2017 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 5

APMdigest's 2017 Application Performance Management Predictions is a forecast by the top minds in APM today. 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 2017. Part 5, the final installment, covers the business side of APM.

Start with 2017 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 1

Start with 2017 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 2

Start with 2017 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 3

Start with 2017 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 4

41. RISE OF THE CXO

Now more than ever companies are thinking about the digital customer experience. Customer experience is becoming a c-level job, we will begin seeing more CXOs.
Assaf Resnick
CEO, BigPanda

42. ROLE OF SYSADMIN NOT GOING AWAY

Contrary to popular belief, the role of sys admins isn't going away. Rather, the "title" and role of sys admins will evolve to where they need to understand the big picture of the organization and the IT department instead of their personal responsibilities.
Jason Hand
DevOps Evangelist, VictorOps

43. INCREASED INVESTMENT IN TOOLS

Quocirca research published in October 2016 shows that application downtime has over taken security as the top IT management concern. With around 15% of the average IT team's time spent on addressing the critical IT events that lead to this, efforts will be made to reduce the impact of such events and to fix problems faster. The IT teams that cope best do so due to improved visibility and co-ordination provide by effective operational intelligence. As IT complexity increases through more use of mixed on-premise and cloud platforms, investment in the supporting crisis analysis and management tools is set to increase.
Bob Tarzey
Analyst and Director, Quocirca

44. MAXIMIZING EXISTING TOOL INVESTMENTS

We're finding that large enterprises are fast recognizing that adding to that ever growing pile of IT management and point solutions is costly, impossible to watch over effectively and can't go on. Making more of data from existing sources and tool-sets through aggregation, correlation and presenting this back to the business in a service context will really take off next year."
Grant Glading
Sales & Marketing Director, Interlink Software

45. COST INHIBITS APM DEPLOYMENTS

In 2017 the largest inhibitor to wide scale APM deployments will continue to be cost. As applications become more componentized and the number of nodes increase, so too does the cost of managing these solutions. This will be a barrier to microservices for most, which will result in miniservices being the typical application pattern in the enterprise.
Jonah Kowall
VP of Market Development and Insights, AppDynamics

46. APM PRICING SHAKEUP

The world of code-level APM will undergo a radical pricing shakeup in 2017. With AWS and Google officially entering the APM market in 2016, both offering significantly lower cost options than existing vendors, expect APM vendors to lower pricing and face margin pressure. And while the functionality of the APM tools provided by IaaS is well below what 3rd parties can provide, the pricing and easy integration will make it a "no brainer" add-on.
Damian Roskill
CMO, AppNeta

47. OPEN SOURCE APM: NOT READY YET

In 2017 the open source community will continue to improve regarding APM and tracing, but the solutions will still not be easily consumable by most enterprise buyers.
Jonah Kowall
VP of Market Development and Insights, AppDynamics

48. NEW COMPETITION

APM in 2017 – We will see the leading APM suite providers continue to expand their product and service portfolios increasingly via combinations of organic development and external acquisition. As these companies become larger and more broad-based, new competitors will continue to arise to challenge them in a manner similar to how today’s leaders challenged the earlier generation APM players. Examples of these new competitors will include not only conventional start-ups, but also cloud-based companies that are increasingly building out their own monitoring capabilities such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
Cameron Haight
Research VP, IT Operations, Gartner

Gartner: Top Predictions for IT in 2017 and Beyond

49. MAKING APM ACCESSIBLE TO THE BUSINESS

According to reviewers on IT Central Station, it's clear that making APM data understandable to the LOB will be a major priority for 2017. IT Central Station community members are increasingly demanding that APM tools play a larger role in overall business needs and strategies. For example, an increasing number of APM tools are assigning monetary values to technical transactions and involved in all facets of a company. In 2017, the products that surface the business value of APM data will be the winners in the competitive APM market.
Russell Rothstein
Founder and CEO, IT Central Station

Read Russell Rothstein's blog: New for 2016: APM Roundup from Real Users

50. BUSINESS VALUE IS KEY

For the last couple of years, a number of APM predictions have centered on APM effectiveness being measured on business impact. In 2017, this will become reality. No longer will the measure of a good APM solution be solely focused on MTTR reduction benefits. Enterprise IT decision makers will want to know how an APM solution helps to ensure that applications drive business outcomes of customer experience, loyalty and revenue.
John Rakowski
Director of Technology Strategy, AppDynamics

Finally, its not just about identifying application performance issues; its also about understanding business outcomes. So expect more analytics capabilities (native or integrated) in APM solutions. in 2017.
Kalyan Ramanathan
VP of Product Marketing, Sumo Logic

Thanks to all the experts for their excellent predictions.

To all the readers, sponsors and contributors of APMdigest: Have a Happy Holiday Season and a Successful 2017 ...

