In this special guest feature, Kunal Agarwal, CEO at Unravel Data explores the area of big data Application Performance Management (APM) and why do enterprises need it. APM is not a new discipline, but it is a new best practice for big data – adopting an application-first approach to guarantee full-stack performance, maximize utilization of cluster resources, while minimizing the TCO of the infrastructure. For architects, it means that the big data architecture has to be designed to meet new business needs for speed, reliability, and cost-effectiveness, as well as align with architecture standards for performance, scalability, and availability.