Adventures of a Technical MasterMind

Stuck in Vegas for two weeks, longing to be back home, it was a trial of might and perseverance. The first week was spent at AppDynamics AppSphere, and the second at the Gartner Data Center, Infrastructure & Operations Management Conference. (Look for a post next week on the Gartner conference.) The second annual AppSphere drew 1500+ attendees, doubling the 2014 attendance. There was lots of passion and wonderful user engagement, but most importantly lots of exciting product announcements. The change from 2014 to 2015 was noticeable and impressive. Having spoken at the first AppSphere on behalf of Gartner and feeling the energy at the conference, the momentum and acceleration one year later was apparent in the content, scale, and depth of the conference. In 2015, AppSphere expanded from one track to four tracks, and there was a large increase in customer and partner speakers. Product announcements included Browser Synthetic Monitoring, Server Infrastructure Monitoring, and new...

Gartner analyst Cameron Haight did a survey  Survey Analysis: End-User Experience Monitoring Is the Critical Dimension for Enterprise APM Consumers  (Gartner clients only) over the summer across users about their APM implementations. There are several key areas where the data is quite telling. Users main concerns Users of APM tools based on this Gartner survey, and in my experience indicate 3 primary issues with APM tools. APM tools are too expensive This is a valid concern, APM is not inexpensive, but when compared to the cost of APM 7 years ago, the license costs fallen over 75%. Typical APM tools would cost $15,000 – $20,000 per server. Today we are looking at pricing closer to $4,000. These are list prices, which we know people do not necessarily pay. Additionally the time to value, implementation time, and spend for services which used to be typical in the past are a fraction of what they were once. I would estimate the cost of deployment and maintenance with ...

Gartner Symposium  is the high level CIO conference to attend. In this venue Gartner unveils new thinking including new predictions, surveys, and other insights into how people and technology will solve the problems of the future. Highlights Introduction to the algorithmic economy The kickoff keynote by  Peter Sondergaard  the SVP leading Gartner’s Research business begun by imploring businesses to invest and create algorithms as the key unlocking insight into the vast amounts of data collected and generated. Peter went on to say how algorithms describe the way the world works, but in software, this is key to allowing systems to exchange data with one another (otherwise known as M2M). These algorithms will be used by agents such as Google Now, Siri (Apple), Cortana (Microsoft), and Alexa (Amazon). These are highly advanced algorithmically driven agents which use vast amounts of data both publicly and privately to provide an interactive and intuitive interface all...

Today’s connected world is moving from devices towards things, what this means is that by using increasingly low cost sensors embedded in devices we can create many new use cases. These span across use cases in cities, vehicles, home, offices, factories, retail environments, worksites, health, logistics, and health. These use cases rely on ubiquitous connectivity and generate massive amounts of data at scale. These technologies enable new business opportunities, ways to optimize and automate, along with new ways to engage with users. These technologies have been enabled by a perfect storm of technologies converging. They include both hardware, transport, and analytics. Inexpensive sensors – As highlighted by this research by the ITAC http://itac.ca/uploads/events/execforum2010/rob_lineback_10-6-10-2.ppt sensor prices have been continually dropping. Ubiquitous internet access – Powered by the pervasive mobile technology devices and sensors can be connected to the internet. Less...

When examining the complexity in today’s applications and environments, and why APM technologies are becoming more critical by the day, those responsible for an application’s lifecycle must understand what an application does. Aside from providing application visibility, APM tools help troubleshoot issues. The failure to see and troubleshoot is a constant struggle for those supporting applications. When I speak publicly I’m always able to point to specific instances of failure which affect each of us; this month the hot button items were travel issues regarding airline IT systems, stock market failures, and others. Within the securities market, the SEC has adopted regulations that attempt to improve US securities markets’ ability to handle systems compliance and maintain integrity. To that effect, on November 19th, 2014, the SEC approved the adoption of the Regulation Systems Compliance and Integrity (Reg SCI) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The regulation requires comp...

For my valued readers: I wanted to point out some issues I’ve recently seen in the public domain. As a Gartner analyst, I heard many claims about 200% growth, and all kind of data points which have little basis in fact. When those vendors are asked what actual numbers they are basing those growth claims on, often the questions are dodged. Dynatrace, recently used the Gartner name and brand in a press release. In Its First Year as an Independent Company, Gartner Ranks Dynatrace #1 in APM Market http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12773790.htm I want to clarify the issues in their statements based on the actual Gartner facts published by Gartner in its Market Share data: Dynatrace says in their press release: “expand globally with more than three times the revenue of other new generation APM vendors” First, let’s look at how new the various technologies are: Dynatrace Data Center RUM (DCRUM) is based on the Adlex technology acquired in 2005, but was cr...

Originally posted on devops.com : http://devops.com/2015/05/20/performance-monitoring-another-view/ This is my first post to DevOps.com, for those who haven’t read my other writings, I currently work as the VP of Market Development and Insights at AppDynamics. I joined in February 2015 after being at Gartner for 4 years as a Research VP covering all things monitoring. During my time as a Gartner analyst I would help buyers make decisions about purchasing monitoring software. When I read articles on the internet which blatantly disregard best practices I either smell that something is fishy (sponsorship) or they just didn’t follow a process. Conversely some people do follow a proper process. I specifically wrote this up due to reading a really fishy article. Step 1 – Admit it The first step to determining you have a problem is admitting it. Most monitoring tool buyers realize they have too many tools, and none of them help isolate root cause. This is a result of most buying h...