This is a summary document of the EMA Radar for Application-Aware Network Performance Management 2013: Illuminating the Pipes.

The days when network managers could simply be concerned with interoperability and uptime are long past, and the focus has turned towards recognizing and eliminating performance degradations. This demand has also elevated and coalesced specifically around gaining a direct understanding of how applications and services -- the life's blood of IT-enabled organizations -- are performing from the network perspective.  Management products that address these objectives are known as Application-aware Network Performance Management (ANPM) solutions, and are increasingly becoming essential tooling for enterprise network management and operations teams. 

For this EMA Radar Report, focus was placed specifically on core capabilities and features associated with the needs that network engineers, managers, and operators have to recognize, characterize, troubleshoot, and communicate details of how applications and services perform as they transit the network. Three common use cases -- capacity planning, sustained monitoring, and troubleshooting -- were examined in detail for solutions that are based (at least in part) on inspection of network packets or collection and analysis of flow records such as NetFlow, IPFIX, and sFlow.  A total of 24 ANPM solutions were reviewed in detail and ranked according to solution impact, resource efficiency, and vendor strength.