Skip to main content

Where Do IT Professionals Need the Most Support During COVID-19?

Research shows an increased demand in APM, cloud monitoring and microservices
Angie Mistretta
AppDynamics

As the pressures for companies to deliver exceptional digital experiences dramatically increase, digital transformation is now a key priority for all. Whether its supporting a remote workforce with collaboration tools or updating a healthcare application to make information about testing facilities more available, the COVID-19 pandemic has exponentially accelerated digital transformation projects for internal and external purposes and is forcing IT teams to adopt new systems and expand their existing tools in order to keep up. In verticals such as higher education, finance and retail, we're seeing IT deployment timelines of 5-10 years accelerate to weeks or months as companies contend with students and customers who now only interact through applications.

Our almost instantaneous and complete reliance on technology for day-to-day activities — from working remotely, ordering groceries, or having a happy hour with friends — forced industry professionals to rapidly adapt to meet the new demands. In this new world, where companies are relying on IT teams to have the right answer to each new challenge, it is important to recognize how technology vendors can support them. What are vendors offering and what do these professionals need?

Identifying Where IT Professionals Need the Most Help

To better understand where IT professionals are turning for help, we analyzed the online behaviors of IT decision-makers across the AppDynamics website during a peak period of the COVID-19 pandemic, March 1 through April 4, 2020. Our research found an increase in demand for resources related to APM, microservices and dependence on cloud services. This shows IT professionals are searching for more effective ways to manage, optimize and scale services to meet their users' expectations.

APM, Cloud and Microservices Are On the Rise

Instead of storefronts, customers have been depending on the reliability of digital experiences to keep things as normal as possible. Similarly, the complete shift to work from home for many companies accelerated a fully digital experience sooner than most expected. Monitoring and evaluating the performance of apps across the network makes sure employees and customers are having dynamic and personalized experiences, which ultimately drives brand loyalty. During the COVID-19 pandemic, web traffic for information about APM service has increased 24 percent and we experienced a 233 percent increase in attendance for an APM class, making it clear there is a huge desire to better understand the technology.

Additionally, the pandemic has made it difficult for businesses to predict demand or rely on capacity models built without accounting for the rapid behavior changes that are occurring. IT decision makers need flexibility to quickly scale resources up and down as user demands shift and we all adjust to this new physically disperse and app heavy reality. The cloud is what will help enable this. Some organizations who previously deployed on-premise software now need to enable a remote workforce and provide access to business-critical data in real-time to geographically dispersed teams. Validating these shifts in IT priorities, we saw a 40 percent increase in traffic to cloud monitoring related pages highlighting that a path to the cloud is necessary for business survival right now.

IT professionals are faced with the challenge of constantly evolving the quality of a digital experience so it makes sense that microservices would also be of interest. As microservices help develop, test and deploy code as efficiently as possible, web traffic for resources focused on microservices adoption and how to leverage microservices to enhance user experience has increased by 21 percent since the pandemic began.

These IT decision makers are accelerating adoption of container orchestration technologies like Kubernetes to manage and scale workloads. We found a 20 percent increase in web traffic for resources related to Kubernetes monitoring and a 33 percent increase in demand for resources about best practices for instrumenting containers.

It is clear that our increased dependence on the digital experience is pushing IT departments to find more efficient ways of deploying applications without breaking their budgets or alienating customers or employees in the process. IT professionals need additional support and tools to address their current challenges, which will not vanish post-pandemic.

This means that business leaders need to give them the tools, support and freedom they need to adopt new technologies and transform digital business models at a pace faster than anything we have seen before.

Angie Mistretta is CMO of AppDynamics, a part of Cisco

The Latest

A new wave of tariffs, some exceeding 100%, is sending shockwaves across the technology industry. Enterprises are grappling with sudden, dramatic cost increases that threaten to disrupt carefully planned budgets, sourcing strategies, and deployment plans. For CIOs and CTOs, this isn't just an economic setback; it's a wake-up call. The era of predictable cloud pricing and stable global supply chains is over ...

