As 2019 comes to an end, it’s safe to say that multi-cloud strategies are here to stay. We can predict that 2020 will bring an ever-increasing demand for application performance management (APM) tools and services.
So what does the future of APM look like? Let’s dive in.
Multi-Cloud Strategies Increase the Demand for APM Tool Adoption
Companies are increasingly adopting more than one platform—either for financial leverage or to create a time-to-market or feature race between the platforms. To remain competitive, public cloud providers must offer unique features or capabilities differentiating them from competitors. This has created an upsurge in new and more complex technologies, increasing the need for APM tool adoption.
Logs Will Be Recognized as Key Aspects of APM
APM is a puzzle made up of user experience, metrics and traces, and logs—and each piece must be incorporated to achieve full-stack visibility and ultimately seamless app performance. However, a healthy app is not characterized solely by top performance, but also availability—making a log management solution that monitors availability, enables proactivity and reacts quickly to remediate problems key.
In 2020, implementing solutions that achieve integrated application performance and availability management for any type of organization, including those operating on-premises and/or cloud-based applications across all mixes of cloud environments, will become increasingly important and prioritized.
APM Skills in a Cloud-First World
The nouns have changed, but the verbs remain the same: APM skills are among the top skills tech pros want to develop in the coming year, according to the recent SolarWinds IT Pro Day survey, Building Confidence for Tech Pros of Tomorrow. However, in 2020 tech pros will begin to recognize that many of the skills they already possess are sufficient to manage the new realm of integrated solutions in the cloud. Tech pros can leverage some of the same skills they could before as the nouns have changed, but the verbs remain the same. Where we used to have server or virtual machine, now we have containers. But the verbs? They’ve always been focused on optimizing performance, ensuring availability and planning capacity.
In 2020, the extent to which tech pros will discover they don’t need to fear new nouns (more than they did when they moved from client virtualization) will increase.
Universal Adoption of APM Tools
As environments become more dynamic and complex, the opportunity for applications to break increases—creating the need for robust monitoring tools. In 2020, as buyers see the benefit of leveraging APM tools on a regular basis rather than only in critical moments, the market will adjust accordingly. We can expect easier-to-implement solutions that are more highly valuable and affordable. The paradigm that APM tools have to be expensive will be broken once and for all.
Want to learn more about what to expect in 2020? Join us Jan. 23 for our Predict 2020 Virtual Summit featuring discussions from some of the industry’s best and brightest offering up their visions for the future. Sign up today for this free daylong virtual event.