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The Corporate Network Is Fading - Here's What Replaces It

For decades, enterprise networks were designed around a simple assumption: work happened inside the office. Applications lived in centralized data centers, employees connected through internal infrastructure, and security focused on protecting the perimeter that surrounded everything ... But the way organizations operate today bears little resemblance to that environment. Cloud platforms host critical applications, employees connect from homes and airports as often as they do from offices, and partners collaborate through shared systems that exist far beyond corporate walls. In short, the corporate network no longer resembles the environment it was designed to protect ...

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The next observability gap may not be in the code. It may be under the rack. That sounds strange until you think about how AI incidents actually feel in the middle of an investigation ... The application dashboard may be accurate. It may also be stopping at the wrong boundary. AI systems depend on software, but they also depend on a dense physical stack: racks, power paths, thermal margin, maintenance activity and, in many environments, liquid cooling. Those physical dependencies can change slowly before they look like a software incident ...

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Enterprises operate different combinations of workloads across cloud, hybrid and multicloud environments. For business-critical workloads, teams need to consider monitoring and observability early so they can detect health issues, investigate failures, and understand operational impact. Organizations place workloads on cloud platforms based on a combination of technical requirements, economics, existing dependencies, organizational standards, and business priorities. Their monitoring priorities therefore depend on what they operate and where those systems run. Those priorities will not look the same for every organization ...

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2017 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 5

APMdigest's 2017 Application Performance Management Predictions is a forecast by the top minds in APM today. 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 2017. Part 5, the final installment, covers the business side of APM.

Start with 2017 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 1

Start with 2017 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 2

Start with 2017 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 3

Start with 2017 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 4

41. RISE OF THE CXO

Now more than ever companies are thinking about the digital customer experience. Customer experience is becoming a c-level job, we will begin seeing more CXOs.
Assaf Resnick
CEO, BigPanda

42. ROLE OF SYSADMIN NOT GOING AWAY

Contrary to popular belief, the role of sys admins isn't going away. Rather, the "title" and role of sys admins will evolve to where they need to understand the big picture of the organization and the IT department instead of their personal responsibilities.
Jason Hand
DevOps Evangelist, VictorOps

43. INCREASED INVESTMENT IN TOOLS

Quocirca research published in October 2016 shows that application downtime has over taken security as the top IT management concern. With around 15% of the average IT team's time spent on addressing the critical IT events that lead to this, efforts will be made to reduce the impact of such events and to fix problems faster. The IT teams that cope best do so due to improved visibility and co-ordination provide by effective operational intelligence. As IT complexity increases through more use of mixed on-premise and cloud platforms, investment in the supporting crisis analysis and management tools is set to increase.
Bob Tarzey
Analyst and Director, Quocirca

44. MAXIMIZING EXISTING TOOL INVESTMENTS

We're finding that large enterprises are fast recognizing that adding to that ever growing pile of IT management and point solutions is costly, impossible to watch over effectively and can't go on. Making more of data from existing sources and tool-sets through aggregation, correlation and presenting this back to the business in a service context will really take off next year."
Grant Glading
Sales & Marketing Director, Interlink Software

45. COST INHIBITS APM DEPLOYMENTS

In 2017 the largest inhibitor to wide scale APM deployments will continue to be cost. As applications become more componentized and the number of nodes increase, so too does the cost of managing these solutions. This will be a barrier to microservices for most, which will result in miniservices being the typical application pattern in the enterprise.
Jonah Kowall
VP of Market Development and Insights, AppDynamics

46. APM PRICING SHAKEUP

The world of code-level APM will undergo a radical pricing shakeup in 2017. With AWS and Google officially entering the APM market in 2016, both offering significantly lower cost options than existing vendors, expect APM vendors to lower pricing and face margin pressure. And while the functionality of the APM tools provided by IaaS is well below what 3rd parties can provide, the pricing and easy integration will make it a "no brainer" add-on.
Damian Roskill
CMO, AppNeta

47. OPEN SOURCE APM: NOT READY YET

In 2017 the open source community will continue to improve regarding APM and tracing, but the solutions will still not be easily consumable by most enterprise buyers.
Jonah Kowall
VP of Market Development and Insights, AppDynamics

48. NEW COMPETITION

APM in 2017 – We will see the leading APM suite providers continue to expand their product and service portfolios increasingly via combinations of organic development and external acquisition. As these companies become larger and more broad-based, new competitors will continue to arise to challenge them in a manner similar to how today’s leaders challenged the earlier generation APM players. Examples of these new competitors will include not only conventional start-ups, but also cloud-based companies that are increasingly building out their own monitoring capabilities such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
Cameron Haight
Research VP, IT Operations, Gartner

Gartner: Top Predictions for IT in 2017 and Beyond

49. MAKING APM ACCESSIBLE TO THE BUSINESS

According to reviewers on IT Central Station, it's clear that making APM data understandable to the LOB will be a major priority for 2017. IT Central Station community members are increasingly demanding that APM tools play a larger role in overall business needs and strategies. For example, an increasing number of APM tools are assigning monetary values to technical transactions and involved in all facets of a company. In 2017, the products that surface the business value of APM data will be the winners in the competitive APM market.
Russell Rothstein
Founder and CEO, IT Central Station

