If You Are Looking to Invest in Advanced Analytics for IT, Exactly What Should You Be Shopping For? Part 2: Environments

Dennis Drogseth

EMA published the AIA buyer's guide — directed at helping IT invest in Advanced IT Analytics(AIA), what the industry more commonly calls "Operational Analytics." We created what we called "Shopping Cart Criteria" based on our prior research on AIA adoptions over the past three years. We divided the sixteen shopping cart criteria into three parts: Cost advantage, Environments and Scenarios.

Start with Part 1: Cost Advantage

In this blog, I will address environments. Environments, as indicated by the list below, indicate "where" the AIA solutions we investigated can be applied. All 13 solutions supported cloud for performance, core infrastructure, and application performance and availability. Mainframe had the support of six of our respondents, and IoT and cloud for change and capacity were not yet prime areas of focus for most of the vendors in our guide.

■ Cloud for Performance Management

■ Cloud for Change/Capacity/Cost Optimization

■ Core Infrastructure (Network/Data Center)

■ Legacy/Mainframe

■ Application Performance and Availability Management

■ Internet of Things (IoT)

Cloud for Performance Management

Here we addressed cloud in all its forms, including public cloud, virtualization, microservices and containers, and hybrid cloud environments — with a focus on performance management of IT services and their associated infrastructure. We saw fairly pervasive support for AWS, Azure, Docker and containers, and microservices. Present but less prevalent was support for Google Cloud, IBM Bluemix, Rackspace and Fujitsu Cloud. We also saw integrations with Pivotal Cloud Foundry in support of DevOps initiatives.

Cloud for Change/Capacity/Cost Optimization

Capacity and cost decisions are often joined at the hip in dealing with planning deployment choices across public and private cloud. These decisions can also significantly impact performance. And in fact, in last year's AIA research, optimizing cloud resources generally ranked higher than pure-play performance management in AIA requirements. This unique but critical area was addressed proactively by several of the vendors in this report, especially those with integrations for capacity analytics, and in two cases even cloud-related pricing models.

Core Infrastructure (Network/Data Center)

All of the solutions represented in this report were directed to some degree at cross-domain operational needs. But the approach they took varied dramatically. In evaluating ratings associated with this criterion, we looked for breadth of coverage, relevant stakeholder support, and breadth of capabilities for assessing issues with infrastructure performance both in itself, and in the context of service delivery. 

Legacy/Mainframe

Mainframes in various form factors have hardly disappeared, and many of the world's most critical IT business services are still dependent on mainframe availability and performance. In evaluating this criterion, we looked at the established architectural support for mainframes, as well as the history of the vendor in mainframe support, and its currency in keeping up with new mainframe design and features. 

Application Performance and Availability Management

If IT is a business, then theoretically it has "products." And unquestionably the single most prominent products of IT are its application business services. In evaluating this criterion, we looked at breadth and depth of support for a wide range of application types, insight into application-to-application and application-to-infrastructure interdependencies, advanced levels of transaction awareness, and handshakes to support DevOps and business impact.

Internet of Things (IoT)

IoT is an emerging area, and one that many solutions in this report are architecturally designed to support — even if, in most cases, IoT has not yet been a priority in deployments. In evaluating this criterion, we looked at three things: architectural feasibility to support IoT data inputs, proof points of IoT use cases from actual deployments, and proactive support for IoT with unique out-of-the box functionality.

In my next blog I address our seven "scenarios" ranging from DevOps and SecOps to business impact and business alignment.

Read Part 3: Scenarios

Related Links

Hot Topics

The Latest

Understanding Zero-Day Vulnerabilities: Why They Matter and How to Stay Protected

Cyber threats are growing more sophisticated every day, and at their forefront are zero-day vulnerabilities. These elusive security gaps are exploited before a fix becomes available, making them among the most dangerous threats in today's digital landscape ... This guide will explore what these vulnerabilities are, how they work, why they pose such a significant threat, and how modern organizations can stay protected ...

Data Center Outages Becoming Less Frequent

The prevention of data center outages continues to be a strategic priority for data center owners and operators. Infrastructure equipment has improved, but the complexity of modern architectures and evolving external threats presents new risks that operators must actively manage, according to the Data Center Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute ...

Instrumentation Score: Quantifying Telemetry Quality

As observability engineers, we navigate a sea of telemetry daily. We instrument our applications, configure collectors, and build dashboards, all in pursuit of understanding our complex distributed systems. Yet, amidst this flood of data, a critical question often remains unspoken, or at best, answered by gut feeling: "Is our telemetry actually good?" ... We're inviting you to participate in shaping a foundational element for better observability: the Instrumentation Score ...

