The Essential Tools to Support Digital Transformation - Part 6

APMdigest asked experts from across the IT industry — from analysts and consultants to users and the top vendors — for their opinions on the essential tools to support digital transformation. Part 6 covers the development process.

Start with The Essential Tools to Support Digital Transformation - Part 1

Start with The Essential Tools to Support Digital Transformation - Part 2

Start with The Essential Tools to Support Digital Transformation - Part 3

Start with The Essential Tools to Support Digital Transformation - Part 4

Start with The Essential Tools to Support Digital Transformation - Part 5

APPLICATION RELEASE AUTOMATION (ARA)

Actually the most important tool to support digital transformation should definitely be a tool that reduces the number of tools you're using! Or at least that reduces the complexity of DevOps processes that span across multiple environments from the mainframe to the cloud. Today's top application development challenge is not lack of tools, but too many tools. Automation, and more specifically Release Automation tools can address this situation by orchestrating existing software assets into a smooth delivery flow.
Yann Guernion
Product Marketing Director, Workload Automation, CA Automation

If businesses want to remain competitive in today's digital marketplace, they must continuously innovate, deliver, and transform through faster software innovation. DevOps practices accelerate software innovation. However, enterprises face significant barriers scaling these practices in Hybrid IT environments without compromising, quality, security, and availability. It's critical to embrace new technologies and software practices while building on what already works. Application Release Automation (ARA) solutions enable IT organizations to bridge the old with the new supporting the digital transformation of the business by automating and orchestrating continuous delivery pipelines across traditional and hybrid IT environments. IT organizations can deliver features — and the business can bring on new revenue streams — faster, achieving the agility needed to respond immediately to marketplace opportunity, events, and trends.
Mark Levy
Director, Product Marketing, Micro Focus

TEST AUTOMATION

Even the best digital transformation strategy falls apart if customers can't use your application. The cause of these problems are often myriad external events outside your control: browser and operating system updates, new device types, and frontend code changes. To mitigate this risk, you must harness test automation tools such as visual AI technology that can "see" user interfaces as a human tester does. Visual AI technology used in the context of test automation can continually check and monitor user interfaces on web and mobile applications against all possible technology combinations — devices, operating systems, browsers, screen sizes, and languages — to pinpoint problems preventing customers from using your application.
Gil Sever
CEO, Applitools

CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION AND DELIVERY (CI/CD)

Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) tools are critical for enabling digital transformation because they provide businesses with confidence to ship smaller changes faster, speeding up the software development lifecycle, and thus delivering greater business value. CI/CD is the basis of automating the entire DevOps lifecycle.
Mark Pundsack
Head of Product, GitLab

Your CD automation tool becomes the connective tissue between teams, tools and processes. A properly automated delivery process establishes the main highway of your digital transformation, providing the foundation for you to go faster.
Brian Dawson
DevOps Evangelist, CloudBees

ENTERPRISE AGILE DELIVERY SYSTEM

When an enterprise looks to embark on a digital transformation project they need to make sure they are poised to implement it with speed, while minimizing disruption. To meet the scope, time and quality of project implementations, large organizations need a solution that has been created with Enterprise IT in mind, which are often siloed and dispersed and heavily reliant on business stakeholder collaboration. As such, IT teams need a dedicated Enterprise Agile Delivery solution that will provide them insight into the entire delivery value chain. In turn, IT teams can respond to the increasing and changing demand streams with a collaborative platform that aligns complex IT organizations around shared objectives, offers visibility and real-time monitoring and reporting to ensure multidimensional views into impact and risk across the delivery of demand streams (pipelines), while continually and intelligently factoring in scope, time and quality. The solution should also support Agile and hybrid frameworks so an enterprise can easily adopt the right delivery methodologies at their own pace.
Ronit Eliav
Director of Product Marketing, Panaya

APM FOR CI/CD

The most important digital transformation tool for any organization is an application monitoring solution that can operate at the speed of CI/CD. That means monitoring all microservice technologies, automating EVERYTHING about monitoring (from discovery to sensor deployment and alerting), adjusting in real-time to changes in the environment, and providing an intelligent understanding of information, not just a set of metrics.
Chris Farrell
Director of Marketing, Instana

