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Exploring Next-Gen Application Performance Management

Dr. Thomas Mendel Ph.D.

The following is based on excerpts from Research In Action's Vendor Selection Matrix for Next Generation Application Performance Management.

The importance of Application Performance Management is at an all time high. This is a very dynamic market, highly complex and with many different facets. Application Performance Management solutions today have many faces and definitions, few vendors can be compared on an apples to apples basis.

There are more than 400 active software and SaaS vendors generating around $4.6 billion in annual revenue. However, the overall importance of Application Performance Management for the IT Service, Application and Operation Management space as a whole, is still growing every year. This makes it worthwhile to look ahead to see what the future will look like for the Next Generation of Application Management solutions.

The End-User Pain Points Today

The Cloud challenge in the extended enterprise

The Cloud phenomenon is driving investment from IT buyers to address issues in Application Performance Management around new applications in the Cloud, as well as extended real-time and Big Data requirements. More traditional challenges around N-tier Applications and instrumentation, are further exemplified by the Cloud.

More business orientation

DevOps is only the beginning, but already high on the agenda for 2015. As the business becomes more entrenched in Application Management as a whole, business SLAs are a key focal point for 2015 as well.

More integration issues than one can handle

IT decision makers are still struggling with the many areas of integration in today’s Application Performance Management implementations. Very few companies have worked this out completely.The most important integration challenges come from the areas of:

1. Cost

2. Capacity

3. BPM/BTM

4. Business process

5. The CMDB

Requirements for Next Generation APM

In a survey of 1600 IT Managers, respondents were asked: What are the key requirements for a Next Generation Application Performance Management solution? The chart below shows the results.


The Next Generation of APM Solutions

APM is a changing market with new and clearer requirements. Application Performance Management has a long history in many enterprises. Many implementations are already more than 25 years old. Vendors and IT buyers alike a struggling with updating their solution sets to accommodate the quickly changing requirements.

The Next Generation Application Performance Management solutions, however, will be based a clearer set of requirements, making it easier to implement and maintain, as well as to compare vendors.

SaaS will be the future delivery platform. SaaS will be the platform of choice for ROI conscious buyers. Next Generation Application Performance Management will be predominantly a SaaS play. SaaS is now widely accepted. While new players are already predominantly SaaS-only, established players are either revamping their solutions, or are at least offering SaaS options. A much better ROI as well as ease of deploy and upgrade are the major drivers for this.

Next Generation Application Performance Management will be more streamlined. The technical requirements for Next Generation Application Performance Management will ultimately lead to a vendor landscape that is much more comparable than the one in today’s highly fragmented market.

Dr. Thomas Mendel Ph.D. is Managing Director of Research in Action.

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Exploring Next-Gen Application Performance Management

Dr. Thomas Mendel Ph.D.

The following is based on excerpts from Research In Action's Vendor Selection Matrix for Next Generation Application Performance Management.

The importance of Application Performance Management is at an all time high. This is a very dynamic market, highly complex and with many different facets. Application Performance Management solutions today have many faces and definitions, few vendors can be compared on an apples to apples basis.

There are more than 400 active software and SaaS vendors generating around $4.6 billion in annual revenue. However, the overall importance of Application Performance Management for the IT Service, Application and Operation Management space as a whole, is still growing every year. This makes it worthwhile to look ahead to see what the future will look like for the Next Generation of Application Management solutions.

The End-User Pain Points Today

The Cloud challenge in the extended enterprise

The Cloud phenomenon is driving investment from IT buyers to address issues in Application Performance Management around new applications in the Cloud, as well as extended real-time and Big Data requirements. More traditional challenges around N-tier Applications and instrumentation, are further exemplified by the Cloud.

More business orientation

DevOps is only the beginning, but already high on the agenda for 2015. As the business becomes more entrenched in Application Management as a whole, business SLAs are a key focal point for 2015 as well.

More integration issues than one can handle

IT decision makers are still struggling with the many areas of integration in today’s Application Performance Management implementations. Very few companies have worked this out completely.The most important integration challenges come from the areas of:

1. Cost

2. Capacity

3. BPM/BTM

4. Business process

5. The CMDB

Requirements for Next Generation APM

In a survey of 1600 IT Managers, respondents were asked: What are the key requirements for a Next Generation Application Performance Management solution? The chart below shows the results.


The Next Generation of APM Solutions

APM is a changing market with new and clearer requirements. Application Performance Management has a long history in many enterprises. Many implementations are already more than 25 years old. Vendors and IT buyers alike a struggling with updating their solution sets to accommodate the quickly changing requirements.

The Next Generation Application Performance Management solutions, however, will be based a clearer set of requirements, making it easier to implement and maintain, as well as to compare vendors.

SaaS will be the future delivery platform. SaaS will be the platform of choice for ROI conscious buyers. Next Generation Application Performance Management will be predominantly a SaaS play. SaaS is now widely accepted. While new players are already predominantly SaaS-only, established players are either revamping their solutions, or are at least offering SaaS options. A much better ROI as well as ease of deploy and upgrade are the major drivers for this.

Next Generation Application Performance Management will be more streamlined. The technical requirements for Next Generation Application Performance Management will ultimately lead to a vendor landscape that is much more comparable than the one in today’s highly fragmented market.

Dr. Thomas Mendel Ph.D. is Managing Director of Research in Action.

Hot Topics

The Latest

The enterprises that will define the next decade are not the ones that deployed the most technology. They are the ones who understood what their technology was actually doing. That distinction is not a philosophical point. It is the central operational challenge facing every organization that has spent the last five years modernizing at speed ...

AI is becoming the operating system of the enterprise. It acts as an invisible coordination layer that understands intent, connects systems, and executes work across complex SaaS environments. Previously, employees had to click through multiple systems — CRM, ERP, support tools, collaboration platforms — to complete a single task. Now, instead of navigating each application manually, they can simply state what they need to accomplish ...

In 2026, the cost of downtime or an outage is no longer just a technical inconvenience; it's a $600 billion wake up call for global businesses. As our digital ecosystems become  more interconnected, each touchpoint introduces new risks and multiplies the consequences when things go wrong. And the data is clear: aggregate downtime costs  for Global 2,000 companies have surged 50% since 2024, reaching a staggering $600 billion ...

Deloitte found that 74% of enterprises expect to deploy agentic AI solutions in the next 24 months. However, the rush to deployment is outpacing foundational work, though. Only 21% of enterprises have fully formed agent governance models in place. The result? AI agents deployed without guidance or governance begin to function as fragmented islands of complexity ...

Cloud spending is no longer viewed as a passthrough IT expense, but as a strategic financial lever that directly impacts innovation capacity, profitability and enterprise resilience, according to the CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report from Azul ...

As AI moves from generating responses to performing actions, the need for trust increases exponentially. And as organizations enlist AI agents for increasingly sophisticated business processes, trust is going to be the single most important theme for spurring adoption. What can organizations do to build trustworthy AI agents? ...

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

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 ...