Read Russell Rothstein's blog: New for 2016: APM Roundup from Real Users

50. BUSINESS VALUE IS KEY

For the last couple of years, a number of APM predictions have centered on APM effectiveness being measured on business impact. In 2017, this will become reality. No longer will the measure of a good APM solution be solely focused on MTTR reduction benefits. Enterprise IT decision makers will want to know how an APM solution helps to ensure that applications drive business outcomes of customer experience, loyalty and revenue.
John Rakowski
Director of Technology Strategy, AppDynamics

Finally, its not just about identifying application performance issues; its also about understanding business outcomes. So expect more analytics capabilities (native or integrated) in APM solutions. in 2017.
Kalyan Ramanathan
VP of Product Marketing, Sumo Logic

Thanks to all the experts for their excellent predictions.

To all the readers, sponsors and contributors of APMdigest: Have a Happy Holiday Season and a Successful 2017 ...

Related Links

Hot Topics

The Latest

Beyond Buy vs. Build: The New Playbook for Data Pipelines

While organizations want to take control of their telemetry, building telemetry pipelines from scratch can be a very daunting, complicated task, even when leveraging open-source standards like OpenTelemetry. It requires specialized knowledge across distributed systems, data engineering, and security. This fragmented approach across systems causes higher operational costs; it puts a strain on resources and reduces efficiency as teams have to work with different interfaces and processes ...

The Corporate Network Is Fading - Here's What Replaces It

For decades, enterprise networks were designed around a simple assumption: work happened inside the office. Applications lived in centralized data centers, employees connected through internal infrastructure, and security focused on protecting the perimeter that surrounded everything ... But the way organizations operate today bears little resemblance to that environment. Cloud platforms host critical applications, employees connect from homes and airports as often as they do from offices, and partners collaborate through shared systems that exist far beyond corporate walls. In short, the corporate network no longer resembles the environment it was designed to protect ...

IT Leaders Must Establish a Network Data Architecture Practice

As an analyst who researches how IT organizations design, build, and operate their networks, I find that network data is a constant source of pain. Network teams struggle with data quality, fragmentation, authority, access, and trust. And these issues undermine everything they try to do. Here are the numbers: Only 45% of network teams are completely confident in the accuracy of their network source of truth, which documents the intent of their network ...

Data Center Outages Are Decreasing but More Costly

The 2026 Global Data Center Survey from Uptime Institute reveals an industry navigating workforce constraints, escalating outage expenses, even as rising costs remain the top concern for management teams ...

Observability Has a Physical Layer Now: What AI Infrastructure Teaches IT Operations

The next observability gap may not be in the code. It may be under the rack. That sounds strange until you think about how AI incidents actually feel in the middle of an investigation ... The application dashboard may be accurate. It may also be stopping at the wrong boundary. AI systems depend on software, but they also depend on a dense physical stack: racks, power paths, thermal margin, maintenance activity and, in many environments, liquid cooling. Those physical dependencies can change slowly before they look like a software incident ...

TLS Certificate Expiration Is Becoming an Observability Problem

Certificate expiration is the rare outage you can see coming. Every TLS certificate carries the date it stops working, so the moment it will begin breaking connections is knowable in advance. That's what makes an expired certificate such a frustrating way to lose a service. What's changing now is how often that date comes around ...

Enterprise Cloud Observability: Choosing the Right Starting Point

Enterprises operate different combinations of workloads across cloud, hybrid and multicloud environments. For business-critical workloads, teams need to consider monitoring and observability early so they can detect health issues, investigate failures, and understand operational impact. Organizations place workloads on cloud platforms based on a combination of technical requirements, economics, existing dependencies, organizational standards, and business priorities. Their monitoring priorities therefore depend on what they operate and where those systems run. Those priorities will not look the same for every organization ...

AI Is Making Incident Management More Complex - Bad Data Makes It Harder

Top-performing businesses prioritize data-driven decision making, enabling leaders to move from intuition and gut feel towards evidence-based judgment. But that judgment is only sound when the data underpinning decisions is accurate. With incident management, data accuracy is particularly important. Long-term revenue, customer trust, and operational stability depend on high-quality data that enables teams to quickly identify and address the root cause of major incidents. Against this backdrop, governance becomes a critical endeavor to ensure the right data drives the right action ...

MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Podcast - Episode 26: Network Compliance

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 26, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network compliance ... 

Why VM and Container Monitoring Is Not Enough for Cloud-Hosted Autonomous Agents

Most production autonomous agents do not run in a vacuum. They run inside cloud infrastructure: virtual machines, containers, pods, managed clusters or private servers. That is where most operations teams start monitoring. Is the VM alive? Is the container running? Did the pod restart? Is memory stable? Is CPU too high? Did the health check pass? Those signals are useful. They tell you whether the shell around the agent is alive. They do not tell you whether the agent inside is actually operational ...