This week we received some exciting news that AppDynamics is nominated for IT Optimisation Product of the Year!  The Network Computing Awards annually recognizes the solutions and companies that are “most impressive in helping organisations function better through getting the most out of their networks”.  As AppDynamics’ first Network Computing nomination, it’s great to be nominated by peers and receive some UK love.

This is all great, but it means nothing if we don’t have your help to vote!
Please see below and share this with your friends!

 How to Vote

You can see what the Network Computing awards are all about here, then follow these easy steps below:

First:
Click this link HERE to get started casting your vote!

Second:
Scroll down to choose AppDynamics under IT Optimisation Product of the Year (see below). Then submit!

.NET, appdynamics, IT Optimisation Product of the Year, Java, Network Computing Award

We came to JavaOne for the first time in 2011, and we liked it so much that not only are we sponsoring the event again, but this year we’re pulling out all the stops. At JavaOne 2012 we’ll have a bigger booth (#5115 – come check it out!), more demo stations, more awesome AppDynamics employees, and of course more Kiss My App T-shirts to give away.

We’re also excited to announce that our own data guru, Boris Livshutz, will be speaking at JavaOne. Boris will be talking about the woes of managing a complex data cloud, and his experience dealing with the <terabytes of> monitoring data AppDynamics collects every day. Come hear him speak in Parc 55 – Market Street at 1pm on October 2. Here’s the full abstract:

CON3253: Monitoring and Managing a Complex Data Cloud
Venue/Room: Parc 55 – Market Street
Date and Time: 10/2/12, 1-2pm

As application data grows rapidly, and data systems struggle to keep up, many have turned to sharding their data or using NoSQL solutions. These new complex systems or “data clouds” present a new array of challenges once they are deployed to production and the cloud. Ops and Dev teams need to find anew way to safely operate a data cloud in production, 24/7, while meeting application SLAs. But although many have talked about how to shard data, there has been little mention of how to manage the data cloud in production. This session will discuss some best practices and techniques around managing a complex data cloud in a production environment, such as unified alerting, measuring performance, and synchronized management and maintenance tasks.

Come get your t-shirt and demo at the AppDynamics booth (#5115)  in the Exhibit Hall. Also, check out our live updates from the event on our Twitter feed. We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

events, Java, JavaOne, JavaOne 2012

I made my first public appearance last week at JavaOne and had a blast mixing it with the dev community and the various exhibitors. Prior to being bitten by radioactive byte code, I’d attended JavaOne as a developer and had fond memories of vast crowds, packed session rooms, and nonstop partying. While JavaOne ran in parallel to Oracle Open World again this year, the event actually felt independent despite San Francisco city being littered with Oracle posters. Walking into the venue every morning felt like it was still the biggest Java conference in the world, especially when you had corridors of developers checking email on bean bags. Java is very much alive, despite skeptics claiming its dead or has no future. If you had to write a new mission critical application for your business today, I’d expect the majority of organizations would still opt for Java despite the hype around other languages like Ruby, Python and the return of PHP.

I was attending JavaOne with AppDynamics as an exhibitor, and I’m pleased to report things went very well for us. What was surprising is that many attendees already knew who we were and what we did, and that wasn’t just from U.S. attendees. I spoke to lots of developers from Europe who were already using AppDynamics Lite and were keen to see a demo of our latest Pro edition.

We also met several attendees who were in the process of evaluating APM toolsets for their organizations. which was great. APM is definitely becoming a priority now for many application teams, with most struggling to get decent performance and visibility in production. I had one alarming conversation with an architect while he was briefing me on his team’s success criteria for selecting an APM solution. I heard the words “All the monitoring vendors tell me they run in production with a few percent overhead so I’ll take their word for it.” For me that’s like agreeing to a mortgage without asking each bank what their actual interest rates and terms & conditions are. My advice to this chap was along the lines of “trust no vendor and prove all overhead claims in production.” The reality today is very few APM vendors can run and scale in production–even though they all sound the same!

Speaking of APM vendors, both OpNet and Quest invited me over to their booth and asked if I’d mind having my photo taken with them. Being an APM superhero I was more than happy to accept their offer; it’s actually good to banter with competitors who have a sense of humor. I did try my best with the other APM vendor, but all the booth staff declined while staring at the floor–something about getting into trouble with their boss if they were seen with App Man. Maybe they were afraid of my X-Ray vision…

Here’s a brief photo diary of what I got up to at JavaOne:

Video Summary:

AppDynamics Customer TiVo stopped by to say Hello:

Grabbing a Coffee at Starbucks:

Meeting Dubu Panda from BMC:

Saying hello OpNet:

Saying hello to Quest:

Enjoying a Beer after a long day:

apm, App Man, Application Performance, Java, JavaOne, JavaOne11, OpNet, Oracle Open World, Quest

Memory, Memory, Memory…

Memory is a critical part of Java, in particular, the management of memory. As a developer, memory management is not something you want to be doing on a regular basis, nor is it something you want to do manually. One of the great benefits of Java is its ability to take care of the memory model for you. When objects aren’t in use, Java helps you out by doing the clean up.

Read the Full Post…

APM Thought Leadership, application development, application monitoring, Java, memory leaks, memory thrash