Certainly, delays in time-to-market, bad application performance, broken links, and exceptions lead to lost opportunities and poor user satisfaction. As you know, poor user satisfaction begets lost business for customer-facing applications, and degrades employee productivity for intranet applications or employee portals. These "soft" costs are harder to calculate and perhaps far exceed the "hard" costs stated above. However, since these costs are typically unknown or not measurable at the front of the project, they are rarely budgeted for and greatly reduced the overall ROI of the project.

The .NET Framework has been a tremendous boost to application development, but its very success has increased the demands on development and operations. Adopting tools with the right capabilities can meet these demands and unlock the full potential benefits of developing applications in .NET. To achieve the promise of this environment and adjust to the increased complexity of development, implementation, and ongoing operational support, development and operations teams need to fully understand that a paradigm shift is occurring. This shift provides greater capabilities, and the cost is that the business must come to terms with the requirement for increased focus on comprehensive documentation and testing, service management, and operational support.

Implementing performance management throughout the software development lifecycle is a critical aspect for managing the quality of service of a .NET application. By implementing a consistent tool, IT can optimize both the development cycle and ongoing operational controls needed to enhance and maintain the service levels the business demands.