As artificial intelligence (AI) adoption gains momentum, network readiness is emerging as a critical success factor. AI workloads generate unpredictable bursts of traffic, demanding high-speed connectivity that is low latency and lossless. AI adoption will require upgrades and optimizations in data center networks and wide-area networks (WANs). This is prompting enterprise IT teams to rethink, re-architect, and upgrade their data center and WANs to support AI-driven operations ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is core to observability practices, with some 41% of respondents reporting AI adoption as a core driver of observability, according to the State of Observability for Financial Services and Insurance report from New Relic ...

Application performance monitoring (APM) is a game of catching up — building dashboards, setting thresholds, tuning alerts, and manually correlating metrics to root causes. In the early days, this straightforward model worked as applications were simpler, stacks more predictable, and telemetry was manageable. Today, the landscape has shifted, and more assertive tools are needed ...

Cloud adoption has accelerated, but backup strategies haven't always kept pace. Many organizations continue to rely on backup strategies that were either lifted directly from on-prem environments or use cloud-native tools in limited, DR-focused ways ... Eon uncovered a handful of critical gaps regarding how organizations approach cloud backup. To capture these prevailing winds, we gathered insights from 150+ IT and cloud leaders at the recent Google Cloud Next conference, which we've compiled into the 2025 State of Cloud Data Backup ...

Private clouds are no longer playing catch-up, and public clouds are no longer the default as organizations recalibrate their cloud strategies, according to the Private Cloud Outlook 2025 report from Broadcom. More than half (53%) of survey respondents say private cloud is their top priority for deploying new workloads over the next three years, while 69% are considering workload repatriation from public to private cloud, with one-third having already done so ...

As organizations chase productivity gains from generative AI, teams are overwhelmingly focused on improving delivery speed (45%) over enhancing software quality (13%), according to the Quality Transformation Report from Tricentis ...

Back in March of this year ... MongoDB's stock price took a serious tumble ... In my opinion, it reflects a deeper structural issue in enterprise software economics altogether — vendor lock-in ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 15, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses Do-It-Yourself Network Automation ... 

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 ...

Where Do IT Professionals Need the Most Support During COVID-19?

Research shows an increased demand in APM, cloud monitoring and microservices
Angie Mistretta
AppDynamics

As the pressures for companies to deliver exceptional digital experiences dramatically increase, digital transformation is now a key priority for all. Whether its supporting a remote workforce with collaboration tools or updating a healthcare application to make information about testing facilities more available, the COVID-19 pandemic has exponentially accelerated digital transformation projects for internal and external purposes and is forcing IT teams to adopt new systems and expand their existing tools in order to keep up. In verticals such as higher education, finance and retail, we're seeing IT deployment timelines of 5-10 years accelerate to weeks or months as companies contend with students and customers who now only interact through applications.

Our almost instantaneous and complete reliance on technology for day-to-day activities — from working remotely, ordering groceries, or having a happy hour with friends — forced industry professionals to rapidly adapt to meet the new demands. In this new world, where companies are relying on IT teams to have the right answer to each new challenge, it is important to recognize how technology vendors can support them. What are vendors offering and what do these professionals need?

Identifying Where IT Professionals Need the Most Help

To better understand where IT professionals are turning for help, we analyzed the online behaviors of IT decision-makers across the AppDynamics website during a peak period of the COVID-19 pandemic, March 1 through April 4, 2020. Our research found an increase in demand for resources related to APM, microservices and dependence on cloud services. This shows IT professionals are searching for more effective ways to manage, optimize and scale services to meet their users' expectations.

APM, Cloud and Microservices Are On the Rise

Instead of storefronts, customers have been depending on the reliability of digital experiences to keep things as normal as possible. Similarly, the complete shift to work from home for many companies accelerated a fully digital experience sooner than most expected. Monitoring and evaluating the performance of apps across the network makes sure employees and customers are having dynamic and personalized experiences, which ultimately drives brand loyalty. During the COVID-19 pandemic, web traffic for information about APM service has increased 24 percent and we experienced a 233 percent increase in attendance for an APM class, making it clear there is a huge desire to better understand the technology.

