Skip to main content

Q&A: AppDynamics Talks About APM - Part 2

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

In Part 2 of APMdigest's exclusive interview, AppDynamics talks about Application Performance Management (APM) for cloud and mobile. Bhaskar Sunkara is AppDynamics CTO and SVP of Product Management. Jonah Kowall is VP of Market Development and Insights at AppDynamics.

Start with Part 1 of the Interview

APM: The 2015 APM Tools Survey also mentioned cloud-readiness as a perceived must-have. In terms of APM, do you agree that cloud-readiness is a top priority? If so, what does it take to be truly cloud-ready in terms of managing app performance?

Sunkara: Cloud is a key strategy for most IT organizations. As you start migrating apps to cloud or building on the cloud, APM has to cover visibility. Migration to the cloud is happening across most organizations, so APM is essential for cloud-readiness.

Kowall: As organizations increasingly virtualize and create more abstraction in their applications and infrastructure, monitoring has to be more lightweight and more fluid. Software has to be more adaptable to the environment and architecture changes, such as when cloud is adopted or new technologies are augmented into a software application. This is something we focus on with our product — supporting new technologies, and being critical to every organization’s cloud strategy.

APM: Is flexible deployment important for public cloud?

Sunkara: Sometimes customers have different types of applications — some businesses are more sensitive and don’t want to send data to the cloud and want the option of on-premises deployment. However, these same businesses could also have some applications that they’re okay having completely in the cloud. Customers need to have flexibility in terms of deployment, so they can make the decision themselves based on their strategy and direction.

Kowall: The amount of regulations businesses are expected to abide by is different around the world and vary by country. Surveillance of information, as well as exposure of surveillance by whistleblowers and others, has created reluctance among businesses to share data outside of their borders. With these points, it is critical to offer flexible deployments to meet different needs as our world evolves faster than it ever has.

APM: Does APM need to change to meet the coming shift to mobile apps?

Kowall: Mobile is just one of the trends that impacts the way information is consumed. Other disruptive technologies, such as wearables and internet of things (IoT), are all contributing to the way we consume information and interact with software. APM will need to evolve with these new methods of consumption in order to enable companies to continue to see inside software and understand user interactions. Mobile is just the first of many technologies that will force APM to evolve.

APM: What are the most important points about application performance and/or APM that every CEO should know?

Kowall: Your users and your software are your business. As a CEO,  you need to not only ensure your company’s software is functioning, but also have the ability to abstract insight from that software.

Read Q&A: AppDynamics Talks About APM - Part 3

The Latest
The Latest 10

The Latest

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

For years, DevOps teams operated under a simple assumption: collect enough telemetry, and you can find and fix any problem. That assumption is breaking down. Modern enterprises now operate across microservices, hybrid cloud environments, APIs, Kubernetes, and highly automated delivery pipelines. Releases happen continuously, dependencies shift constantly, and failures spread faster than teams can diagnose them ...

New Relic surveyed IT and engineering leaders from the media and entertainment (M&E) sector to understand what's working — and where challenges persist with their observability practices. The findings reveal how M&E organizations are navigating rising platform complexity, audience expectations, and AI-driven change. Below are five takeaways that stand out ...

Let me start with something I've seen play out more times than I can count. A team hits a wall with the cloud. Costs creep up, then spike. Performance starts to feel inconsistent. Someone in finance asks a simple question like "why did this double?" and nobody has a clean answer ... Maybe this isn't the right place for everything. That realization feels like a breakthrough, like you've identified the problem. In reality, you've just identified the starting line ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 24, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network observability tool sprawl ... 

In cloud-native systems, scaling is often as simple as moving a slider. For on-premise databases, the stakes are different. Over-provisioning hardware is expensive. Under-provisioning leads to performance bottlenecks that are difficult to fix once the equipment is in the rack ...

When most people think about cybersecurity, they picture firewalls, encryption, and access controls — technical tools designed to protect systems and data. But beneath the technology lies a deeper set of principles about trust, decision-making, and resilience ... The best leaders don't eliminate risk. They manage it intelligently. And in many ways, cybersecurity offers a surprisingly useful playbook for doing exactly that ...

