Application analytics and crash reporting tools have been around for a long time. The idea of application analytics is to collect data about your users, their behavior within your application, the features they use (or don't use), and how often they use the application or specific features of the application. The idea of crash reporting is to collect crash or error data from within the application. In both cases, the information collected is typically aggregated into a single dashboard-like interface so that you and other members on the application team can analyze it.
Application analytics are also extremely important to a product's life cycle and its stakeholders, as it provides real insight into the application and can help drive key business decisions around the product. For example, a feature that was thought to be very important...