Additionally, the pandemic has made it difficult for businesses to predict demand or rely on capacity models built without accounting for the rapid behavior changes that are occurring. IT decision makers need flexibility to quickly scale resources up and down as user demands shift and we all adjust to this new physically disperse and app heavy reality. The cloud is what will help enable this. Some organizations who previously deployed on-premise software now need to enable a remote workforce and provide access to business-critical data in real-time to geographically dispersed teams. Validating these shifts in IT priorities, we saw a 40 percent increase in traffic to cloud monitoring related pages highlighting that a path to the cloud is necessary for business survival right now.

IT professionals are faced with the challenge of constantly evolving the quality of a digital experience so it makes sense that microservices would also be of interest. As microservices help develop, test and deploy code as efficiently as possible, web traffic for resources focused on microservices adoption and how to leverage microservices to enhance user experience has increased by 21 percent since the pandemic began.

These IT decision makers are accelerating adoption of container orchestration technologies like Kubernetes to manage and scale workloads. We found a 20 percent increase in web traffic for resources related to Kubernetes monitoring and a 33 percent increase in demand for resources about best practices for instrumenting containers.

It is clear that our increased dependence on the digital experience is pushing IT departments to find more efficient ways of deploying applications without breaking their budgets or alienating customers or employees in the process. IT professionals need additional support and tools to address their current challenges, which will not vanish post-pandemic.

This means that business leaders need to give them the tools, support and freedom they need to adopt new technologies and transform digital business models at a pace faster than anything we have seen before.

Angie Mistretta is CMO of AppDynamics, a part of Cisco

The Latest

A new wave of tariffs, some exceeding 100%, is sending shockwaves across the technology industry. Enterprises are grappling with sudden, dramatic cost increases that threaten to disrupt carefully planned budgets, sourcing strategies, and deployment plans. For CIOs and CTOs, this isn't just an economic setback; it's a wake-up call. The era of predictable cloud pricing and stable global supply chains is over ...

As artificial intelligence (AI) adoption gains momentum, network readiness is emerging as a critical success factor. AI workloads generate unpredictable bursts of traffic, demanding high-speed connectivity that is low latency and lossless. AI adoption will require upgrades and optimizations in data center networks and wide-area networks (WANs). This is prompting enterprise IT teams to rethink, re-architect, and upgrade their data center and WANs to support AI-driven operations ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is core to observability practices, with some 41% of respondents reporting AI adoption as a core driver of observability, according to the State of Observability for Financial Services and Insurance report from New Relic ...

Application performance monitoring (APM) is a game of catching up — building dashboards, setting thresholds, tuning alerts, and manually correlating metrics to root causes. In the early days, this straightforward model worked as applications were simpler, stacks more predictable, and telemetry was manageable. Today, the landscape has shifted, and more assertive tools are needed ...

Cloud adoption has accelerated, but backup strategies haven't always kept pace. Many organizations continue to rely on backup strategies that were either lifted directly from on-prem environments or use cloud-native tools in limited, DR-focused ways ... Eon uncovered a handful of critical gaps regarding how organizations approach cloud backup. To capture these prevailing winds, we gathered insights from 150+ IT and cloud leaders at the recent Google Cloud Next conference, which we've compiled into the 2025 State of Cloud Data Backup ...

Private clouds are no longer playing catch-up, and public clouds are no longer the default as organizations recalibrate their cloud strategies, according to the Private Cloud Outlook 2025 report from Broadcom. More than half (53%) of survey respondents say private cloud is their top priority for deploying new workloads over the next three years, while 69% are considering workload repatriation from public to private cloud, with one-third having already done so ...

As organizations chase productivity gains from generative AI, teams are overwhelmingly focused on improving delivery speed (45%) over enhancing software quality (13%), according to the Quality Transformation Report from Tricentis ...

Back in March of this year ... MongoDB's stock price took a serious tumble ... In my opinion, it reflects a deeper structural issue in enterprise software economics altogether — vendor lock-in ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 15, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses Do-It-Yourself Network Automation ... 

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 ...