Q&A: AppDynamics Talks About APM - Part 3

Pete Goldin
APMdigest
Learn more about Cisco

In Part 3 of APMdigest's exclusive interview, AppDynamics talks about Unified Monitoring, analytics and the AppDynamics Summer 15 release. Bhaskar Sunkara is AppDynamics CTO and SVP of Product Management. Jonah Kowall is VP of Market Development and Insights at AppDynamics. Kalyan Ramanathan is VP of Product Marketing at AppDynamics.

Start with Part 1 of the Interview

Start with Part 2 of the Interview

APM: What does AppDynamics mean by "Unified Monitoring"?

Ramanathan: Unified Monitoring is the industry-first, application-centric solution that traces and monitors transactions from the end user, through the entire application and infrastructure environment, to help quickly and proactively solve performance issues, and ensure excellent user experience. The unified solution leverages a common data platform, making it easy to install and manage, and provides consistent and shareable interfaces for all users. This approach replaces the miscellany of siloed, non-integrated, infrastructure-specific tools that characterize the monitoring solution for many enterprises.

APM: What makes AppDynamics Unified Monitoring different?

Kowall: AppDynamics’ vision of Unified Monitoring starts with the user and transaction as they flow through  application components and relate this user and their transactions to the other parts of the infrastructure. Our Unified Monitoring is not about availability or event management. Rather, it is about how the infrastructure relates back to the user and the transaction— both of which are key to today’s businesses as they become software-defined. This visibility and technology is made possible by watching every line of code.

Sunkara: In the past, “unified monitoring” has been multiple products supplying you with multiple views— more of a top down approach and leading with a business transaction. The difference between the old attempts at unified monitoring and AppDynamics’ approach is that we are bringing all of the data throughout the various layers and placing them in a single data store. This allows for a much more powerful correlation, done organically.

APM: How does integrated analytics add an advantage?

Sunkara: Integrated analytics—especially with what AppDynamics’ is doing with analytics— really paint a picture of how performance is linking back to business. For example, APM tells you where the problem is and how to fix, whereas analytics tell you the impact of that problem— who was impacted, whether the business and/or customers were affected, etc. You need a lot more context to deal with the business impact and without an integrated approach to put both the APM and analytics pieces together, the performance dimension will be extremely difficult.

APM: What is AppDynamics war room feature? How does it alleviate the problems associated with the traditional war room?

Ramanathan: One of the biggest challenges IT organizations face in trying to solve urgent application issues is getting the entire organization on the same page, to see the same data, and reach conclusions together. Typically, a mix of communication tools are involved — phone calls, chat, emails, in-person discussions, etc.—  which often leaves the team collectively out of sync. The AppDynamics Virtual War Room solves those issues by creating a virtual space where everyone — development, operations, and business users —  can see the same data, chat, make changes to application configuration and settings in real time, and collaborate on every level, in the same space. Such collaboration radically shortens time-to-resolution for application issues and reduces their business impact. The results of this process then can be captured and indexed in knowledge management systems to streamline future troubleshooting.

APM: What other new features does the Summer 15 release offer?

Ramanathan: The Summer 15 release includes:

■ Unified Monitoring: the industry-first, application-centric integrated monitoring solution.

■ Public beta availability of Browser Synthetic Monitoring: AppDynamics’ distributed, cloud-based, intelligent monitoring solution for programmatically testing website availability, functionality, and performance.

■ Server Monitoring: AppDynamics’ new server monitoring platform is available as a public beta. Fully integrated into the Application Intelligence Platform interface, it extends the AppDynamics Server Monitoring capability to provide enhanced host visibility, extended CPU, network and storage performance metrics, comprehensive dashboard, and detailed process list information.

■ Python Application Performance Monitoring: AppDynamics’ Python APM provides code-level application monitoring, business transaction monitoring, errors and exception detection in real time, and as part of AppDynamics Unified Monitoring, visibility into processes, components, and dependencies that impact Python performance.