LOW-CODE

IT teams are far too often understaffed and overworked to deliver on the promise of digital transformation. Helping companies meet demands from business operations and customers, low-code is enabling organizations to exceed digital expectations — and ultimately embrace new digital business models. Low-code is a game changer for organizations, allowing for agile and rapid delivery of software while keeping organizations focused on continuous digital innovation.
Malcolm Ross
VP of Product, Appian

NO-CODE PLATFORM

Digital transformation is meaningless to business users unless the new processes seamlessly automate or make more efficient the non-digital processes they're accustomed to. They also have to be easy to adopt and use. No-code platforms make it easy to build highly-customized enterprise workflows, and reconfigure them in a matter of days based on user feedback or changes to the desired processes.
Colin Earl
CEO, Agiloft

AUTOMATED SECURITY

"Organizations undergoing digital transformation should look for a security automation tool to take pressure off their IT team. During a digital transformation, it can be difficult for companies to continuously provide a positive customer experience and ensure any security gaps are handled properly. Automating security can help an organization meet customer and application service-level agreements (SLAs) under any operational conditions. When looking at options for automated security services, look for a tool that offers complete visibility into user experience, application performance, and network and application security. It should also automatically accelerate application response time while offloading optimization from development teams. Selecting a solution that uses a multi-layered approach and can block cyber-attacks before they ever reach your network, will help improve overall security and support digital transformation efforts as well.
Louis Scialabba
Director of Carrier Solutions Marketing, Radware

VALUE STREAM MANAGEMENT

With today's intense focus on digital transformation and DevOps, it's easy to lose sight of architecture and design (A&D). Investment in A&D early in the life cycle of an app, before any code is created, is the most efficient way to drive quality up, cost down, and faster time to market. A&D is absolutely critical in complex application development where important choices about being process-led or decision-led have to be made up front. DevOps and the focus it creates on the pipeline often sucks all the air out of the A&D conversation. Enterprises should not lose sight of A&D and look more closely at value stream management (VSM) to gain a more holistic approach to DevOps that covers the entire SDLC.
Stephen D. Hendrick
Research Director, Application Development & Management, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)

The most important tool you need to execute on your digital transformation is Value Stream Mapping. Without a clear understanding of what your value stream should look like (front to back, time to value focused) your digital transformation is at best a local optimization.
Robert Elves
Senior Director of Product, Tasktop Technologies

Read The Essential Tools to Support Digital Transformation - Part 7, offering some final thoughts.

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Observability 2.0: The Convergence of AI, OpenTelemetry, and Unified Data

Traditional observability requires users to leap across different platforms or tools for metrics, logs, or traces and related issues manually, which is very time-consuming, so as to reasonably ascertain the root cause. Observability 2.0 fixes this by unifying all telemetry data, logs, metrics, and traces into a single, context-rich pipeline that flows into one smart platform. But this is far from just having a bunch of additional data; this data is actionable, predictive, and tied to revenue realization ...

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Cloud computing has transformed how we build and scale software, but it has also quietly introduced one of the most persistent challenges in modern IT: cost visibility and control ... So why, after more than a decade of cloud adoption, are cloud costs still spiraling out of control? The answer lies not in tooling but in culture ...

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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 ...

The Essential Tools to Support Digital Transformation - Part 6

APMdigest asked experts from across the IT industry — from analysts and consultants to users and the top vendors — for their opinions on the essential tools to support digital transformation. Part 6 covers the development process.

Start with The Essential Tools to Support Digital Transformation - Part 1

Start with The Essential Tools to Support Digital Transformation - Part 2

Start with The Essential Tools to Support Digital Transformation - Part 3

Start with The Essential Tools to Support Digital Transformation - Part 4

Start with The Essential Tools to Support Digital Transformation - Part 5

APPLICATION RELEASE AUTOMATION (ARA)

Actually the most important tool to support digital transformation should definitely be a tool that reduces the number of tools you're using! Or at least that reduces the complexity of DevOps processes that span across multiple environments from the mainframe to the cloud. Today's top application development challenge is not lack of tools, but too many tools. Automation, and more specifically Release Automation tools can address this situation by orchestrating existing software assets into a smooth delivery flow.
Yann Guernion
Product Marketing Director, Workload Automation, CA Automation

