Having completed his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems from Caldwell University, Gregg boasts of a 22 years long career during which he has successfully handled key roles across BlackBerry Samsung Electronics, prior to joining Cisco in 2014.

Application observability is now being seen as a strategic priority for organizations in all industries, as IT teams look for new tools, structures and ways of working to cope with soaring levels of complexity. Technologists recognize that they need to move beyond traditional application monitoring approaches to manage and optimize increasingly fragmented and volatile hybrid environments. In fact, according to the latest research from Cisco AppDynamics titled ‘The Age of Application Observability’, 53 percent of organizations are already analyzing application observability solutions, and 44 percent are likely to do so in the next 12 months. But with the pressure mounting on technologists to accelerate innovation and always deliver seamless digital experiences, it is essential for IT teams to identify the right application observability solution that can meet current and future requirements. Particularly, they need to ensure that they have unified visibility across their hybrid IT estate.

Additionally, 89 percent of technologists report that their organization’s expectations around application observability solutions are increasing. Businesses are looking at application observability to address some of their biggest strategic challenges, from embedding innovation into their everyday operations through to breaking down the organizational silos that exist between people, processes and data. Technologists have firm ideas about what application observability should deliver, and below are the five critical attributes that they’re prioritizing when reviewing solution

Integration of Application Availability & Performance Data with Security

Technologists point to expanding attack surfaces as the greatest challenge they face in managing their hybrid environments. With application components running across a mix of cloud native platforms and on-premises databases, visibility gaps are being exposed and the risk of a security event is rising. Therefore, application observability solutions need to integrate performance and security monitoring so that IT teams can understand how vulnerabilities and incidents could impact end users and the business. Business transaction insights enable IT teams to measure the importance of threats based on severity scoring, factoring in the context of the threat. This means that they can prioritize threats that could damage a business-critical area of the environment or application. Technologists can cut through the data noise caused by high volumes of security alerts and focus on the things that really matter.

Technologists want an application observability solution that leverages automation and AI to automatically detect and resolve issues across the application landscape. AI should be deployed for continuous detection and prioritization, so that security exploits are identified and blocked automatically, without human intervention, maximizing speed and uptime while minimizing risk.

Ability to Validate Investments in Cloud Native Technologies

With the economic slowdown continuing, digital transformation budgets are coming under increased scrutiny and IT leaders are under pressure to validate their cloud investments. However, 84 percent of technologists admit that they struggle to align cloud costs with business performance. This is why technologists want an application observability solution which correlates IT data with business metrics. This enables IT leaders to generate business transaction insights in real-time, and then to view them in business-level dashboards. They can measure and demonstrate the value that their innovation programs are generating. Application observability should allow IT teams to make insight-driven decisions around investment. Indeed, 88 percent of technologists claim that application observability with business context will enable them to be more strategic and spend more time on innovation.

Simplifies Rather than Adds to Complexity

83 percent of technologists state that levels of complexity within their IT department are rising because of increased deployment of cloud native technologies. IT teams are being bombarded with overwhelming volumes of metrics, events, logs and traces (MELT) data from microservices and containers. Therefore, it’s essential that application observability solutions are able to simplify complexity, cutting through data noise to provide all IT teams with key insights on application availability, performance and security. Technologists need a solution which offers complete visibility across the application landscape to easily understand how applications and digital services are performing in real time.

Provides a Single Version of Truth for all Availability, Performance & Security Data

With most IT departments still deploying separate tools to monitor cloud native and on-premises technologies, IT teams don’t have a complete line of sight up and down the application path where components are running across a hybrid environment. Teams are working with their own data, reinforcing siloed working practices and cultures. Technologists are therefore looking for an application observability solution which provides a single source of truth for all availability, performance, and security data. Application observability should provide a platform for much closer collaboration between developers, operations, and security teams, paving the way for a DevSecOps approach in the IT department. Technologists want application observability to unite all IT teams around a common purpose and shared vision.

Utilizes Open Telemetry

As organizations shift towards modern application stacks, Open Telemetry is essential for IT teams to manage and optimize availability and performance within dynamic cloud native environments. This is why technologists point to the need for an application observability solution which can ingest the massive volumes of data they get from Open Telemetry and combine it with data from other data points that they derive through agents and data coming in from public cloud environments. Crucially, technologists want a unified application observability solution which can extract business transactions from Open Telemetry data. This allows IT teams to generate business context throughout the overarching application flow to drive seamless digital experiences at all times.

With application observability now a priority for 85 percent of organizations, IT leaders will be looking to develop a holistic and future-proof strategy for their organization. This means finding a solution which provides flexibility to span across both cloud native and on-premises technologies, to provide IT teams with the real-time insights they need to manage and optimize application performance across hybrid environments.

Ultimately, organizations need an application observability solution which meets the current and future needs of all technologists, enabling them to accelerate innovation and maximize their impact on customers and the business.