Automating While Keeping Humans in the Loop

We're inching ever closer toward a long-held goal: technology infrastructure that is so automated that it can protect itself. But as IT leaders aggressively employ automation across our enterprises, we need to continuously reassess what AI is ready to manage autonomously and what can not yet be trusted to algorithms ...

AI Factories: Scaling Intelligence with Observability, Reliability and Efficiency

Much like a traditional factory turns raw materials into finished products, the AI factory turns vast datasets into actionable business outcomes through advanced models, inferences, and automation. From the earliest data inputs to the final token output, this process must be reliable, repeatable, and scalable. That requires industrializing the way AI is developed, deployed, and managed ...

Think You've Heard Everything About the Debate over RTO? Here's the Big Thing Leaders Are Missing

Almost half (48%) of employees admit they resent their jobs but stay anyway, according to research from Ivanti ... This has obvious consequences across the business, but we're overlooking the massive impact of resenteeism and presenteeism on IT. For IT professionals tasked with managing the backbone of modern business operations, these numbers spell big trouble ...

Beyond the MACH Hype: Why Your Commerce Platform Is Not Helping You Win DX or CX

For many B2B and B2C enterprise brands, technology isn't a core strength. Relying on overly complex architectures (like those that follow a pure MACH doctrine) has been flagged by industry leaders as a source of operational slowdown, creating bottlenecks that limit agility in volatile market conditions ...

Effective FinOps: Moving from Recommendations to Risks

FinOps champions crucial cross-departmental collaboration, uniting business, finance, technology and engineering leaders to demystify cloud expenses. Yet, too often, critical cost issues are softened into mere "recommendations" or "insights" — easy to ignore. But what if we adopted security's battle-tested strategy and reframed these as the urgent risks they truly are, demanding immediate action? ...

Rising IT Complexity Threatens Modernization - Survey Shows SysAdmins Under Pressure

Two in three IT professionals now cite growing complexity as their top challenge — an urgent signal that the modernization curve may be getting too steep, according to the Rising to the Challenge survey from Checkmk ...

State of the Data Center 2025

While IT leaders are becoming more comfortable and adept at balancing workloads across on-premises, colocation data centers and the public cloud, there's a key component missing: connectivity, according to the 2025 State of the Data Center Report from CoreSite ...

If You Are Looking to Invest in Advanced Analytics for IT, Exactly What Should You Be Shopping For? Part 2: Environments

Dennis Drogseth

EMA published the AIA buyer's guide — directed at helping IT invest in Advanced IT Analytics(AIA), what the industry more commonly calls "Operational Analytics." We created what we called "Shopping Cart Criteria" based on our prior research on AIA adoptions over the past three years. We divided the sixteen shopping cart criteria into three parts: Cost advantage, Environments and Scenarios.

Start with Part 1: Cost Advantage

In this blog, I will address environments. Environments, as indicated by the list below, indicate "where" the AIA solutions we investigated can be applied. All 13 solutions supported cloud for performance, core infrastructure, and application performance and availability. Mainframe had the support of six of our respondents, and IoT and cloud for change and capacity were not yet prime areas of focus for most of the vendors in our guide.

■ Cloud for Performance Management

■ Cloud for Change/Capacity/Cost Optimization

■ Core Infrastructure (Network/Data Center)

■ Legacy/Mainframe

■ Application Performance and Availability Management

■ Internet of Things (IoT)

Cloud for Performance Management

Here we addressed cloud in all its forms, including public cloud, virtualization, microservices and containers, and hybrid cloud environments — with a focus on performance management of IT services and their associated infrastructure. We saw fairly pervasive support for AWS, Azure, Docker and containers, and microservices. Present but less prevalent was support for Google Cloud, IBM Bluemix, Rackspace and Fujitsu Cloud. We also saw integrations with Pivotal Cloud Foundry in support of DevOps initiatives.

Cloud for Change/Capacity/Cost Optimization

Capacity and cost decisions are often joined at the hip in dealing with planning deployment choices across public and private cloud. These decisions can also significantly impact performance. And in fact, in last year's AIA research, optimizing cloud resources generally ranked higher than pure-play performance management in AIA requirements. This unique but critical area was addressed proactively by several of the vendors in this report, especially those with integrations for capacity analytics, and in two cases even cloud-related pricing models.

Core Infrastructure (Network/Data Center)

All of the solutions represented in this report were directed to some degree at cross-domain operational needs. But the approach they took varied dramatically. In evaluating ratings associated with this criterion, we looked for breadth of coverage, relevant stakeholder support, and breadth of capabilities for assessing issues with infrastructure performance both in itself, and in the context of service delivery. 

