2016 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 2

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 2016. Part 2 features visions of expanded capabilities of Application Performance Management solutions.

Start with 2016 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 1

APM SUPPORTS INTERNET OF THINGS

With growing and astronomical opportunities in IoT, coupled with the fact that IoT is driven by massive scale software and data interactions, APM technologies are directly applicable to these new software use cases. Analytics and transaction tracing are key to extract and get value out of these new, emerging, and exciting platforms. In 2016 we will see this become a reality, whereas today it's in its nascency.
Jonah Kowall
VP of Market Development and Insights, AppDynamics

A COMPLETE MONITORING SOLUTION

I foresee the (3) main factions of APM (Wire Data Analytics, Synthetic Transactions, and Agent Code Instrumentation) coming together to round out the monitoring spectrum as a complete solution. Wire Data Analytics will automatically discover and decipher all applications coming from a simple network tap. Synthetic Transactions will be made easier with recording features that support advanced browser functions which will be seamless for all mobile devices. Finally, there will be a new agent concept which is lightweight, deploys quickly, and goes in virtually undetected with zero configuration.
Larry Dragich
Director of Customer Experience Management at the Auto Club Group and Founder of the APM Strategies Group on LinkedIn.

For a better understanding of the (3) main factions of APM read: Slow Applications are Criminal

APM OFFERS DEEP DIVE VISIBILITY

APM requirements will expand past the capabilities of transaction visibility and real user monitoring, seeking deep-dive visibility across the entire infrastructure. Troubleshooting performance issues requires extensive expertise inside each and every tier, and enabling performance diagnosis to be accomplished with minimal human expertise requires a great deal of automation. In response to this demand, APM tools must go beyond user experience monitoring and transaction tracing with in-depth insights and domain expertise into every layer and every tier of the infrastructure. These tools will need to be easy to set up and use, to keep the barriers to adoption as low as possible.
Srinivas Ramanathan
CEO, eG Innovations

5 Predictions for Application Performance Management in 2016

DATABASE BECOMES APPLICATION PERFORMANCE FOCUS

With application performance the heart of most businesses, 2016 will see APM professionals start doing a much better job at realizing that, in turn, the database is the heart of application performance. As a result, the importance of having shared visibility into how databases affect application performance and the need to embrace response time analysis to identify bottlenecks will only grow in the coming year.
Gerardo Dada
VP, Product Marketing and Strategy, SolarWinds

THE NEED FOR SPEED

2016 will be the year of Fast Insights in APM. We have big data, small data, analytics, user experience data, etc. But what is the point of having all that data if I have to wait to figure out what happened that caused a performance outage or degradation, or even worse not have a clue that something happened? So 2016 will be about how do I get the information I need to have to make the right decision, right now. With customer experience more critical to business success than ever, IT's ability to respond to issues faster or pre-empt them altogether has never been more crucial.
Drit Suljoti
Chief Product Officer, Catchpoint

APM STRATEGIES INCLUDE MAINFRAME

Due to the sheer number of transactions and users impacted, even slight mainframe code optimizations can have a hugely positive experience on customer experience. For these reasons, modern IT teams will increasingly extend APM strategies to include the mainframe, identifying opportunities for improved customer experience and cost optimizations. Deep insights into mainframe code can also help IT teams identify and fix inefficiencies that may be driving up mainframe licensing costs unnecessarily.
Christopher O'Malley
President and CEO, Compuware

APM INTEGRATES WITH HELPDESK AND PRODUCT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

To continue to be successful and increase adoption it is imperative that good (automated) integration is developed between the APM system, the Helpdesk system and the Product/Issue management systems used by developers.
Frank Puranik
Senior Technical Specialist, iTrinegy

THE RENAISSANCE OF BSM

The emergence of provisioning tools that can be leveraged to perform low maintenance, automatically updating dependency maps and CMDBs – leading to the renaissance of Business Service Management (BSM).
Grant Glading
Sales & Marketing Director, Interlink Software

Read 2016 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 3

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2016 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 2

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 2016. Part 2 features visions of expanded capabilities of Application Performance Management solutions.