ABOUT Bhaskar Sunkara

As CTO and SVP of Product Management, Bhaskar Sunkara is responsible for product management, user experience, and field engineering enablement at AppDynamics. He also drives AppDynamics' Customer-centric Innovation methodology to combine customer feedback with fast-paced innovation. Sunkara was an original founder of AppDynamics and served as Director of Engineering responsible for all product development. Prior to joining AppDynamics, Sunkara was Lead Engineer at Wily Technology, where he pioneered a dynamic instrumentation engine as well as the company's product expansion into .NET. Prior to that, he was Lead Engineer for Pramati Technologies, where he was one of the key people behind the design and development of their J2EE Application Server. Sunkara received a BS degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Madras University.

ABOUT Jonah Kowall

As VP of Market Development and Insights at AppDynamics, Jonah Kowall helps drive the AppDynamics product roadmap and vision, while developing entry into new markets and providing valuable technology and business insights to fuel the accelerating and broad-based demand for the company’s Application Intelligence Platform. Kowall has a diverse background including 15 years as an IT practitioner at several startups and larger enterprises focused on infrastructure and operations, security, and performance engineering. These included running tactical and strategic operational initiatives, going deep into monitoring of infrastructure and application components. In 2011, Kowall changed careers, moving to Gartner to focus on availability and performance monitoring and IT operations management (ITOM). He led Gartner's influential Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics (NPMD) Magic Quadrants and research as a Research VP.

ABOUT Kalyan Ramanathan

Kalyan Ramanathan is VP of Product Marketing at AppDynamics. He as more than 20 years of experience in software and marketing, with a deep understanding of the mobile ecosystem and the broader IT operations market. Prior to AppDynamics, he served as CMO at Crittercism, a provider of mobile application performance management (mAPM) solutions. Prior to Crittercism, Ramanathan served as VP of Marketing at Electric Cloud, a DevOps automation leader, and as Senior Director of Product Marketing at Opsware/HP, where he oversaw marketing for HP’s data center automation and application performance management suite. Prior to Opsware, Ramanathan led product marketing and product management at Collation (acquired by IBM) and Portal Software (acquired by Oracle). Ramanathan began his career at Intel and has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

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Q&A: AppDynamics Talks About APM - Part 3

Pete Goldin
APMdigest
Learn more about Cisco

In Part 3 of APMdigest's exclusive interview, AppDynamics talks about Unified Monitoring, analytics and the AppDynamics Summer 15 release. Bhaskar Sunkara is AppDynamics CTO and SVP of Product Management. Jonah Kowall is VP of Market Development and Insights at AppDynamics. Kalyan Ramanathan is VP of Product Marketing at AppDynamics.

Start with Part 1 of the Interview

Start with Part 2 of the Interview

APM: What does AppDynamics mean by "Unified Monitoring"?

Ramanathan: Unified Monitoring is the industry-first, application-centric solution that traces and monitors transactions from the end user, through the entire application and infrastructure environment, to help quickly and proactively solve performance issues, and ensure excellent user experience. The unified solution leverages a common data platform, making it easy to install and manage, and provides consistent and shareable interfaces for all users. This approach replaces the miscellany of siloed, non-integrated, infrastructure-specific tools that characterize the monitoring solution for many enterprises.

APM: What makes AppDynamics Unified Monitoring different?

Kowall: AppDynamics’ vision of Unified Monitoring starts with the user and transaction as they flow through  application components and relate this user and their transactions to the other parts of the infrastructure. Our Unified Monitoring is not about availability or event management. Rather, it is about how the infrastructure relates back to the user and the transaction— both of which are key to today’s businesses as they become software-defined. This visibility and technology is made possible by watching every line of code.

Sunkara: In the past, “unified monitoring” has been multiple products supplying you with multiple views— more of a top down approach and leading with a business transaction. The difference between the old attempts at unified monitoring and AppDynamics’ approach is that we are bringing all of the data throughout the various layers and placing them in a single data store. This allows for a much more powerful correlation, done organically.

