Adventures of a Technical MasterMind

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...

Response : http://www.kitchensoap.com/2015/05/01/openlettertomonitoringproducts/ John we couldn’t agree more with this letter, the specific issue is context. Too many of the tools and systems in use both commercially and with open source are metric or event (log) collectors, providing dashboards with little context about what is happening. In order to provide the proper context and operational visibility one must understand relationships and data flows between metrics and events. This well written letter makes many points we completely agree with at AppDynamics. The use of words predictive or fixing issues automatically are not something we prescribe. Gartner has also long condoned the use of predictive in ITOA scenarios (“ IT Operations Analytics Technology Requires Planning and Training ” Will Cappelli December 2012). The area we disagree with is having early warning indicators of problems which are escalating. If technology is employed which collects end user experience from...

Sourcing strategies are evolving rapidly. CIOs have to handle this shift, where innovation isn't coming from the usual vendors. There is a clear movement toward those who can facilitate the most critical agendas to enable digital business. New organizational structures are required that allow for a culture of innovation and experimentation. In order to innovate, teams that typically consist of larger, slower-moving units must transform into small, startup-type or project-based units. AppDynamics CEO, Jyoti Bansal, often speaks about his methodology for  creating a startup within a startup . Many new product initiatives begin with a small team of two-to-four engineers and product managers tasked with building a minimum viable product. In this model startup teams are augmented with small  acquisitions which come with talent . This new talent provides new perspectives, skills, and core intellectual property allowing the acquirer to meet customer needs quickly. This is simila...

A decade ago, when I first learned of Apdex, it was thanks to a wonderful technology partner, Coradiant. At the time, I was running IT operations and web operations, and brought Coradiant into the fold. Coradiant was ahead of its time, providing end-user experience monitoring capabilities via packet analysis. The network-based approach was effective in a day when the web was less rich. Coradiant was one of the first companies to embed Apdex in its products. As a user of APM tools, I was looking for the ultimate KPI, and the concept of Apdex resonated with me and my senior management. A single magical number gave us an idea of how well development, QA, and operations were doing in terms of user experience and performance. Had I found the metric to rule all metrics? I thought I had, and I was a fan of Apdex for many years leading up to 2012, when I started to dig into the true calculations behind this magical number. As my colleague Jim Hirschauer pointed out in a 2013  blog...