Start with 2016 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 1

APM SUPPORTS INTERNET OF THINGS

With growing and astronomical opportunities in IoT, coupled with the fact that IoT is driven by massive scale software and data interactions, APM technologies are directly applicable to these new software use cases. Analytics and transaction tracing are key to extract and get value out of these new, emerging, and exciting platforms. In 2016 we will see this become a reality, whereas today it's in its nascency.
Jonah Kowall
VP of Market Development and Insights, AppDynamics

A COMPLETE MONITORING SOLUTION

I foresee the (3) main factions of APM (Wire Data Analytics, Synthetic Transactions, and Agent Code Instrumentation) coming together to round out the monitoring spectrum as a complete solution. Wire Data Analytics will automatically discover and decipher all applications coming from a simple network tap. Synthetic Transactions will be made easier with recording features that support advanced browser functions which will be seamless for all mobile devices. Finally, there will be a new agent concept which is lightweight, deploys quickly, and goes in virtually undetected with zero configuration.
Larry Dragich
Director of Customer Experience Management at the Auto Club Group and Founder of the APM Strategies Group on LinkedIn.

For a better understanding of the (3) main factions of APM read: Slow Applications are Criminal

APM OFFERS DEEP DIVE VISIBILITY

APM requirements will expand past the capabilities of transaction visibility and real user monitoring, seeking deep-dive visibility across the entire infrastructure. Troubleshooting performance issues requires extensive expertise inside each and every tier, and enabling performance diagnosis to be accomplished with minimal human expertise requires a great deal of automation. In response to this demand, APM tools must go beyond user experience monitoring and transaction tracing with in-depth insights and domain expertise into every layer and every tier of the infrastructure. These tools will need to be easy to set up and use, to keep the barriers to adoption as low as possible.
Srinivas Ramanathan
CEO, eG Innovations

5 Predictions for Application Performance Management in 2016

DATABASE BECOMES APPLICATION PERFORMANCE FOCUS

With application performance the heart of most businesses, 2016 will see APM professionals start doing a much better job at realizing that, in turn, the database is the heart of application performance. As a result, the importance of having shared visibility into how databases affect application performance and the need to embrace response time analysis to identify bottlenecks will only grow in the coming year.
Gerardo Dada
VP, Product Marketing and Strategy, SolarWinds

THE NEED FOR SPEED

2016 will be the year of Fast Insights in APM. We have big data, small data, analytics, user experience data, etc. But what is the point of having all that data if I have to wait to figure out what happened that caused a performance outage or degradation, or even worse not have a clue that something happened? So 2016 will be about how do I get the information I need to have to make the right decision, right now. With customer experience more critical to business success than ever, IT's ability to respond to issues faster or pre-empt them altogether has never been more crucial.
Drit Suljoti
Chief Product Officer, Catchpoint

APM STRATEGIES INCLUDE MAINFRAME

Due to the sheer number of transactions and users impacted, even slight mainframe code optimizations can have a hugely positive experience on customer experience. For these reasons, modern IT teams will increasingly extend APM strategies to include the mainframe, identifying opportunities for improved customer experience and cost optimizations. Deep insights into mainframe code can also help IT teams identify and fix inefficiencies that may be driving up mainframe licensing costs unnecessarily.
Christopher O'Malley
President and CEO, Compuware

APM INTEGRATES WITH HELPDESK AND PRODUCT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

To continue to be successful and increase adoption it is imperative that good (automated) integration is developed between the APM system, the Helpdesk system and the Product/Issue management systems used by developers.
Frank Puranik
Senior Technical Specialist, iTrinegy

THE RENAISSANCE OF BSM

The emergence of provisioning tools that can be leveraged to perform low maintenance, automatically updating dependency maps and CMDBs – leading to the renaissance of Business Service Management (BSM).
Grant Glading
Sales & Marketing Director, Interlink Software

Read 2016 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 3

Related Links

Hot Topics

The Latest

Operator to Orchestrator: 80% of IT Pros See Shift in Role as AI Permeates Workflows

80% of respondents agree that the IT role is shifting from operators to orchestrators, according to the 2026 IT Trends Report: The Human Side of Autonomous IT from SolarWinds ...

