Applications have evolved from being fairly simply architected, single platform environments to today's applications which are complex, distributed, and multi-tiered.

To achieve scalability and performance, most Internet application deployments have evolved into multi-tier infrastructures where the web server tier serves as the web front-end, the business logic is executed on middleware application servers, and the backend storage and access is provided via database servers. While multi-tier infrastructures offer a variety of scalability and extensibility benefits, they are also more difficult to operate and manage. When a problem occurs (e.g., a slowdown), an administrator often has difficulty in figuring out which application(s) in the multi-tier infrastructure could be the cause of the problem - i.e., is it the network? Or the database? Or the application server? Or the middleware? Or the web server? Comprehensive, routine monitoring of every infrastructure application and network device is essential to be able to troubleshoot effectively when problems occur.

The application server middleware that hosts and supports the business logic components is often the most complex of the multi-tier infrastructure. To offer peak performance, an application server provides a host of complex functions and features including database connection pooling, thread pooling, database result caching, session management, bean caching and management etc. To ensure that the application server is functioning effectively at all times, all of these functions have to be monitored and tracked proactively and constantly.

eG Enterprise supports over 80 applications and databases as standard. a full list can be found here