2018 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 2
December 19, 2017
Share this

Industry experts — from analysts and consultants to users and the top vendors — offer thoughtful, insightful, and often controversial predictions on how APM and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2018. Part 2 covers ITIL, ITSM and more.

Start with 2018 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 1

ITIL WILL BE CHALLENGED

ITIL's dominance within ITSM as the definitive best practice, will be challenged. Leaner, more lightweight and adaptable methodologies will offer alternatives that are more aligned with agile principles, and CI/CD patterns. In fact the definition of what constitutes ITSM itself may change, as DevOps engineers take their ethos of simplicity and efficiency into the ITSM space.
Richard Whitehead
Evangelist-in-Chief, Moogsoft

ITSM SHIFTS FOCUS AWAY FROM IT INFRASTRUCTURE

ITSM will continue its shift in focus away from IT infrastructure toward user-centered design. We expect a richer, more powerful user experience from ITSM-based applications — which will also mean breaking down the silos between ITSM and other functions to further deliver greater user centricity overall.
Jason Bloomberg
President, Intellyx

CHATBOTS AND VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS

In 2018, we will see an increased interest in chatbot technology, mostly from organizations that provide IT Service Management (ITSM). Chatbots powered with artificial intelligence will help ITSM organizations meet increasing demands fueled by the rapid adoption of IoT, and the growing interest by enterprise CIOs to implement more IoT applications over the next few years.
Marcel Shaw
Engineer, Federal Markets, Ivanti

With more than half (52%) of CIOs saying they are using machine learning and 40% planning to adopt this technology as well as increasing focus on customer experiences, I expect chatbots and virtual assistants to play a key role in helping businesses expedite improved end-user experience and reduce manual processes in the IT service desk. As the data quality AI/ML pulls from improves and the experience becomes "more human," these new technologies are primed to be an ITSM staple. Current technologies are already improving the speed and quality of IT service desk processes by automatically categorizing and routing requests, and we will continue to see innovation in this area in 2018.
Farrell Hough
VP and GM, IT Service Management, ServiceNow

UNIFICATION OF TOOLS

2018 is the year that IT organizations will have to redefine how they align with the business, while simultaneously having to roll out Windows 10, and continue to improve security. To manage, and do more in security, yet assign a larger amount of their budget to innovation at the same time, is a challenge. The solution: unification and automation of IT. For some years we have observed how the number of devices per user has been growing. With an increase in applications, platforms and the sheer number of OS and application updates, managing varying platforms using various toolsets from multiple vendors is becoming a bottleneck and costly experience for IT. Unification simply has to occur. As one example we see enterprise mobility management (EMM) and client management tools coming together, and more organizations reducing the number of vendors and technologies they use to manage their user estate.  The result will be unified endpoint management that is easier and more cost effective. We expect this unification to extend to asset management, networking and ITSM, as enterprises work to decrease the complexity of too many vendors, look beyond point solutions, and demand better integrated solutions from their vendors.
Simon Townsend
Chief Technologist, EMEA, Ivanti

TOOLS MUST DELIVER BUSINESS VALUE

I believe 2018 will be the year that technology prowess takes a back seat to value proposition. Leading vendors will simplify their marketing content and messaging to take the customer's perspective on value by answering only two questions for the customer: 1) "What's in it for me?"; and 2) "What makes you different?" This shifts the focus from horn-tooting to how the vendor's solution helps the customer achieve their business and risk management objectives most efficiently and cost effectively. The technology is already there.
Gabe Lowy
Technology Analyst and Founder of TechTonics Advisors

For a number of years, APM vendors have strived to ensure that they can ingest lots of data. But in 2018, those vendors that will get the press will be those who provide the ability to easily correlate this data with business-centric KPIs. Applications are critical to business success but ensuring technical performance is only the first step, enterprise IT has to be able to prove that every application and every release is driving business value.
John Rakowski
Director of Technology Strategy, AppDynamics