Gartner: 40% of Organizations Deploying AI Will Use AI Observability to Monitor Model Performance by 2028

40% of organizations deploying AI will implement dedicated AI observability tools by 2028 to monitor model performance, bias and outputs, according to Gartner ...

Almost Half of AI-Generated Code Fails in Production

Until AI-powered engineering tools have live visibility of how code behaves at runtime, they cannot be trusted to autonomously ensure reliable systems, according to the State of AI-Powered Engineering Report 2026 report from Lightrun. The report reveals that a major volume of manual work is required when AI-generated code is deployed: 43% of AI-generated code requires manual debugging in production, even after passing QA or staging tests. Furthermore, an average of three manual redeploy cycles are required to verify a single AI-suggested code fix in production ...

AI Requires Design, Not Edicts

Many organizations describe AI as strategic, but they do not manage it strategically. When AI plans are disconnected from strategy, detached from organizational learning, and protected from serious assumptions testing, the problem is no longer technical immaturity; it is a failure of management discipline ... Executives too often tell organizations to "use AI" before they define what AI is supposed to change. The problem deepens in organizations where strategy isn't well articulated in the first place ...

How Intelligent Orchestration Enables Enterprises to Move from AI POC to AI Production

Across the enterprise technology landscape, a quiet crisis is playing out. Organizations have run hundreds, sometimes thousands, of generative AI pilots. Leadership has celebrated the proof of concept (POCs) ... Industry experience points to a sobering reality: only 5-10% of AI POCs that progress to the pilot stage successfully reach scaled production. The remaining 90% fail because the enterprise environment around them was never ready to absorb them, not the AI models ...

Reliability Is the New Bottleneck of Innovation

Today's modern systems are not what they once were. Organizations now rely on distributed systems, event-driven workflows, hybrid and multi-cloud environments and continuous delivery pipelines. While each adds flexibility, it also introduces new, often invisible failures. Development speed is no longer the primary bottleneck of innovation. Reliability is ...

5 Takeaways from the Observability Forecast for Retail and eCommerce

Seeing is believing, or in this case, seeing is understanding, according to New Relic's 2025 Observability Forecast for Retail and eCommerce report. Retailers who want to provide exceptional customer experiences while improving IT operations efficiency are leaning on observability ... Here are five key takeaways from the report ...

Maximizing Impact Amid Constraints: The Role of Automation and Orchestration in Federal IT Modernization

Technology leaders across the federal landscape are facing, and will continue to face, an uphill battle when it comes to fortifying their digital environments against hostile and persistent threat actors. On one hand, they are being asked to push digital transformation ... On the other hand, they are facing the fiscal uncertainty of continuing resolutions (CR) and government shutdowns looming near and far. In the face of these challenges, CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs must figure out how to modernize legacy systems and infrastructure while doing more with less and still defending against external and internal threats ...

The SRE Report 2026: Reliability Is Being Redefined

Reliability is no longer proven by uptime alone, according to the The SRE Report 2026 from LogicMonitor. In the AI era, it is experienced through speed, consistency, and user trust, and increasingly judged by business impact. As digital services grow more complex and AI systems move into production, traditional monitoring approaches are struggling to keep pace, increasing the need for AI-first observability that spans applications, infrastructure, and the Internet ...

The Hidden Data Engineering Work Required to Make Enterprise AI Viable

If AI is the engine of a modern organization, then data engineering is the road system beneath it. You can build the most powerful engine in the world, but without paved roads, traffic signals, and bridges that can support its weight, it will stall. In many enterprises, the engine is ready. The roads are not ...