If businesses want to remain competitive in today's digital marketplace, they must continuously innovate, deliver, and transform through faster software innovation. DevOps practices accelerate software innovation. However, enterprises face significant barriers scaling these practices in Hybrid IT environments without compromising, quality, security, and availability. It's critical to embrace new technologies and software practices while building on what already works. Application Release Automation (ARA) solutions enable IT organizations to bridge the old with the new supporting the digital transformation of the business by automating and orchestrating continuous delivery pipelines across traditional and hybrid IT environments. IT organizations can deliver features — and the business can bring on new revenue streams — faster, achieving the agility needed to respond immediately to marketplace opportunity, events, and trends.
Mark Levy
Director, Product Marketing, Micro Focus

TEST AUTOMATION

Even the best digital transformation strategy falls apart if customers can't use your application. The cause of these problems are often myriad external events outside your control: browser and operating system updates, new device types, and frontend code changes. To mitigate this risk, you must harness test automation tools such as visual AI technology that can "see" user interfaces as a human tester does. Visual AI technology used in the context of test automation can continually check and monitor user interfaces on web and mobile applications against all possible technology combinations — devices, operating systems, browsers, screen sizes, and languages — to pinpoint problems preventing customers from using your application.
Gil Sever
CEO, Applitools

CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION AND DELIVERY (CI/CD)

Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) tools are critical for enabling digital transformation because they provide businesses with confidence to ship smaller changes faster, speeding up the software development lifecycle, and thus delivering greater business value. CI/CD is the basis of automating the entire DevOps lifecycle.
Mark Pundsack
Head of Product, GitLab

Your CD automation tool becomes the connective tissue between teams, tools and processes. A properly automated delivery process establishes the main highway of your digital transformation, providing the foundation for you to go faster.
Brian Dawson
DevOps Evangelist, CloudBees

ENTERPRISE AGILE DELIVERY SYSTEM

When an enterprise looks to embark on a digital transformation project they need to make sure they are poised to implement it with speed, while minimizing disruption. To meet the scope, time and quality of project implementations, large organizations need a solution that has been created with Enterprise IT in mind, which are often siloed and dispersed and heavily reliant on business stakeholder collaboration. As such, IT teams need a dedicated Enterprise Agile Delivery solution that will provide them insight into the entire delivery value chain. In turn, IT teams can respond to the increasing and changing demand streams with a collaborative platform that aligns complex IT organizations around shared objectives, offers visibility and real-time monitoring and reporting to ensure multidimensional views into impact and risk across the delivery of demand streams (pipelines), while continually and intelligently factoring in scope, time and quality. The solution should also support Agile and hybrid frameworks so an enterprise can easily adopt the right delivery methodologies at their own pace.
Ronit Eliav
Director of Product Marketing, Panaya

APM FOR CI/CD

The most important digital transformation tool for any organization is an application monitoring solution that can operate at the speed of CI/CD. That means monitoring all microservice technologies, automating EVERYTHING about monitoring (from discovery to sensor deployment and alerting), adjusting in real-time to changes in the environment, and providing an intelligent understanding of information, not just a set of metrics.
Chris Farrell
Director of Marketing, Instana

LOW-CODE

IT teams are far too often understaffed and overworked to deliver on the promise of digital transformation. Helping companies meet demands from business operations and customers, low-code is enabling organizations to exceed digital expectations — and ultimately embrace new digital business models. Low-code is a game changer for organizations, allowing for agile and rapid delivery of software while keeping organizations focused on continuous digital innovation.
Malcolm Ross
VP of Product, Appian

NO-CODE PLATFORM

Digital transformation is meaningless to business users unless the new processes seamlessly automate or make more efficient the non-digital processes they're accustomed to. They also have to be easy to adopt and use. No-code platforms make it easy to build highly-customized enterprise workflows, and reconfigure them in a matter of days based on user feedback or changes to the desired processes.
Colin Earl
CEO, Agiloft