APM: How does integrated analytics add an advantage?

Sunkara: Integrated analytics—especially with what AppDynamics’ is doing with analytics— really paint a picture of how performance is linking back to business. For example, APM tells you where the problem is and how to fix, whereas analytics tell you the impact of that problem— who was impacted, whether the business and/or customers were affected, etc. You need a lot more context to deal with the business impact and without an integrated approach to put both the APM and analytics pieces together, the performance dimension will be extremely difficult.

APM: What is AppDynamics war room feature? How does it alleviate the problems associated with the traditional war room?

Ramanathan: One of the biggest challenges IT organizations face in trying to solve urgent application issues is getting the entire organization on the same page, to see the same data, and reach conclusions together. Typically, a mix of communication tools are involved — phone calls, chat, emails, in-person discussions, etc.—  which often leaves the team collectively out of sync. The AppDynamics Virtual War Room solves those issues by creating a virtual space where everyone — development, operations, and business users —  can see the same data, chat, make changes to application configuration and settings in real time, and collaborate on every level, in the same space. Such collaboration radically shortens time-to-resolution for application issues and reduces their business impact. The results of this process then can be captured and indexed in knowledge management systems to streamline future troubleshooting.

APM: What other new features does the Summer 15 release offer?

Ramanathan: The Summer 15 release includes:

■ Unified Monitoring: the industry-first, application-centric integrated monitoring solution.

■ Public beta availability of Browser Synthetic Monitoring: AppDynamics’ distributed, cloud-based, intelligent monitoring solution for programmatically testing website availability, functionality, and performance.

■ Server Monitoring: AppDynamics’ new server monitoring platform is available as a public beta. Fully integrated into the Application Intelligence Platform interface, it extends the AppDynamics Server Monitoring capability to provide enhanced host visibility, extended CPU, network and storage performance metrics, comprehensive dashboard, and detailed process list information.

■ Python Application Performance Monitoring: AppDynamics’ Python APM provides code-level application monitoring, business transaction monitoring, errors and exception detection in real time, and as part of AppDynamics Unified Monitoring, visibility into processes, components, and dependencies that impact Python performance.

ABOUT Bhaskar Sunkara

As CTO and SVP of Product Management, Bhaskar Sunkara is responsible for product management, user experience, and field engineering enablement at AppDynamics. He also drives AppDynamics' Customer-centric Innovation methodology to combine customer feedback with fast-paced innovation. Sunkara was an original founder of AppDynamics and served as Director of Engineering responsible for all product development. Prior to joining AppDynamics, Sunkara was Lead Engineer at Wily Technology, where he pioneered a dynamic instrumentation engine as well as the company's product expansion into .NET. Prior to that, he was Lead Engineer for Pramati Technologies, where he was one of the key people behind the design and development of their J2EE Application Server. Sunkara received a BS degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Madras University.

ABOUT Jonah Kowall

As VP of Market Development and Insights at AppDynamics, Jonah Kowall helps drive the AppDynamics product roadmap and vision, while developing entry into new markets and providing valuable technology and business insights to fuel the accelerating and broad-based demand for the company’s Application Intelligence Platform. Kowall has a diverse background including 15 years as an IT practitioner at several startups and larger enterprises focused on infrastructure and operations, security, and performance engineering. These included running tactical and strategic operational initiatives, going deep into monitoring of infrastructure and application components. In 2011, Kowall changed careers, moving to Gartner to focus on availability and performance monitoring and IT operations management (ITOM). He led Gartner's influential Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics (NPMD) Magic Quadrants and research as a Research VP.

