Vendor Forum Rules

The APMdigest Vendor Forum was established to give vendors of Application Performance Management (APM), Observability, AIOps, NPM and related technologies an opportunity to share their views with the IT community in an objective venue. All commentary in Vendor Forum blogs is intended to be objective, vendor-neutral and non-promotional content to educate and enlighten APMdigest readers. (Sponsors of APMdigest are allowed to add a promotional sentence or two at the end, plus promotional links and hyperlinks, but blog copy must be vendor-neutral).

All vendors in APM, Observability, AIOps, NPM and related market spaces are welcome to blog on the Vendor Forum at no cost. To request a blogging account on the Vendor Forum, contact Pete Goldin, Editor and Publisher of APMdigest.

The following guidelines apply to software vendors who would like to post a blog on APMdigest. Non-vendor blogs are posted in The APM Blog. If you work for or represent a company or organization that is not considered a product vendor by APMdigest, and you want to submit a blog, click here for the Editorial Guidelines.

For sponsors of the site, APMdigest makes exceptions for some of the guidelines below. Blogs from APMdigest sponsors are also posted in the Vendor Forum, but sponsors gain certain benefits when blogging. If you work for or represent a sponsor of APMdigest, click here for the Sponsor Blog Guidelines.

Signing Up for a Vendor Forum Blogging Account

■ A request for a blogging account on the Vendor Forum must come directly from the individual whose name will be on the blogs, from that individual's corporate email address.

■ Only one representative from each vendor will be allowed to maintain a blogging account on the Vendor Forum at any particular time, if that vendor does not sponsor APMdigest. Once a company's blogger is established, that same byline must be used for all future blogs from that company. The only time the byline can be changed is if the blogger is no longer with the company, or the blogger has not posted a blog in the last 24 months.

■ APMdigest sponsors are allowed multiple blogging accounts on the Vendor Forum. This sponsor benefit is especially helpful for companies with multiple thought leaders in the industry who would like to claim authorship for their own blogs. With an APMdigest sponsorship, your CEO, CTO, CMO, technology evangelists and others can all blog. Click here to find out how you can sponsor APMdigest. Click here for the Sponsor Blog Guidelines.

■ Blogs go with the blogger. This means if a blogger leaves a company, moves to a new company in the APM industry or a related market, and continues to blog, all blogs posted by that blogger – past and present – will reference the new company. References to the previous company will be removed from the previous blogs. Exceptions to this rule can be made for sponsors, if requested.

Rules for Blogging on the Vendor Forum

Please observe the following rules when blogging on the Vendor Forum:

■ Your completed blog should be sent to the editor, when ready for posting. Word doc is the preferred format. APMdigest will post the blog under your byline.

■ APMdigest does not accept any blog submissions from gmail or other anonymous email accounts. You must send the blog from your corporate email account.

■ Do not promote your own company, products, services, resources, events or partners in blogs on the Vendor Forum. Topics should be general industry interest. Copy and graphics should be non-promotional and vendor-neutral.

■ One reference to your company in the blog copy is permitted when you are discussing a survey or report conducted or commissioned by your company. A reference to your company's or partner's product is never permitted in the blog copy.

■ If your blog is about a study, survey or report conducted or commissioned by your company, focus on the results of the survey/study. Do not focus on why and how the survey/study was conducted, or the value the report will have to readers.

■ Do not use your product names or phrases that refer to your specific product or service in a blog. Even if your company is trying to turn the phrase into an industry term, if only your company uses this term and it basically refers to your product or service, do not include the phrase in a blog.

■ Case studies are not permitted on the Vendor Forum, even if the vendor is not mentioned by name. Do not reference your customer in a blog, or talk about or imply how your company or products helped a customer.

■ Do not mention any product brands or make negative references to a company, brand or product in any blogs on the Vendor Forum. The purpose of this rule is to prohibit vendors from posting negative blogs about their competitors. However, when the blog is about solving performance issues relating to a specific environment or infrastructure brand, exceptions to this rule can be made on a case-by-case basis.

■ A reference to open source projects is usually permitted, as long as the reference is non-promotional, and is a reference to the open source project or technology itself, and not the company that founded or owns the project. Inclusion of these references is decided by APMdigest on a case-by-case basis. Open source projects that are run by organizations that are supported across the industry can usually be mentioned or covered in a blog. OpenTelemetry would be an example of this type of open source technology that can be covered, but not in relation to a vendor's product.

■ Companies that do not sponsor APMdigest can only include a link to their company home page at the end of the blog – no product pages or any other pages. Even if the product has its own URL separate from the company page, this cannot be included in place of the company home page. The home page link will always be included in the "Related Links" section at the end of the blog, and cannot be substituted with a hyperlink in the text. The home page link cannot include any tracking code.