AUTOMATED SECURITY

"Organizations undergoing digital transformation should look for a security automation tool to take pressure off their IT team. During a digital transformation, it can be difficult for companies to continuously provide a positive customer experience and ensure any security gaps are handled properly. Automating security can help an organization meet customer and application service-level agreements (SLAs) under any operational conditions. When looking at options for automated security services, look for a tool that offers complete visibility into user experience, application performance, and network and application security. It should also automatically accelerate application response time while offloading optimization from development teams. Selecting a solution that uses a multi-layered approach and can block cyber-attacks before they ever reach your network, will help improve overall security and support digital transformation efforts as well.
Louis Scialabba
Director of Carrier Solutions Marketing, Radware

VALUE STREAM MANAGEMENT

With today's intense focus on digital transformation and DevOps, it's easy to lose sight of architecture and design (A&D). Investment in A&D early in the life cycle of an app, before any code is created, is the most efficient way to drive quality up, cost down, and faster time to market. A&D is absolutely critical in complex application development where important choices about being process-led or decision-led have to be made up front. DevOps and the focus it creates on the pipeline often sucks all the air out of the A&D conversation. Enterprises should not lose sight of A&D and look more closely at value stream management (VSM) to gain a more holistic approach to DevOps that covers the entire SDLC.
Stephen D. Hendrick
Research Director, Application Development & Management, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)

The most important tool you need to execute on your digital transformation is Value Stream Mapping. Without a clear understanding of what your value stream should look like (front to back, time to value focused) your digital transformation is at best a local optimization.
Robert Elves
Senior Director of Product, Tasktop Technologies

Read The Essential Tools to Support Digital Transformation - Part 7, offering some final thoughts.

Related Links

Hot Topics

The Latest

Checkmate VPN Intruders with Personal SASE Service

Zero-day vulnerabilities — security flaws that are exploited before developers even know they exist — pose one of the greatest risks to modern organizations. Recently, such vulnerabilities have been discovered in well-known VPN systems like Ivanti and Fortinet, highlighting just how outdated these legacy technologies have become in defending against fast-evolving cyber threats ... To protect digital assets and remote workers in today's environment, companies need more than patchwork solutions. They need architecture that is secure by design ...

Observability 2.0: The Convergence of AI, OpenTelemetry, and Unified Data

Traditional observability requires users to leap across different platforms or tools for metrics, logs, or traces and related issues manually, which is very time-consuming, so as to reasonably ascertain the root cause. Observability 2.0 fixes this by unifying all telemetry data, logs, metrics, and traces into a single, context-rich pipeline that flows into one smart platform. But this is far from just having a bunch of additional data; this data is actionable, predictive, and tied to revenue realization ...

Challenges of DIY Network Automation

64% of enterprise networking teams use internally developed software or scripts for network automation, but 61% of those teams spend six or more hours per week debugging and maintaining them, according to From Scripts to Platforms: Why Homegrown Tools Dominate Network Automation and How Vendors Can Help, my latest EMA report ...

Best Practices for Enterprises to Reduce Cloud Costs

Cloud computing has transformed how we build and scale software, but it has also quietly introduced one of the most persistent challenges in modern IT: cost visibility and control ... So why, after more than a decade of cloud adoption, are cloud costs still spiraling out of control? The answer lies not in tooling but in culture ...

CEOs Double Down on AI While Navigating Enterprise Hurdles

CEOs are committed to advancing AI solutions across their organization even as they face challenges from accelerating technology adoption, according to the IBM CEO Study. The survey revealed that executive respondents expect the growth rate of AI investments to more than double in the next two years, and 61% confirm they are actively adopting AI agents today and preparing to implement them at scale ...

IBM

 

6 Signals That an Architectural Shift Is Underway Across Enterprise Networks

A major architectural shift is underway across enterprise networks, according to a new global study from Cisco. As AI assistants, agents, and data-driven workloads reshape how work gets done, they're creating faster, more dynamic, more latency-sensitive, and more complex network traffic. Combined with the ubiquity of connected devices, 24/7 uptime demands, and intensifying security threats, these shifts are driving infrastructure to adapt and evolve ...

Cisco

Is Better Release Management the Solution to the Persistent Banking App Downtime?

The development of banking apps was supposed to provide users with convenience, control and piece of mind. However, for thousands of Halifax customers recently, a major mobile outage caused the exact opposite, leaving customers unable to check balances, or pay bills, sparking widespread frustration. This wasn't an isolated incident ... So why are these failures still happening? ...

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 ...