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5 Top Findings from TRAC Research's APM Spectrum

The following are five interesting findings from TRAC Research's APM Spectrum report, based on more than 400 survey participants and more than 120 live interviews:

1. Differences in the value of APM capabilities for specific job roles

Research example: IT operations roles are nearly four times less likely to be interested in deploying application instrumentation techniques. The study includes sections that cover the need for APM solutions for IT operations, application developers/QA, CIO and business users.

2. It is not about selecting the best solution, it is about the right mix of products that can close all visibility gaps

Research example: 71% of user organizations are using more than 1 tool for APM. The study includes nine APM submarkets that include between 8 and 23 technology vendors based on their ability to support specific use cases and job roles, and very often using a mix of different underlining technologies to address different aspects of application performance monitoring.

3. Beyond features and functionalities

Research example: CIOs reported that 72% of IT budgets is being spent on operating and maintaining existing IT services. Most of the purchases are driven, not by features and functionalities, but by the ability to solve real business problems. These problems range from reducing the amount of IT resources allocated to firefighting and troubleshooting problems to ensure that performance issues do not cause revenue loss.

4. Supporting different IT initiatives

Research example: 49% of organizations reported that lack of SLAs for user experience is the key challenge for managing application performance in the cloud. Organizations are reporting that their APM capabilities are often defined based on IT initiatives that they are looking to support, such as virtualization, cloud, SaaS, Big Data, Web Services, or mobility.

5. Capabilities relevant for different industry sectors

Research example: Organizations in the Finance sector are 59% less likely to deploy, or are interested in deploying, APM solutions that are delivered as SaaS. When it comes to specific APM capabilities, the research shows major differences across organizations from different industry sectors.

ABOUT Bojan Simic

Bojan Simic is President and Principal Analyst at TRAC Research, a market research and analyst firm that specializes in IT performance management. As an industry analyst, Simic has interviewed more than 2,000 IT and business professionals from end-user organizations and has published more than 50 research reports. His domain knowledge includes insights into end user experiences, best-practices in deploying solutions for IT performance management, and strategies of related solution providers.

Prior to joining TRAC Research, Simic was a lead analyst for Network and Application Performance Management research at Aberdeen Group. He is frequently quoted in leading industry publications and has presented his research findings at more than 30 market facing events.

Simic's coverage area at TRAC Research includes application and network monitoring, WAN management and acceleration, cloud and virtualization management, business service management and managed services.

Bojan holds a BA in Economics from Belgrade University in Belgrade, Serbia and an MBA from McCallum Graduate School of Business at Bentley University.

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5 Top Findings from TRAC Research's APM Spectrum

The following are five interesting findings from TRAC Research's APM Spectrum report, based on more than 400 survey participants and more than 120 live interviews:

1. Differences in the value of APM capabilities for specific job roles

Research example: IT operations roles are nearly four times less likely to be interested in deploying application instrumentation techniques. The study includes sections that cover the need for APM solutions for IT operations, application developers/QA, CIO and business users.

2. It is not about selecting the best solution, it is about the right mix of products that can close all visibility gaps

Research example: 71% of user organizations are using more than 1 tool for APM. The study includes nine APM submarkets that include between 8 and 23 technology vendors based on their ability to support specific use cases and job roles, and very often using a mix of different underlining technologies to address different aspects of application performance monitoring.

3. Beyond features and functionalities

Research example: CIOs reported that 72% of IT budgets is being spent on operating and maintaining existing IT services. Most of the purchases are driven, not by features and functionalities, but by the ability to solve real business problems. These problems range from reducing the amount of IT resources allocated to firefighting and troubleshooting problems to ensure that performance issues do not cause revenue loss.

4. Supporting different IT initiatives

Research example: 49% of organizations reported that lack of SLAs for user experience is the key challenge for managing application performance in the cloud. Organizations are reporting that their APM capabilities are often defined based on IT initiatives that they are looking to support, such as virtualization, cloud, SaaS, Big Data, Web Services, or mobility.

5. Capabilities relevant for different industry sectors

Research example: Organizations in the Finance sector are 59% less likely to deploy, or are interested in deploying, APM solutions that are delivered as SaaS. When it comes to specific APM capabilities, the research shows major differences across organizations from different industry sectors.

ABOUT Bojan Simic

Bojan Simic is President and Principal Analyst at TRAC Research, a market research and analyst firm that specializes in IT performance management. As an industry analyst, Simic has interviewed more than 2,000 IT and business professionals from end-user organizations and has published more than 50 research reports. His domain knowledge includes insights into end user experiences, best-practices in deploying solutions for IT performance management, and strategies of related solution providers.

Prior to joining TRAC Research, Simic was a lead analyst for Network and Application Performance Management research at Aberdeen Group. He is frequently quoted in leading industry publications and has presented his research findings at more than 30 market facing events.

Simic's coverage area at TRAC Research includes application and network monitoring, WAN management and acceleration, cloud and virtualization management, business service management and managed services.

Bojan holds a BA in Economics from Belgrade University in Belgrade, Serbia and an MBA from McCallum Graduate School of Business at Bentley University.

Hot Topics

The Latest

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...

In March, New Relic published the State of Observability for Media and Entertainment Report to share insights, data, and analysis into the adoption and business value of observability across the media and entertainment industry. Here are six key takeaways from the report ...

Regardless of their scale, business decisions often take time, effort, and a lot of back-and-forth discussion to reach any sort of actionable conclusion ... Any means of streamlining this process and getting from complex problems to optimal solutions more efficiently and reliably is key. How can organizations optimize their decision-making to save time and reduce excess effort from those involved? ...

As enterprises accelerate their cloud adoption strategies, CIOs are routinely exceeding their cloud budgets — a concern that's about to face additional pressure from an unexpected direction: uncertainty over semiconductor tariffs. The CIO Cloud Trends Survey & Report from Azul reveals the extent continued cloud investment despite cost overruns, and how organizations are attempting to bring spending under control ...

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