Legacy/Mainframe

Mainframes in various form factors have hardly disappeared, and many of the world's most critical IT business services are still dependent on mainframe availability and performance. In evaluating this criterion, we looked at the established architectural support for mainframes, as well as the history of the vendor in mainframe support, and its currency in keeping up with new mainframe design and features. 

Application Performance and Availability Management

If IT is a business, then theoretically it has "products." And unquestionably the single most prominent products of IT are its application business services. In evaluating this criterion, we looked at breadth and depth of support for a wide range of application types, insight into application-to-application and application-to-infrastructure interdependencies, advanced levels of transaction awareness, and handshakes to support DevOps and business impact.

Internet of Things (IoT)

IoT is an emerging area, and one that many solutions in this report are architecturally designed to support — even if, in most cases, IoT has not yet been a priority in deployments. In evaluating this criterion, we looked at three things: architectural feasibility to support IoT data inputs, proof points of IoT use cases from actual deployments, and proactive support for IoT with unique out-of-the box functionality.

In my next blog I address our seven "scenarios" ranging from DevOps and SecOps to business impact and business alignment.

Read Part 3: Scenarios

Related Links

Hot Topics

The Latest

Understanding Zero-Day Vulnerabilities: Why They Matter and How to Stay Protected

Cyber threats are growing more sophisticated every day, and at their forefront are zero-day vulnerabilities. These elusive security gaps are exploited before a fix becomes available, making them among the most dangerous threats in today's digital landscape ... This guide will explore what these vulnerabilities are, how they work, why they pose such a significant threat, and how modern organizations can stay protected ...

Data Center Outages Becoming Less Frequent

The prevention of data center outages continues to be a strategic priority for data center owners and operators. Infrastructure equipment has improved, but the complexity of modern architectures and evolving external threats presents new risks that operators must actively manage, according to the Data Center Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute ...

Instrumentation Score: Quantifying Telemetry Quality

As observability engineers, we navigate a sea of telemetry daily. We instrument our applications, configure collectors, and build dashboards, all in pursuit of understanding our complex distributed systems. Yet, amidst this flood of data, a critical question often remains unspoken, or at best, answered by gut feeling: "Is our telemetry actually good?" ... We're inviting you to participate in shaping a foundational element for better observability: the Instrumentation Score ...

Automating While Keeping Humans in the Loop

We're inching ever closer toward a long-held goal: technology infrastructure that is so automated that it can protect itself. But as IT leaders aggressively employ automation across our enterprises, we need to continuously reassess what AI is ready to manage autonomously and what can not yet be trusted to algorithms ...

AI Factories: Scaling Intelligence with Observability, Reliability and Efficiency

Much like a traditional factory turns raw materials into finished products, the AI factory turns vast datasets into actionable business outcomes through advanced models, inferences, and automation. From the earliest data inputs to the final token output, this process must be reliable, repeatable, and scalable. That requires industrializing the way AI is developed, deployed, and managed ...

Think You've Heard Everything About the Debate over RTO? Here's the Big Thing Leaders Are Missing

Almost half (48%) of employees admit they resent their jobs but stay anyway, according to research from Ivanti ... This has obvious consequences across the business, but we're overlooking the massive impact of resenteeism and presenteeism on IT. For IT professionals tasked with managing the backbone of modern business operations, these numbers spell big trouble ...

Beyond the MACH Hype: Why Your Commerce Platform Is Not Helping You Win DX or CX

For many B2B and B2C enterprise brands, technology isn't a core strength. Relying on overly complex architectures (like those that follow a pure MACH doctrine) has been flagged by industry leaders as a source of operational slowdown, creating bottlenecks that limit agility in volatile market conditions ...

Effective FinOps: Moving from Recommendations to Risks

FinOps champions crucial cross-departmental collaboration, uniting business, finance, technology and engineering leaders to demystify cloud expenses. Yet, too often, critical cost issues are softened into mere "recommendations" or "insights" — easy to ignore. But what if we adopted security's battle-tested strategy and reframed these as the urgent risks they truly are, demanding immediate action? ...

Rising IT Complexity Threatens Modernization - Survey Shows SysAdmins Under Pressure

Two in three IT professionals now cite growing complexity as their top challenge — an urgent signal that the modernization curve may be getting too steep, according to the Rising to the Challenge survey from Checkmk ...

State of the Data Center 2025

While IT leaders are becoming more comfortable and adept at balancing workloads across on-premises, colocation data centers and the public cloud, there's a key component missing: connectivity, according to the 2025 State of the Data Center Report from CoreSite ...