Table of Contents
- Executive Summary
- APM Sector Brief
- Decision Criteria Analysis
- Analyst’s Outlook
- Methodology
- About Lisa Erickson-Harris
- About GigaOm
- Copyright
1. Executive Summary
Applications provide an entry point for those seeking products and services from government, businesses, and non-profits worldwide. Yet, growing application complexity is a primary operational challenge for application performance management (APM) staff and operations teams across the enterprise. GigaOm’s recent application user research shows that the majority expressed application complexity as among the biggest operational challenges for operations teams. To address application environment complexity, foundational APM tools are needed with an awareness of applications that run within and across all of these environments.
Application and operations management within complex environments places pressure on IT Operations Management (ITOM) teams to ensure the applications and services meet the needs of quality user experiences. Similarly, an additional load and responsibility rests with developers who must handle the application code complexity and infrastructure use. With DevOps practices having risen in acceptance, developers and R&D teams are essential to the operations landscape and must have the tools and knowledge to not only build efficiently performing code but also to anticipate future impacts on the complex environment.
The discipline of security operations (SecOps) is also crucial to application performance in protecting sensitive and ensuring security vulnerabilities are not introduced within the environment.
APM aims to ensure applications deliver optimal speed, reliability, scalability, and end-user experience to support key business services and objectives. APM solutions help organizations to ensure that applications and services remain performant and available, providing a tangible benefit to any business IT environment, regardless of size. APM also helps to predict anomalies and potential degradation of service using a host of different techniques.
Business Imperative
The C-suite will be interested in this tool to the extent the APM tool and associated processes can avert customer, client, and constituent impacts. Application failures lead to missed business transactions and disrupt the delivery of essential services to those seeking to do business. APM tools can foresee degradation within the environment and provide an opportunity to resolve issues quickly and, in some cases, before users are impacted.
Other stakeholders include technical ITOM teams, service management teams, developers, security teams, department heads, and business users. APM is critical for avoiding revenue-impacting downtime and provides a way to plan ahead to avoid operational challenges.
Sector Adoption Score
This GigaOm Key Criteria report offers a structured assessment to help executives and decision-makers evaluate the potential impact and value of deploying an APM solution, examining the sector across five key factors: benefit, maturity, urgency, impact, and effort. By scoring each factor based on how strongly it compels or deters the adoption of an APM solution, we provide an overall Sector Adoption Score (Figure 1) of 4.2 out of 5, with 5 indicating the strongest possible recommendation to adopt. This indicates that an APM solution is a credible candidate for deployment and worthy of thoughtful consideration.
The factors contributing to the Sector Adoption Score for an APM are explained in more detail in the Sector Brief section that follows.
Figure 1. Sector Adoption Score for APM
This is the third year that GigaOm has reported on the APM space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This report builds on our previous analysis and considers how the market has evolved over the last year.
This GigaOm Key Criteria report highlights the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) for selecting an effective APM solution. The companion GigaOm Radar report identifies vendors and products that excel in those decision criteria. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading APM offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions to make a more informed investment decision.
GIGAOM KEY CRITERIA AND RADAR REPORTS
The GigaOm Key Criteria report provides a detailed decision framework for IT and executive leadership assessing enterprise technologies. Each report defines relevant functional and nonfunctional aspects of solutions in a sector. The Key Criteria report informs the GigaOm Radar report, which provides a forward-looking assessment of vendor solutions in the sector.