ABOUT Kalyan Ramanathan

Kalyan Ramanathan is VP of Product Marketing at AppDynamics. He as more than 20 years of experience in software and marketing, with a deep understanding of the mobile ecosystem and the broader IT operations market. Prior to AppDynamics, he served as CMO at Crittercism, a provider of mobile application performance management (mAPM) solutions. Prior to Crittercism, Ramanathan served as VP of Marketing at Electric Cloud, a DevOps automation leader, and as Senior Director of Product Marketing at Opsware/HP, where he oversaw marketing for HP’s data center automation and application performance management suite. Prior to Opsware, Ramanathan led product marketing and product management at Collation (acquired by IBM) and Portal Software (acquired by Oracle). Ramanathan began his career at Intel and has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Related Links

The Latest
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Closing the Gap in Modern Tech and the Tools Meant to Monitor Them

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Podcast - Episode 23: NetOps Labor Shortage

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Technology management is evolving, and in turn, so is the scope of FinOps. The FinOps Foundation recently updated their mission statement from "advancing the people who manage the value of cloud" to "advancing the people who manage the value of technology." This seemingly small change solidifies a larger evolution: FinOps practitioners have organically expanded to be focused on more than just cloud cost optimization. Today, FinOps teams are largely — and quickly — expanding their job descriptions, evolving into a critical function for managing the full value of technology ...

Clearing the Path to AI: Why Vendor Consolidation Matters Now

Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

Cold Data, Hot Problem: Why AI Is Rewriting Enterprise Storage Strategy

Nearly every conversation about AI eventually circles back to compute. GPUs dominate the headlines while cloud platforms compete for workloads and model benchmarks drive investment decisions. But underneath that noise, a quieter infrastructure challenge is taking shape. The real bottleneck in enterprise AI is not processing power, it is the ability to store, manage and retrieve the relentless volumes of data that AI systems generate, consume and multiply ...

Observability at a Crossroads: AI, Economics, Complexity and the Enduring Power of Open Source

The 2026 Observability Survey from Grafana Labs paints a vivid picture of an industry maturing fast, where AI is welcomed with careful conditions, SaaS economics are reshaping spending decisions, complexity remains a defining challenge, and open standards continue to underpin it all ...

Explainability Is the New Battleground in AI-Powered Observability

The observability industry has an evolving relationship with AI. We're not skeptics, but it's clear that trust in AI must be earned ... In Grafana Labs' annual Observability Survey, 92% said they see real value in AI surfacing anomalies before they cause downtime. Another 91% endorsed AI for forecasting and root cause analysis. So while the demand is there, customers need it to be trustworthy, as the survey also found that the practitioners most enthusiastic about AI are also the most insistent on explainability ...

Empowering the Human Side of the Autonomous IT Age

In the modern enterprise, the conversation around AI has moved past skepticism toward a stage of active adoption. According to our 2026 State of IT Trends Report: The Human Side of Autonomous AI, nearly 90% of IT professionals view AI as a net positive, and this optimism is well-founded. We are seeing agentic AI move beyond simple automation to actively streamlining complex data insights and eliminating the manual toil that has long hindered innovation. However, as we integrate these autonomous agents into our ecosystems, the fundamental DNA of the IT role is evolving ...

AI Scale Is Outpacing Infrastructure - and IT Leaders Are Running Out of Time

AI workloads require an enormous amount of computing power ... What's also becoming abundantly clear is just how quickly AI's computing needs are leading to enterprise systems failure. According to Cockroach Labs' State of AI Infrastructure 2026 report, enterprise systems are much closer to failure than their organizations realize. The report ... suggests AI scale could cause widespread failures in as little as one year — making it a clear risk for business performance and reliability.

No Escalations ≠ No Work: Why Visibility in DevOps Matters More Now That AI Is Accelerating Everything

The quietest week your engineering team has ever had might also be its best. No alarms going off. No escalations. No frantic Teams or Slack threads at 2 a.m. Everything humming along exactly as it should. And somewhere in a leadership meeting, someone looks at the metrics dashboard, sees a flat line of incidents and says: "Seems like things are pretty calm over there. Do we really need all those people?" ... I've spent many years in engineering, and this pattern keeps repeating ...