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Technology

Scout Monitoring Releases Scout APM To Simplify Code Performance Troubleshooting in a New Platform-as-a-Service Market

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New APM-as-a-Service Platform Designed by Developers for Developers Quickly Isolates Problem Code in Business-Critical Web Applications.

Fort Collins, CO, USA — Scout Monitoring (http://www.scoutapp.com), creators of highly reliable server and application monitoring solutions created by developers for developers, has released the first application performance monitoring (APM) service for developers deploying apps to Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions. Scout APM represents the next phase in developer migration to writing software for PaaS, allowing programmers to design and troubleshoot specialized apps faster than ever before.

“Scout gives us unprecedented performance insights into our web apps: down to the slow line-of-code, associated database calls, the developer that wrote it, and when the code was changed. Putting the pieces together without Scout would take hours – we’re able to do it in minutes with Scout,” says Aaron Scruggs, CTO of AcademicWorks, the leading provider of scholarship management solutions for universities, community colleges, and community foundations. “Now, more of our development team’s time is spent delivering great features, not tracking down performance issues.”

Before the advent of software-as-as-service, developers were responsible for the full-stack of their application, from the load balancer down to the database servers. Vendors and hosted services have offloaded many of those functions, such as Amazon Elastic Load Balancing (load balancer) and Relational Database Service (database). As a result, software engineers worry less about infrastructure plumbing and spend more time writing custom application code. Although this means more and better value-added applications, it also means new issues with increasingly complex custom code that slows performance.

Scout APM was developed as a hosted solution to instrument web app custom code versus the full stack infrastructure stack. By providing a targeted, application-specific APM solution that isolates problems in custom code, Scout APM addresses the most time-consuming developer issue – finding and fixing bottlenecks in custom code – while avoiding areas for which developers are not responsible.

“Anyone writing software to run on a hosted, platform-as-a-service like Heroku or Cloud Foundry knows that the only code they need to worry about runs on the App Server,” said Derek Haynes, CEO of Scout. “Since they aren’t responsible for uptime or services beyond the app code, we developed Scout APM as a surgical tool to fix problems in custom code.”

Where most APM tools use sampling and make it hard to pinpoint problems, Scout APM goes beyond simple code metrics assessment. Scout APM identifies five key elements behind every slow app request: who wrote it, where the line of code resides, when was it committed and deployed, which file, and what is the database analysis. Rather than spending hours to isolate a performance problem, Scout APM can isolate the problem in minutes, including the programmer best suited to address it.

Scout APM also has three key features that make it an excellent tool for app performance troubleshooting:

1. Captures every request – Where most APM solutions merely sample slow requests, Scout APM captures every request to provide better insight into app performance.
2. Integrates with Git – Works with Git open source version control to make it easy to identify who wrote the code, and when.
3. Provides context – In addition, Scout APM allows you to attach custom context to slow requests. For example: identify the email address of the user that triggered the event, the associated database shard, and the customer’s monthly spend.

Finally, Scout APM has a flexible pricing model for both apps running on PaaS services and those powered by traditional servers. Customers can choose to be billed by their request volume (starting at $20/month) or by the number of hosts their app runs on (starting at $59/host).

Scout APM is available now. For more information about Scout APM and Scout Server, visit http://www.scoutapp.com.

About Scout Monitoring
Since 2009, Scout Monitoring has been providing server and application monitoring services to developers around the world. Developed by programmers for programmers, Scout’s hosted monitoring tools are designed to provide a clean, reliable monitoring solution for servers and applications. The Scout philosophy is that monitoring doesn’t have to painful, and tens of thousands of loyal customers managing applications for some of the world’s most recognizable brands tend to agree.

Scout monitoring is based in Fort Collins, Colorado. For more information, please visit http://www.scoutapp.com.

Contact:
Tom Woolf
Woolf Media & Marketing
415-259-5638
tomw@woolfmedia.com

Technology

Scout Monitoring Introduces Scout APM, First SaaS Application Monitoring Solution to Isolate Issues That Affect Revenue

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New Hosted APM Platform Pinpoints Web Application Bottlenecks in Real Time to Address Needs of Today’s Business-Critical Cloud Environments.

Las Vegas, NV, USA — At the AWS re:Invent conference this week, Scout Monitoring, creators of reliable server and application monitoring solutions created by developers for developers, unveiled its latest hosted application monitoring solution, Scout APM. Unlike other application performance management (APM) products, Scout APM is the only one that automatically prioritizes performance problems based on their impact on business-critical Web applications.

Application development and management has become more complex with virtualization and cloud computing. Release cycles are shorter so more programmers are using agile development strategies, and production environments have become more dynamic with more frequent software releases. Unfortunately, most APM solutions can’t keep pace with today’s accelerated software development cycles. Scout APM addresses those issues by delivering context-driven analysis that exposes Web application bottlenecks in a software-as-a-service solution.

Scout APM is the first APM platform to offer context-driven performance analysis, highlighting bottlenecks that have an immediate impact on revenue first, so you can correct the software code before it has a dramatic effect on the bottom line. Scout APM is also the only platform that features automatic developer attribution, not only exposing the specific code responsible for performance problems, but also identifying which developer on the team is best suited to resolve the problem.

Scout APM isolates code problems quickly, shortening time to resolution with features such as:

• Exposing poor application performance in real time;
• Identifying who experienced the problem, how frequently, and in what segment of the application source code;
• Isolating the exact line of code creating the performance issue;
• Notifying the developer who last worked with the code; and
• Determining if the performance failure is an isolated issue or part of a larger problem.

“Developers have been asking us for a hosted APM solution that offers the same reliability and ease of use as our SaaS server monitoring product,” said Andre Lewis, CTO and co-founder of Scout. “With Scout APM, we have created a robust application performance management tool that isolates problems quickly and efficiently. And since it’s delivered as a hosted solution, it’s easy to implement without budget approval from senior management. It’s ideal for business-critical applications on any scale.”

Other hosted APM products are priced by the server, which can become exceedingly expensive with virtualization and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Scout APM is licensed at $10 per monitored process per month. A small-scale deployment could cost less than $100 per month, and a typical deployment costs less than $1,000 per month. Pricing was deliberately structured so developers and department managers could quickly add Scout APM to troubleshoot development issues without having to seek budget approval from senior management.

Scout APM is available now. For more information about Scout APM and Scout Server, visit http://www.scoutapp.com.

About Scout Monitoring
Since 2009, Scout Monitoring has been providing server and application monitoring services to developers around the world. Developed by programmers for programmers, Scout’s hosted monitoring tools are designed to provide a clean, reliable monitoring solution for servers and applications. The Scout philosophy is that monitoring doesn’t have to painful, and tens of thousands of loyal customers managing applications for some of the world’s most recognizable brands tend to agree.

Scout monitoring is based in Fort Collins, Colorado. For more information, please visit http://www.scoutapp.com.

Media Contact:
Tom Woolf
(415) 259-5638
tomw@woolfmedia.com