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2016 APM Prediction: Application Performance and Delivery Remain Top-of-Mind

Todd DeCapua

It's a new year and the fight for market share amongst all enterprises has never been fiercer. Organizations compete for customers on multiple fronts — in person, on the web, and via mobile applications. Today, it's not enough to churn out applications, products, and services faster than the competition. Anything that fails to meet a high performance standard could cause a serious loss of brand value, revenue, and the ability to attract and maintain customers and competitive advantage.

Below are three predictions for what we can expect in 2016:

1. Load Testing will move to the cloud

In 2016, we'll see more enterprises moving load testing to the cloud. Companies are under constant pressure to deliver products and services to the market faster than ever before. Meanwhile, business owners are exhausted by in-house IT departments with slow delivery cycles. In this dichotomy, performance must not be sacrificed. By using load testing from the cloud capabilities, the business and technology teams both get what they need: Technology gets an affordable, secure way to test system and application performance before it reaches production, and the business doesn't have to wait so long that it loses competitive advantage.

2. Enterprises will prioritize lifecycle virtualization

Organizations today are expected to deliver quality products and services to market on time, and therefore, they must have the ability to virtualize production conditions and ensure their solutions are ready for prime time. For instance, releasing a buggy video-streaming application can have major consequences, but imagine the ramifications of releasing autonomous vehicle software that causes a self-driving car to blow through red lights — or a home security system that can be overridden by a simple hack. In 2015, less than half of performance and development professionals used Release Quality as a baseline metric to judge application performance, according to a report sponsored by HPE and blind survey executed by YouGov. This number is expected to rise in 2016 as organizations fully appreciate that there are no second chances with respect to making a strong first impression based on performance.

3. Organizations will adopt a "Continuous Evolution" model

Continuous Evolution will leverage new channels of delivery for end-users and businesses. The way of doing business is changing, and a need to evolve to the next level is more evident than ever before. Being challenged by mobile is the story of the past, and now is the time for businesses to hit the multiplier by leveraging their existing mobile capabilities. Companies must learn to take the best of their mobile investments, then accelerate them through their backlog with DevOps practices, and deliver game changing results via IoT. Effectively, Continuous Evolution enables a business to ensure the delivery of quality, scale, and performance throughout its products and services; so businesses impress their customers with amazing experiences.

Though the year ahead brings many unknowns, users will continue to judge businesses by their performance. Those who embrace the changes ahead will rise to the top, while the others will simply be left behind.

Todd DeCapua is Chief Technology Evangelist at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

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2016 APM Prediction: Application Performance and Delivery Remain Top-of-Mind

Todd DeCapua

It's a new year and the fight for market share amongst all enterprises has never been fiercer. Organizations compete for customers on multiple fronts — in person, on the web, and via mobile applications. Today, it's not enough to churn out applications, products, and services faster than the competition. Anything that fails to meet a high performance standard could cause a serious loss of brand value, revenue, and the ability to attract and maintain customers and competitive advantage.

Below are three predictions for what we can expect in 2016:

1. Load Testing will move to the cloud

In 2016, we'll see more enterprises moving load testing to the cloud. Companies are under constant pressure to deliver products and services to the market faster than ever before. Meanwhile, business owners are exhausted by in-house IT departments with slow delivery cycles. In this dichotomy, performance must not be sacrificed. By using load testing from the cloud capabilities, the business and technology teams both get what they need: Technology gets an affordable, secure way to test system and application performance before it reaches production, and the business doesn't have to wait so long that it loses competitive advantage.

2. Enterprises will prioritize lifecycle virtualization

Organizations today are expected to deliver quality products and services to market on time, and therefore, they must have the ability to virtualize production conditions and ensure their solutions are ready for prime time. For instance, releasing a buggy video-streaming application can have major consequences, but imagine the ramifications of releasing autonomous vehicle software that causes a self-driving car to blow through red lights — or a home security system that can be overridden by a simple hack. In 2015, less than half of performance and development professionals used Release Quality as a baseline metric to judge application performance, according to a report sponsored by HPE and blind survey executed by YouGov. This number is expected to rise in 2016 as organizations fully appreciate that there are no second chances with respect to making a strong first impression based on performance.

3. Organizations will adopt a "Continuous Evolution" model

Continuous Evolution will leverage new channels of delivery for end-users and businesses. The way of doing business is changing, and a need to evolve to the next level is more evident than ever before. Being challenged by mobile is the story of the past, and now is the time for businesses to hit the multiplier by leveraging their existing mobile capabilities. Companies must learn to take the best of their mobile investments, then accelerate them through their backlog with DevOps practices, and deliver game changing results via IoT. Effectively, Continuous Evolution enables a business to ensure the delivery of quality, scale, and performance throughout its products and services; so businesses impress their customers with amazing experiences.

Though the year ahead brings many unknowns, users will continue to judge businesses by their performance. Those who embrace the changes ahead will rise to the top, while the others will simply be left behind.

Todd DeCapua is Chief Technology Evangelist at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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