■ Only sponsors of APMdigest can include additional links at the end of the blog. Click here to find out how you can sponsor APMdigest.

■ APMdigest removes old outdated links, but only updates outdated links for current sponsors of the site.

■ Do not place any hyperlinks in the body copy of a blog linking to your company's or any other vendor's web pages or other promotional pages. Hyperlinks in the body copy should only be to support factual points you are making. These hyperlinks can link to a supporting report or article as long as the content is not on your website or any other vendor's website, is not sponsored or commissioned by your company or any other vendor, and does not promote your company or any other vendor in any way. Hyperlinks cannot include any tracking code. Inclusion of any hyperlinks is at the sole discretion of APMdigest.

■ When supporting a fact in your blog with a hyperlink, only link to content that is not gated. For example, do not link to gated analyst reports that require the reader to purchase the report or a subscription in order to access the report.

■ Try to keep blogs between 500-1000 words. This is more of a guideline than a rule. You can include more content if you wish, but APMdigest recommends posting shorter blogs more often. If you have written a 1000+ word blog, consider breaking it into two or more blogs. You could call them Part One and Part Two, if you like. If a blog is lengthy, APMdigest may choose to post it in multiple parts.

■ All blogs will be reviewed by APMdigest prior to publication. APMdigest reserves the right to edit any content submitted, and the publication of any blog is at the sole discretion of APMdigest. Vendor Forum blog posts are edited by APMdigest for spelling, basic grammar and punctuation. Vendor Forum blogs are also edited to ensure they meet APMdigest guidelines.

■ Blogs do not have to follow AP style. They can be casual in style. However, APMdigest expects blogs to be written to meet basic grammar standards. If a blog does not meet these standards, it will not be posted.

■ The date the blog is actually published will be decided by the editor. APMdigest may provide you with an estimated publication date prior to posting, but that date cannot be guaranteed, as unforeseen priorities may push the posting date back. APMdigest sponsors have priority when blogs are posted.

■ All Vendor Forum blogs must be original content that has not been published – and will not be published – on any other website. APMdigest periodically may request to re-post a blog, if the content is particularly valuable to our readers, but please do not pitch APMdigest to re-post your blog.

■ APMdigest does not accept blogs that are AI-generated. If APMdigest determines that it is highly likely a blog is AI-generated, it will not be posted.

■ APMdigest will always send an email to the main contact(s) when a blog posts, with the URL. If you have not rec'd an email, your blog has not posted yet.

■ You can re-post your blogs from the Vendor Forum on your own blogs or websites, as long as you mention that the blog was originally posted on APMdigest, and include a link to APMdigest. However, we recommend linking to the blog on APMdigest.com rather than posting the full blog on your site, to highlight the fact that the content was published by an independent third party. Publication of your blog on a respected industry site provides strong thought leadership credibility for the author and company.

■ Please note that these guidelines are updated periodically to ensure continued alignment with APMdigest's mission.

Topics for the Vendor Forum

Click here for a list of topics covered by APMdigest

If you are unsure whether your topic fits APMdigest, run your idea by Pete Goldin.

Publication Schedule

APMdigest posts one item of primary content — blog or feature — each day, Monday through Thursday. Consequently, there is often a queue of content waiting to be posted.

APMdigest does not post content on and around US holidays, including the week of July 4 and two weeks around Christmas/New Years.

APMdigest e-mails go out twice per month, and the current mailing includes content posted since the last mailing. During July and December, APMdigest may only send one email for that month.

The Latest

The Hidden Data Engineering Work Required to Make Enterprise AI Viable

If AI is the engine of a modern organization, then data engineering is the road system beneath it. You can build the most powerful engine in the world, but without paved roads, traffic signals, and bridges that can support its weight, it will stall. In many enterprises, the engine is ready. The roads are not ...

Why AI Is the Differentiator for Operationally Resilient Organizations

In the world of digital-first business, there is no tolerance for service outages. Businesses know that outages are the quickest way to lose money and customers. For smaller organizations, unplanned downtime could even force the business to close ... A new study from PagerDuty, The State of AI-First Operations, reveals that companies actively incorporating AI into operations now view operational resilience as a growth driver rather than a cost center. But how are they achieving it? ...

Escaping Pilot Purgatory: How AI Becomes an Operational Advantage

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

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

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 23, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses the NetOps labor shortage ... 

Why FinOps Rewrote Its Mission and What It Signals for Technology Management

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 ...

