Why every CIO should care about full-stack observability

The top­ic of dig­i­tal and busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion has been high on the agen­da for IT and busi­ness lead­ers alike as com­pa­nies have had to find new ways to weath­er the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

For many, this meant shift­ing to a dig­i­tal-first mod­el to ensure prod­ucts, ser­vices and infor­ma­tion could be eas­i­ly accessed by cus­tomers, and that work­forces could oper­ate from home with the tools they need to be pro­duc­tive, and the abil­i­ty to con­nect with remote col­leagues all over the world.

As a result, con­sumer depen­dence on appli­ca­tions and dig­i­tal ser­vices has nev­er been high­er, and tol­er­ance of poor per­form­ing ser­vices has nev­er been so low. When it comes to dig­i­tal cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, we now live in an age of height­ened expec­ta­tions, and that is putting extra­or­di­nary pres­sure on both busi­ness lead­ers and tech­nol­o­gists.

In order to deal with the sweep­ing change of switch­ing to dig­i­tal and spin­ning up new appli­ca­tions and dig­i­tal ser­vices to meet user demand, there has been a sig­nif­i­cant shift in how IT works. To enable inno­va­tion and meet the needs of users, many busi­ness­es have opt­ed to migrate to the cloud. This has added tech­ni­cal com­plex­i­ty through­out IT depart­ments, with tech­nol­o­gists hav­ing to cope with tech­nol­o­gy sprawl and a patch­work of lega­cy and
cloud tech­nolo­gies.

It has also sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased the amount of data being cre­at­ed. Cut­ting through the ‘data noise’ caused by this increas­ing vol­ume of infor­ma­tion – and iden­ti­fy­ing the root cause of per­for­mance issues – is cre­at­ing a chal­lenge for tech­nol­o­gists.

“The tech­nol­o­gy stack is infi­nite­ly more com­plex than at any time in the past. It’s also being recon­fig­ured at speed,” says James Har­vey, exec­u­tive chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer at App­Dy­nam­ics, a part of Cis­co, and a glob­al leader in appli­ca­tion per­for­mance man­age­ment and full-stack observ­abil­i­ty solu­tions for enter­pris­es.

It’s also why tech­nol­o­gy teams are increas­ing­ly work­ing at high speed, to keep ahead of com­pet­ing busi­ness­es and achieve the real-world out­comes expect­ed of them, includ­ing flaw­less dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences for cus­tomers and employ­ees.

The bar is being raised on a dai­ly basis. Tech­nol­o­gists imple­ment­ed dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects faster in 2020 than in any pre­vi­ous year; on aver­age three times faster, accord­ing to ‘The Agents of Trans­for­ma­tion 2021,’ an App­Dy­nam­ics sur­vey of more than 1,000 glob­al IT deci­sion mak­ers.

At the same time, IT depart­ments are expect­ed to inno­vate, con­sol­i­date and ratio­nalise their own infra­struc­ture, much of which can sprawl across many phys­i­cal sites, lega­cy sys­tems and cloud archi­tec­tures. In response, tech­nol­o­gists have recog­nised the need to have a greater under­stand­ing of the full IT estate.

“It’s increas­ing­ly impor­tant for CIOs and their teams to get a sin­gle view of the entire IT envi­ron­ment. They need to con­nect the dots up and down the stack, from the cus­tomer or employ­ee-fac­ing appli­ca­tion, all the way down to the low­est lev­el infra­struc­ture. The con­cept is known as full-stack observ­abil­i­ty, and it’s now vital to every busi­ness,” says Har­vey.

It doesn’t mat­ter what indus­try or sec­tor an organ­i­sa­tion is in, the tech­nol­o­gy that’s work­ing behind the scenes to enable trans­ac­tions, inven­to­ry or cus­tomer expe­ri­ence must be more vis­i­ble.

“It’s excit­ing to see how tech­nol­o­gy is show­ing its true val­ue to an organ­i­sa­tion. When you have full vis­i­bil­i­ty of all your IT sys­tems, you are in a posi­tion of empow­er­ment. In real-time, you can view your base­line infra­struc­ture, as well as the appli­ca­tions that sit on top of it. You can also mon­i­tor the work­flows that deliv­er busi­ness trans­ac­tions,” Har­vey adds.

Hav­ing IT sys­tems per­form at their best is vital. App­Dy­nam­ics recent­ly sur­veyed 13,000 glob­al con­sumers; 57% said if a dig­i­tal ser­vice does not per­form, they won’t use it again.

“Brands only have one shot to impress. Con­sumers are now look­ing for the ‘total appli­ca­tion expe­ri­ence;’ a high-per­form­ing, reli­able, dig­i­tal ser­vice, which is sim­ple, secure, help­ful and fun to use. This becomes the new bench­mark. This is a moment of reck­on­ing for brands. They must deliv­er, or risk los­ing cus­tomers,” Har­vey says.

The research also found that 83% of con­sumers had incurred prob­lems with appli­ca­tions and dig­i­tal ser­vices in the past 12 months, and most are now far more like­ly to take action when they run into per­for­mance issues. This includes switch­ing to an alter­na­tive provider, shar­ing neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences with oth­er peo­ple or delet­ing the ser­vice per­ma­nent­ly.

“Right now, con­sumer and busi­ness users expect every appli­ca­tion to be as effec­tive as the best appli­ca­tion on their phone. That is why every cor­po­ra­tion needs to know what is work­ing well and what isn’t from an IT per­spec­tive. But crit­i­cal­ly, they need the abil­i­ty to link that IT per­for­mance with busi­ness out­comes such as cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, sales trans­ac­tions and rev­enue. We call this full-stack observ­abil­i­ty with busi­ness con­text,” Har­vey says.

He adds: “This gives tech­nol­o­gists com­plete vis­i­bil­i­ty of their IT stack, across their own net­work and the inter­net, and then the abil­i­ty to act on that infor­ma­tion based on what will have the great­est impact on their organ­i­sa­tion. In pre­vi­ous CTO roles, I’ve had lots of alerts and infor­ma­tion about IT per­for­mance issues, but they lacked con­text to pri­ori­tise fix­es based on busi­ness val­ue. In short, they left me won­der­ing where to focus my atten­tion in order to min­imise the neg­a­tive impact to the busi­ness. That’s all changed. Now tech­nol­o­gists can pri­ori­tise IT prob­lems and know which are the most impor­tant to fix first.”

Har­vey says: “The move to full-stack observ­abil­i­ty is only going to accel­er­ate in order to answer the grow­ing needs of IT teams and the unavoid­able com­plex­i­ty that comes with rapid inno­va­tion and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. IT lead­ers need a fin­ger on the beat­ing heart of their busi­ness and the abil­i­ty to observe what mat­ters most with­in the organ­i­sa­tion. Get this right and more CIOs will con­tin­ue to expand their influ­ence in board-lev­el deci­sions and we’ll increas­ing­ly see IT teams spear­head­ing val­ue cre­ation across their organ­i­sa­tions.”

For more go to www.appdynamics.com

Pro­mot­ed by App­Dy­nam­ics