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Why Full-Stack Observability Should Be a Priority This Year

Angie Mistretta
AppDynamics

One year ago, the world shifted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, sending companies into rapid digital transformation in order to adapt to the "next normal." Technologists were placed at the forefront of sustaining their companies' business, which ultimately put them under a considerable amount of strain as they navigated how to implement and maintain technologies, while facing increased demand from end users.

As we move into another year, technologists are concerned this rise in IT complexity will continue to pose significant challenges. In fact, our 2021 edition of the Agents of Transformation report found that 75 percent of global technologists believe the pandemic created more IT complexity than ever before and they are struggling to manage overwhelming "data noise."


Gaining Visibility into the IT Estate with Full-Stack Observability

After making a quick pivot to increase focus on their digital strategies, companies are now looking for ways to improve efficiency and ensure their organization's long-term success. Notably, full-stack observability has been a common need across the industry — our report uncovered about three quarters of technologists recognize that the inability to connect full-stack observability with business outcomes will be detrimental to their business in 2021.

The benefit of full-stack observability is that it allows IT teams to monitor an entire IT stack, including everything from customer-facing applications to core network and infrastructure. This approach ensures your organization will have full visibility into all your applications, teams and tools, and that you can quickly identify and address performance issues before they negatively impact end users.

But, full-stack observability alone doesn't give your teams everything they need to be successful. They also need to know how all of the data they are now receiving impacts the business. Adding business context enables your team to observe what matters most and prioritize resources accordingly.

Contextualizing IT Performance Insights with Real-Time Business Data

As we saw with the pandemic, when consumer demand is unexpectedly high and requires an instant response, implementing a "quick fix" such as moving all of the company's extra data to the cloud can sometimes be the best, or only, solution at that time. However, without monitoring or automation tools to support these moves, the fix will likely provide only short-term success and eventually put additional pressure on IT teams who are monitoring applications' performances on their own.

As discovered in our report, 76 percent of technologists acknowledge that since they are now experiencing heightened levels of complexity, they can no longer afford to rely on gut instinct with technology performance, they need accurate, real-time data. The lack of support can also lead to a gap in how a company manages its IT insights versus its business insights. To foster long-term success, companies should look into gaining full visibility across the business so any decisions made on the IT side are targeted at improving both the IT team and overall business performance.

The last year presented many new challenges for business and IT teams and showed everyone the importance of being able to quickly and decisively make adjustments to their digital strategy while also being able to identify, understand and resolve bottlenecks before customers are affected. Nearly 96 percent of technologists today recognize the significance of full-stack observability and its direct link to business performance and consider it essential to deliver first-class digital experiences. To support technologists working behind the scenes, companies should implement full-stack observability sooner rather than later to improve customer experiences and overall business performance.

Angie Mistretta is CMO of AppDynamics, a part of Cisco

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Why Full-Stack Observability Should Be a Priority This Year

Angie Mistretta
AppDynamics

One year ago, the world shifted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, sending companies into rapid digital transformation in order to adapt to the "next normal." Technologists were placed at the forefront of sustaining their companies' business, which ultimately put them under a considerable amount of strain as they navigated how to implement and maintain technologies, while facing increased demand from end users.

As we move into another year, technologists are concerned this rise in IT complexity will continue to pose significant challenges. In fact, our 2021 edition of the Agents of Transformation report found that 75 percent of global technologists believe the pandemic created more IT complexity than ever before and they are struggling to manage overwhelming "data noise."


Gaining Visibility into the IT Estate with Full-Stack Observability

After making a quick pivot to increase focus on their digital strategies, companies are now looking for ways to improve efficiency and ensure their organization's long-term success. Notably, full-stack observability has been a common need across the industry — our report uncovered about three quarters of technologists recognize that the inability to connect full-stack observability with business outcomes will be detrimental to their business in 2021.

The benefit of full-stack observability is that it allows IT teams to monitor an entire IT stack, including everything from customer-facing applications to core network and infrastructure. This approach ensures your organization will have full visibility into all your applications, teams and tools, and that you can quickly identify and address performance issues before they negatively impact end users.

But, full-stack observability alone doesn't give your teams everything they need to be successful. They also need to know how all of the data they are now receiving impacts the business. Adding business context enables your team to observe what matters most and prioritize resources accordingly.

Contextualizing IT Performance Insights with Real-Time Business Data

As we saw with the pandemic, when consumer demand is unexpectedly high and requires an instant response, implementing a "quick fix" such as moving all of the company's extra data to the cloud can sometimes be the best, or only, solution at that time. However, without monitoring or automation tools to support these moves, the fix will likely provide only short-term success and eventually put additional pressure on IT teams who are monitoring applications' performances on their own.

As discovered in our report, 76 percent of technologists acknowledge that since they are now experiencing heightened levels of complexity, they can no longer afford to rely on gut instinct with technology performance, they need accurate, real-time data. The lack of support can also lead to a gap in how a company manages its IT insights versus its business insights. To foster long-term success, companies should look into gaining full visibility across the business so any decisions made on the IT side are targeted at improving both the IT team and overall business performance.

The last year presented many new challenges for business and IT teams and showed everyone the importance of being able to quickly and decisively make adjustments to their digital strategy while also being able to identify, understand and resolve bottlenecks before customers are affected. Nearly 96 percent of technologists today recognize the significance of full-stack observability and its direct link to business performance and consider it essential to deliver first-class digital experiences. To support technologists working behind the scenes, companies should implement full-stack observability sooner rather than later to improve customer experiences and overall business performance.

Angie Mistretta is CMO of AppDynamics, a part of Cisco

Hot Topics

The Latest

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...