealing with IT backlog, many organizations rely on application management services (AMS) to augment their AM capabilities. AMS organizations enable the outsourcing of application maintenance and monitoring, and AMS firms then shoulder the responsibility of patch management, bug fixes, and enhancements, freeing up valuable IT, line of business (LOB), and DevSecOps resources. Even large enterprises utilize AMS services to help reduce backlogs, as evidenced by a Gartner report showing that IT backlogs were hindering application adoption.

Enterprises can prevent these backlogs – and the user-dissatisfaction, interruptions and other inefficiencies those backlogs cause – by outsourcing the monitoring, management, bug-fixing and optimization tasks for those apps to an AMS provider.

AMS organizations help mitigate continuity risks that occur when key personnel leave, reduce the time required to backfill necessary AM skills, and can contribute to every application from web application to database to custom in-house business code developed on legacy platforms.

For many small/medium businesses (SMBs), AMS providers may be the only reasonable way to achieve a robust application lifecycle management process, given the typically limited IT resources present. The AMS market is rapidly growing, with estimates from Grand View Research indicating that the global AMS market would exceed USD $87B by 2025.

What does an application manager do?

What is an Application Manager?

Application Managers are IT professionals who own the AM process that manages the application software lifecycle within the enterprise. Typically, application managers are not developers or users, rather they are analysts who help define the need for new applications, communicate their findings to other key stakeholders, lead implementation, maintenance, and retirement of applications as part of the IT team.

Key functions of an application manager include:

• Identifying business opportunities for new applications by analyzing workflows and determining where efficiencies can be gained
• Determine whether new application capabilities should be purchased, subscribed to via SaaS, or developed in-house
  • If software is purchased, application manager oversees acquisition of infrastructure, installation, configuration, and application lifecycle
  • If developed in-house, application manager collaborates with development, DevSecOps, and business units to ensure application meets the defined needs and user interface requirements
• In either case, application managers lead the roll-out to prevent any possible problems from becoming show-stoppers
• Leads problem resolution by troubleshooting technical issues as they occur and develops a solution to solve root cause issues.
• Determines when training is needed and oversees training for both IT and user teams
• Ensuring application’s usefulness, or whether application should be sunsetted in favor of newer application or due to elimination of business function

  Application managers are problem solvers, and as such must have solid analytical skills and the ability to develop creative solutions to problems. Since AM stakeholders exist throughout the organization, application managers by necessity have solid communication skills and leadership abilities to present and promote their suggestions and see them bear fruit.

  Skills that are most often associated with application managers include:

  • Strong understanding of project management
  • System analysis including design, development, deployment, and support
  • IT troubleshooting
  • Business process automation (BPA)
  • Database management
  • Communicating technical concepts to non-IT audiences

  Additionally, experience in developing training programs is a big plus, as are advanced data analytics skills such as Big Data and Machine Learning. Those interested in pursuing a career in application management should also research industry associations such as the Application Developers Alliance.

  Why is application management important for the business?

  Application management is a key factor in a business’ ability to innovate. By ensuring that business functions are being properly addressed with modern applications, business process solutions can be brought to market more efficiently, quickly, and at a lower total cost. When applications are efficiently managed, more IT resources are available to focus on new business challenges and competitive issues.

  Additionally, effectively managed applications are more reliable and less prone to failure that could lead to loss of functionality. Thus, application management can reduce the risk of downtime and improve overall business continuity.

  By incorporating new capabilities and monitoring user issues, application management can provide an enhanced end-user experience, which not only increases productivity but also helps accelerate the adoption of new applications or features.

  The importance of application management to the bottom line is manifold. Efficient management strategies reduce person-hours spent in meetings, yielding higher productivity. Solid application management practices can reduce the need to retain expensive outside consultants, and lower overall operating costs as the number and frequency of application problems decrease.

  What is Application Lifecycle Management?

  Application lifecycle management (ALM) describes the ecosystem that manages an application from cradle to grave. ALM is composed of stakeholders, ALM tools, and a management process that spans each phase of an application’s existence.

  As enterprises evolve from traditional waterfall to agile and DevOps to cloud-native applications, ALM tools and processes evolve in sync, so that there may be multiple ALM processes in a given organization depending on where they are in their transition from traditional to modern applications.

  One goal of ALM is to combine these multiple development practices into a comprehensive management methodology that encompasses legacy, agile, and cloud-native development.

  Many enterprises adopting ALM have also embraced continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) of applications with frequent releases as opposed to traditional monthly or quarterly releases that embody many changes over a period of time into a single release.

  Thus, ALM encompasses the lifecycle of applications by considering the need for maintenance and updates as an ongoing process. ALM provides all stakeholders with visibility into the development process, offering a clear view of where the enterprise is in the development, integration, or maintenance of a given application.

  There are distinct phases of the ALM process including

  Governance: Beginning with business need, application governance includes the decision-making process on why applications are needed, what problems they solve, what resources will be required to make the application a reality, and what regulatory, security, and other considerations must be taken into account, for example if data must be kept in a certain geography.

  Development: Development and DevOps teams begin the creation of the application, increasingly utilizing agile tools and methods to achieve CI/CD, whether for containerized deployments or for traditional VM workloads. The development process includes acquiring or writing code, testing the application, and facilitating its deployment once initial development is completed.