Vendor Forum Rules

The APMdigest Vendor Forum was established to give vendors of Application Performance Management (APM), Observability, AIOps, NPM and related technologies an opportunity to share their views with the IT community in an objective venue. All commentary in Vendor Forum blogs is intended to be objective, vendor-neutral and non-promotional content to educate and enlighten APMdigest readers. (Sponsors of APMdigest are allowed to add a promotional sentence or two at the end, plus promotional links and hyperlinks, but blog copy must be vendor-neutral).

All vendors in APM, Observability, AIOps, NPM and related market spaces are welcome to blog on the Vendor Forum at no cost. To request a blogging account on the Vendor Forum, contact Pete Goldin, Editor and Publisher of APMdigest.

The following guidelines apply to software vendors who would like to post a blog on APMdigest. Non-vendor blogs are posted in The APM Blog. If you work for or represent a company or organization that is not considered a product vendor by APMdigest, and you want to submit a blog, click here for the Editorial Guidelines.

For sponsors of the site, APMdigest makes exceptions for some of the guidelines below. Blogs from APMdigest sponsors are also posted in the Vendor Forum, but sponsors gain certain benefits when blogging. If you work for or represent a sponsor of APMdigest, click here for the Sponsor Blog Guidelines.

Signing Up for a Vendor Forum Blogging Account

■ A request for a blogging account on the Vendor Forum must come directly from the individual whose name will be on the blogs, from that individual's corporate email address.

■ Only one representative from each vendor will be allowed to maintain a blogging account on the Vendor Forum at any particular time, if that vendor does not sponsor APMdigest. Once a company's blogger is established, that same byline must be used for all future blogs from that company. The only time the byline can be changed is if the blogger is no longer with the company, or the blogger has not posted a blog in the last 24 months.

■ APMdigest sponsors are allowed multiple blogging accounts on the Vendor Forum. This sponsor benefit is especially helpful for companies with multiple thought leaders in the industry who would like to claim authorship for their own blogs. With an APMdigest sponsorship, your CEO, CTO, CMO, technology evangelists and others can all blog. Click here to find out how you can sponsor APMdigest. Click here for the Sponsor Blog Guidelines.

■ Blogs go with the blogger. This means if a blogger leaves a company, moves to a new company in the APM industry or a related market, and continues to blog, all blogs posted by that blogger – past and present – will reference the new company. References to the previous company will be removed from the previous blogs. Exceptions to this rule can be made for sponsors, if requested.

Rules for Blogging on the Vendor Forum

Please observe the following rules when blogging on the Vendor Forum:

■ Your completed blog should be sent to the editor, when ready for posting. Word doc is the preferred format. APMdigest will post the blog under your byline.

■ APMdigest does not accept any blog submissions from gmail or other anonymous email accounts. You must send the blog from your corporate email account.

■ Do not promote your own company, products, services, resources, events or partners in blogs on the Vendor Forum. Topics should be general industry interest. Copy and graphics should be non-promotional and vendor-neutral.

■ One reference to your company in the blog copy is permitted when you are discussing a survey or report conducted or commissioned by your company. A reference to your company's or partner's product is never permitted in the blog copy.

■ If your blog is about a study, survey or report conducted or commissioned by your company, focus on the results of the survey/study. Do not focus on why and how the survey/study was conducted, or the value the report will have to readers.

■ Do not use your product names or phrases that refer to your specific product or service in a blog. Even if your company is trying to turn the phrase into an industry term, if only your company uses this term and it basically refers to your product or service, do not include the phrase in a blog.

■ Case studies are not permitted on the Vendor Forum, even if the vendor is not mentioned by name. Do not reference your customer in a blog, or talk about or imply how your company or products helped a customer.

■ Do not mention any product brands or make negative references to a company, brand or product in any blogs on the Vendor Forum. The purpose of this rule is to prohibit vendors from posting negative blogs about their competitors. However, when the blog is about solving performance issues relating to a specific environment or infrastructure brand, exceptions to this rule can be made on a case-by-case basis.

■ A reference to open source projects is usually permitted, as long as the reference is non-promotional, and is a reference to the open source project or technology itself, and not the company that founded or owns the project. Inclusion of these references is decided by APMdigest on a case-by-case basis. Open source projects that are run by organizations that are supported across the industry can usually be mentioned or covered in a blog. OpenTelemetry would be an example of this type of open source technology that can be covered, but not in relation to a vendor's product.

■ Companies that do not sponsor APMdigest can only include a link to their company home page at the end of the blog – no product pages or any other pages. Even if the product has its own URL separate from the company page, this cannot be included in place of the company home page. The home page link will always be included in the "Related Links" section at the end of the blog, and cannot be substituted with a hyperlink in the text. The home page link cannot include any tracking code.

