Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:
Application Performance Management (APM) refers to a set of tools and practices used to monitor and manage the performance, behavior, and availability of software applications. Although APM is not defined exclusively in the Google SRE Book, it is described within the broader context of monitoring and observability.
In the SRE Workbook, under Monitoring:
“Application monitoring tools provide insights into the performance, latency, availability, and behavior of applications to help engineering teams maintain reliability.”
Industry-standard APM frameworks (including Google Cloud Operations Suite, formerly Stackdriver) define APM as:
“The monitoring and management of application performance and availability.”
Why the other options are incorrect:
A describes telemetry, not APM.
C describes system monitoring (infrastructure), not application performance monitoring.
D refers to communication of metrics, not the monitoring of application performance.
Therefore, B is the correct definition.
[References:, SRE Workbook, “Monitoring”, Google Cloud Operations Suite (APM documentation), , ]