Democratization of APM

Microservices and containers are being used to speed deployment of new application functionality. In doing so, they are creating IT complexity that will force the democratization of application performance management to bridge the divide between Ops, Dev and SRE teams and improve communication for better quality of service. Modern, democratized APM will provide the deep knowledge and understanding into everything that makes up a dynamic application and ultimately helps the entire Ops team maintain service quality.
Mirko Novakovic
CEO, Instana

FOCUS ON IT OPS TEAM HEALTH

With increased pressure on ITOps to move quickly, and the growing tie between operations and the business bottom line, organizations should take a deeper look at the health of their team. By this I mean considering the human impact of ITOps demands and on-call life. Having ITOps teams paged 24/7 is not a sustainable practice, so it will be necessary for some organizations to reassess their triage and workflows to preserve infrastructure team health, ultimately helping with efficiency and retention.
Eric Sigler
Head of DevOps, PagerDuty

Read 2018 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 3, covering APM and monitoring.

Share this

The Latest

March 18, 2024

Gartner has highlighted the top trends that will impact technology providers in 2024: Generative AI (GenAI) is dominating the technical and product agenda of nearly every tech provider ...

March 15, 2024

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 4 - Part 1, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) discusses artificial intelligence and network management ...

March 14, 2024

The integration and maintenance of AI-enabled Software as a Service (SaaS) applications have emerged as pivotal points in enterprise AI implementation strategies, offering both significant challenges and promising benefits. Despite the enthusiasm surrounding AI's potential impact, the reality of its implementation presents hurdles. Currently, over 90% of enterprises are grappling with limitations in integrating AI into their tech stack ...

March 13, 2024

In the intricate landscape of IT infrastructure, one critical component often relegated to the back burner is Active Directory (AD) forest recovery — an oversight with costly consequences ...

March 12, 2024

eBPF is a technology that allows users to run custom programs inside the Linux kernel, which changes the behavior of the kernel and makes execution up to 10x faster(link is external) and more efficient for key parts of what makes our computing lives work. That includes observability, networking and security ...

March 11, 2024

Data mesh, an increasingly important decentralized approach to data architecture and organizational design, focuses on treating data as a product, emphasizing domain-oriented data ownership, self-service tools and federated governance. The 2024 State of the Data Lakehouse report from Dremio presents evidence of the growing adoption of data mesh architectures in enterprises ... The report highlights that the drive towards data mesh is increasingly becoming a business strategy to enhance agility and speed in problem-solving and innovation ...

March 07, 2024
In this digital era, consumers prefer a seamless user experience, and here, the significance of performance testing cannot be overstated. Application performance testing is essential in ensuring that your software products, websites, or other related systems operate seamlessly under varying conditions. However, the cost of poor performance extends beyond technical glitches and slow load times; it can directly affect customer satisfaction and brand reputation. Understand the tangible and intangible consequences of poor application performance and how it can affect your business ...
March 06, 2024

Too much traffic can crash a website ... That stampede of traffic is even more horrifying when it's part of a malicious denial of service attack ... These attacks are becoming more common, more sophisticated and increasingly tied to ransomware-style demands. So it's no wonder that the threat of DDoS remains one of the many things that keep IT and marketing leaders up at night ...

March 05, 2024

Today, applications serve as the backbone of businesses, and therefore, ensuring optimal performance has never been more critical. This is where application performance monitoring (APM) emerges as an indispensable tool, empowering organizations to safeguard their applications proactively, match user expectations, and drive growth. But APM is not without its challenges. Choosing to implement APM is a path that's not easily realized, even if it offers great benefits. This blog deals with the potential hurdles that may manifest when you actualize your APM strategy in your IT application environment ...

March 04, 2024

This year's Super Bowl drew in viewership of nearly 124 million viewers and made history as the most-watched live broadcast event since the 1969 moon landing. To support this spike in viewership, streaming companies like YouTube TV, Hulu and Paramount+ began preparing their IT infrastructure months in advance to ensure an exceptional viewer experience without outages or major interruptions. New Relic conducted a survey to understand the importance of a seamless viewing experience and the impact of outages during major streaming events such as the Super Bowl ...