■ Only sponsors of APMdigest can include additional links at the end of the blog. Click here to find out how you can sponsor APMdigest.

■ APMdigest removes old outdated links, but only updates outdated links for current sponsors of the site.

■ Do not place any hyperlinks in the body copy of a blog linking to your company's or any other vendor's web pages or other promotional pages. Hyperlinks in the body copy should only be to support factual points you are making. These hyperlinks can link to a supporting report or article as long as the content is not on your website or any other vendor's website, is not sponsored or commissioned by your company or any other vendor, and does not promote your company or any other vendor in any way. Hyperlinks cannot include any tracking code. Inclusion of any hyperlinks is at the sole discretion of APMdigest.

■ When supporting a fact in your blog with a hyperlink, only link to content that is not gated. For example, do not link to gated analyst reports that require the reader to purchase the report or a subscription in order to access the report.

■ Try to keep blogs between 500-1000 words. This is more of a guideline than a rule. You can include more content if you wish, but APMdigest recommends posting shorter blogs more often. If you have written a 1000+ word blog, consider breaking it into two or more blogs. You could call them Part One and Part Two, if you like. If a blog is lengthy, APMdigest may choose to post it in multiple parts.

■ All blogs will be reviewed by APMdigest prior to publication. APMdigest reserves the right to edit any content submitted, and the publication of any blog is at the sole discretion of APMdigest. Vendor Forum blog posts are edited by APMdigest for spelling, basic grammar and punctuation. Vendor Forum blogs are also edited to ensure they meet APMdigest guidelines.

■ Blogs do not have to follow AP style. They can be casual in style. However, APMdigest expects blogs to be written to meet basic grammar standards. If a blog does not meet these standards, it will not be posted.

■ The date the blog is actually published will be decided by the editor. APMdigest may provide you with an estimated publication date prior to posting, but that date cannot be guaranteed, as unforeseen priorities may push the posting date back. APMdigest sponsors have priority when blogs are posted.

■ All Vendor Forum blogs must be original content that has not been published – and will not be published – on any other website. APMdigest periodically may request to re-post a blog, if the content is particularly valuable to our readers, but please do not pitch APMdigest to re-post your blog.

■ APMdigest does not accept blogs that are AI-generated. If APMdigest determines that it is highly likely a blog is AI-generated, it will not be posted.

■ APMdigest will always send an email to the main contact(s) when a blog posts, with the URL. If you have not rec'd an email, your blog has not posted yet.

■ You can re-post your blogs from the Vendor Forum on your own blogs or websites, as long as you mention that the blog was originally posted on APMdigest, and include a link to APMdigest. However, we recommend linking to the blog on APMdigest.com rather than posting the full blog on your site, to highlight the fact that the content was published by an independent third party. Publication of your blog on a respected industry site provides strong thought leadership credibility for the author and company.

■ Please note that these guidelines are updated periodically to ensure continued alignment with APMdigest's mission.

Topics for the Vendor Forum

Click here for a list of topics covered by APMdigest

If you are unsure whether your topic fits APMdigest, run your idea by Pete Goldin.

Publication Schedule

APMdigest posts one item of primary content — blog or feature — each day, Monday through Thursday. Consequently, there is often a queue of content waiting to be posted.

APMdigest does not post content on and around US holidays, including the week of July 4 and two weeks around Christmas/New Years.

APMdigest e-mails go out twice per month, and the current mailing includes content posted since the last mailing. During July and December, APMdigest may only send one email for that month.

The Latest

The Hidden Data Engineering Work Required to Make Enterprise AI Viable

If AI is the engine of a modern organization, then data engineering is the road system beneath it. You can build the most powerful engine in the world, but without paved roads, traffic signals, and bridges that can support its weight, it will stall. In many enterprises, the engine is ready. The roads are not ...

Why AI Is the Differentiator for Operationally Resilient Organizations

In the world of digital-first business, there is no tolerance for service outages. Businesses know that outages are the quickest way to lose money and customers. For smaller organizations, unplanned downtime could even force the business to close ... A new study from PagerDuty, The State of AI-First Operations, reveals that companies actively incorporating AI into operations now view operational resilience as a growth driver rather than a cost center. But how are they achieving it? ...

Escaping Pilot Purgatory: How AI Becomes an Operational Advantage

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

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

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 23, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses the NetOps labor shortage ... 

Why FinOps Rewrote Its Mission and What It Signals for Technology Management

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 ...