Q&A: AppDynamics Talks About APM - Part 2

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

In Part 2 of APMdigest's exclusive interview, AppDynamics talks about Application Performance Management (APM) for cloud and mobile. Bhaskar Sunkara is AppDynamics CTO and SVP of Product Management. Jonah Kowall is VP of Market Development and Insights at AppDynamics.

Start with Part 1 of the Interview

APM: The 2015 APM Tools Survey also mentioned cloud-readiness as a perceived must-have. In terms of APM, do you agree that cloud-readiness is a top priority? If so, what does it take to be truly cloud-ready in terms of managing app performance?

Sunkara: Cloud is a key strategy for most IT organizations. As you start migrating apps to cloud or building on the cloud, APM has to cover visibility. Migration to the cloud is happening across most organizations, so APM is essential for cloud-readiness.

Kowall: As organizations increasingly virtualize and create more abstraction in their applications and infrastructure, monitoring has to be more lightweight and more fluid. Software has to be more adaptable to the environment and architecture changes, such as when cloud is adopted or new technologies are augmented into a software application. This is something we focus on with our product — supporting new technologies, and being critical to every organization’s cloud strategy.

APM: Is flexible deployment important for public cloud?

Sunkara: Sometimes customers have different types of applications — some businesses are more sensitive and don’t want to send data to the cloud and want the option of on-premises deployment. However, these same businesses could also have some applications that they’re okay having completely in the cloud. Customers need to have flexibility in terms of deployment, so they can make the decision themselves based on their strategy and direction.

Kowall: The amount of regulations businesses are expected to abide by is different around the world and vary by country. Surveillance of information, as well as exposure of surveillance by whistleblowers and others, has created reluctance among businesses to share data outside of their borders. With these points, it is critical to offer flexible deployments to meet different needs as our world evolves faster than it ever has.

APM: Does APM need to change to meet the coming shift to mobile apps?

Kowall: Mobile is just one of the trends that impacts the way information is consumed. Other disruptive technologies, such as wearables and internet of things (IoT), are all contributing to the way we consume information and interact with software. APM will need to evolve with these new methods of consumption in order to enable companies to continue to see inside software and understand user interactions. Mobile is just the first of many technologies that will force APM to evolve.

APM: What are the most important points about application performance and/or APM that every CEO should know?

Kowall: Your users and your software are your business. As a CEO,  you need to not only ensure your company’s software is functioning, but also have the ability to abstract insight from that software.

Read Q&A: AppDynamics Talks About APM - Part 3

The Latest
The Latest 10

The Latest

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

For years, DevOps teams operated under a simple assumption: collect enough telemetry, and you can find and fix any problem. That assumption is breaking down. Modern enterprises now operate across microservices, hybrid cloud environments, APIs, Kubernetes, and highly automated delivery pipelines. Releases happen continuously, dependencies shift constantly, and failures spread faster than teams can diagnose them ...

New Relic surveyed IT and engineering leaders from the media and entertainment (M&E) sector to understand what's working — and where challenges persist with their observability practices. The findings reveal how M&E organizations are navigating rising platform complexity, audience expectations, and AI-driven change. Below are five takeaways that stand out ...

Let me start with something I've seen play out more times than I can count. A team hits a wall with the cloud. Costs creep up, then spike. Performance starts to feel inconsistent. Someone in finance asks a simple question like "why did this double?" and nobody has a clean answer ... Maybe this isn't the right place for everything. That realization feels like a breakthrough, like you've identified the problem. In reality, you've just identified the starting line ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 24, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network observability tool sprawl ... 

In cloud-native systems, scaling is often as simple as moving a slider. For on-premise databases, the stakes are different. Over-provisioning hardware is expensive. Under-provisioning leads to performance bottlenecks that are difficult to fix once the equipment is in the rack ...

When most people think about cybersecurity, they picture firewalls, encryption, and access controls — technical tools designed to protect systems and data. But beneath the technology lies a deeper set of principles about trust, decision-making, and resilience ... The best leaders don't eliminate risk. They manage it intelligently. And in many ways, cybersecurity offers a surprisingly useful playbook for doing exactly that ...