Leading Research Firm Names AppFirst "Cool Vendor" in Application Performance Monitoring

NEW YORK, May 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Gartner Research today named AppFirst as one of four companies highlighted in a new report from Research Director Jonah Kowall and Research VP Will Capelli entitled "Cool Vendors in APM."  AppFirst is a leading provider of critical business and system visibility solutions, designed to aid businesses in their quest to completely align IT with business goals.  AppFirst's platform and solutions enable IT to integrate business performance and system metrics into a single repository.  With that capability, organizations are impacted in powerful ways: sharing insights about customers, engaging the organization to innovate at the most grassroots level, executing to bring that innovation to market, and resolving issues before their customers even know there is a problem.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120501/SF98543LOGO)

"We highlight Cool Vendors in APM that should be considered as part of an IT operations management software strategy," said Jonah Kowall, Gartner research director, in his report entitled "Cool Vendors in Application Performance Monitoring, 2012." "This dynamically evolving market segment holds high interest for those in IT operations, application support, development and quality assurance, and for line-of-business managers."

Because IT sits as the nexus point between customers and the services they consume, IT has focused and unique knowledge to lead the organization.  To support the transition to true alignment, technology executives must have access to the business and system metrics that live within applications to provide critical business visibility through technical operations.  AppFirst delivers the platform and solutions needed to be able to use those metrics to drive business.

"We are pleased that Gartner has recognized the importance of Application Performance Monitoring Solutions as critical to the overall IT operation," said Pamela Roussos, chief marketing officer for AppFirst, Inc.  "By having direct and immediate access to business metrics, IT is ideally suited to integrate those metrics into the overall risk framework, becoming the go-to source for business and system risk management."

AppFirst Solutions
AppFirst recently unveiled new initiatives designed to support organizations in their move to complete alignment:

• System Risk Management Solution – Following AppFirst's continued commitment to DevOps teams, the System Risk Management solution delivers tools that provide a 360-degree view of risks and use baselines, enabling execution of any technical action from a common set of data.  This allows companies to be alerted to, and prevent failures, and allows IT to evangelize prevention over recovery.
• Business Risk Management Solution – Focused on supporting technical executives, this solution moves organizations to a truly aligned state where IT is the direct source for business risk management.  Tech execs can now have a shared view of business risks and how they relate to the overall system, allowing business performance metrics to be integrated into the overall risk framework.

For more information on these initiatives, or any other AppFirst solutions, please visit the website at www.appfirst.com.

About AppFirst, Inc.
AppFirst is the leading SaaS-based provider of critical business and system visibility solutions that allow organizations to closely align their IT and business goals to manage business risks.  Focused on mid-market IT executives, as well as application architects and DevOps, the company delivers the platform and solutions that integrate business performance and system metrics into a single repository, providing cause analysis at a glance.

The company provides a simple yet thorough way to use business and system-related metrics to quickly and easily identify the root cause of application and infrastructure problems and measure the impact to the business, increasing revenues and customer retention.

Founded in 2009, AppFirst is a New York City-based company venture backed by FirstMark Capital, First Round Capital and Javelin Partners. For more information, visit http://www.appfirst.com. Follow us on Twitter or subscribe to the AppFirst blog to stay up-to-date on the latest AppFirst news.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE AppFirst