  Waterfall development processes separate testing from development, with agile and DevOps teams testing is performed in conjunction with development as a single integrated process.

  Maintenance: After deployment, ALM focuses on maintenance for the remainder of the application’s useful life. Frequent releases address both bugs and feature additions, as well as integration with other new or legacy applications. Maintenance also addresses any rehosting necessary if applications are moved from on-premises to cloud and from cloud to containers.

  Enterprises often rely on one or more ALM tools to facilitate the ALM process, helping to keep track of version control, collaboration, and requests for bug fixes and new features.

  Popular ALM tools include Basecamp and Atlassian Jira, amongst many others.

  Application Manager Класс

  Определение

  Управляет доменами приложений для ведущего приложения ASP.NET. Manages ASP.NET application domains for an ASP.NET hosting application.

  Комментарии

  ApplicationManagerОбъект обеспечивает управление жизненным циклом объектов в среде размещения для приложения ASP.NET. The ApplicationManager object provides lifetime management of objects in the hosting environment for an ASP.NET application. Он отвечает за следующее: It is responsible for:

  Активация и инициализация приложений ASP.NET. Activating and initializing ASP.NET applications.

  Управление временем существования приложения и временем существования объектов, зарегистрированных в приложении. Managing the application lifetime and the lifetime of objects registered in the application.

  Предоставление объектов, используемых средой размещения для обработки запросов приложений ASP.NET. Exposing objects used by the hosting environment to process ASP.NET application requests.

  Предоставление списка приложений, выполняющихся в процессе размещения в данный момент времени. Providing a list of applications running in the hosting process at any given moment.

  Методы

  Завершает работу всех доменов приложений. Shuts down all application domains.

  Создает объект для заданного домена приложения на основе типа. Creates an object for the specified application domain, based on type.

  Создает объект для указанного домена приложения на основе типа, виртуального и физического пути, а также логического значения, указывающего на ошибку, когда объект указанного типа уже существует. Creates an object for the specified application domain based on type, virtual and physical paths, and a Boolean value indicating failure behavior when an object of the specified type already exists.

  Создает объект для указанного домена приложения на основе типа, виртуального и физического пути, логического значения, указывающего на ошибку, когда объект указанного типа уже существует, и логического значения, указывающего, порождаются ли исключения ошибок инициализации размещения. Creates an object for the specified application domain based on type, virtual and physical paths, a Boolean value indicating failure behavior when an object of the specified type already exists, and a Boolean value indicating whether hosting initialization error exceptions are thrown.

  Создает объект, который содержит всю необходимую информацию для создания прокси-сервера, используемого для взаимодействия с удаленным объектом. Creates an object that contains all the relevant information required to generate a proxy used to communicate with a remote object.

  (Унаследовано от MarshalByRefObject) Equals(Object)

  Определяет, равен ли указанный объект текущему объекту. Determines whether the specified object is equal to the current object.

  (Унаследовано от Object) GetAppDomain(IApplicationHost)

  Получает домен приложения для приложения с использованием заданного узла. Gets the application domain of an application using the specified host.

  Получает домен заданного приложения. Gets the application domain of the specified application.

  Возвращает единственный экземпляр объекта ApplicationManager, связанный с ведущим процессом ASP.NET. Returns the single instance of the ApplicationManager object associated with this ASP.NET host process.

  Служит хэш-функцией по умолчанию. Serves as the default hash function.

  (Унаследовано от Object) GetLifetimeService()

  Извлекает объект обслуживания во время существования, который управляет политикой времени существования данного экземпляра. Retrieves the current lifetime service object that controls the lifetime policy for this instance.

  (Унаследовано от MarshalByRefObject) GetObject(String, Type)

  Возвращает зарегистрированный объект указанного типа из указанного приложения. Returns the registered object of the specified type from the specified application.

  Возвращает моментальный снимок выполняющихся приложений. Returns a snapshot of running applications.

  Возвращает объект Type для текущего экземпляра. Gets the Type of the current instance.

  (Унаследовано от Object) InitializeLifetimeService()

  Предоставляет домену приложения бесконечное время существования, предотвращая создание аренды. Gives the application domain an infinite lifetime by preventing a lease from being created.

  Возвращает значение, указывающее, находятся ли все размещенные в процессе приложения в состоянии бездействия и не обрабатывают запросы. Returns a value indicating whether all applications hosted by the process are idle and not processing requests.

  Создает неполную копию текущего объекта Object. Creates a shallow copy of the current Object.

  (Унаследовано от Object) MemberwiseClone(Boolean)

  Создает неполную копию текущего объекта MarshalByRefObject. Creates a shallow copy of the current MarshalByRefObject object.

  (Унаследовано от MarshalByRefObject) Open()

  Производит потокобезопасное увеличение числа пользовательских ссылок экземпляра диспетчера приложений. Makes a thread-safe increment to the user reference count of the application manager instance.

  Выгружает все ресурсы приложения. Unloads all application resources.

  Выгружает указанное приложение. Unloads the specified application.

  Удаляет указанный объект из списка зарегистрированных в приложении объектов. Removes the specified object from the list of registered objects in an application. Если удаляемый объект является последним оставшимся в списке объектов, зарегистрированных в приложении, то приложение выгружается. If the object to be removed is the last remaining object in the list of registered objects in an application, the application is unloaded.

  Возвращает строку, представляющую текущий объект. Returns a string that represents the current object.

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