New Cisco AppDynamics research highlights importance of full-stack observability
- Date: 27 May, 2021
A new study from Cisco AppDynamics reveals how the global pandemic has resulted in a dramatic increase in IT complexity, leading to a need for technologists to monitor all technical areas across their IT stack and directly link that performance to business outcomes.
‘Agents of Transformation 2021: The Rise of Full-Stack Observability’, explores the impact of the rapid acceleration of digital transformation created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the repercussions for global technologists. The findings reveal a dramatic increase in IT complexity and the key role that full-stack observability can play in the light of this.
What is full-stack observability? Essentially, it’s about capturing metrics, events, logs and trace data from software and making it available to teams to enable the best software performance and the most effective response to an issue.
The main benefit is that it allows IT teams to monitor an entire IT stack, including everything from customer-facing applications to core network and infrastructure. In turn, this ensures that the organisation has full visibility into all of its applications, teams and tools, and that it can quickly identify and address performance issues before they negatively impact end users.
The study covered 1,050 IT professionals in 11 markets, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan and Russia, and found that the shift to digital-first business models required to weather the storm and minimise the commercial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic had led to a surge in digital transformation projects.
The result was technologists felt under pressure, as technical complexity increased, creating the following challenges:
- A new set of priorities and challenges (80%)
- Technology sprawl and a patchwork of legacy and cloud technologies (78%)
- Acceleration to cloud computing (77%)
- Multiple, disconnected monitoring systems (74%)
The rise in complexity has significantly increased the amount of data created across the technology stack, from the application, through to the physical infrastructure. In response to this rise, it’s clear that the vast majority of IT professionals (96% of respondents) now believe it’s essential to monitor all technical areas across the IT stack. The need for accurate, real-time data has never been so acute.
However, that in itself is not enough. A critical next step for organisations is aligning full-stack observability with business performance. The key here is linking technology performance to business outcomes - such as customer experience, sales transactions and revenue – in order to help IT professionals to achieve innovation goals and provide a first-class digital experience.
This point was reinforced by Linda Tong, vice president and general manager of Cisco AppDynamics, who said: “Full-stack observability is the only way technologists can deal with the sprawling IT estate and increased complexity created by such rapid rates of innovation. But on its own, it's just not enough. Technologists have recognised that without business context, they will quickly find themselves drowning in complexity and data noise.