5 Ways Application Performance Monitoring Will Change in 2016

The application performance monitoring industry underwent a lot of big changes in 2015.

And 2016 won’t be any different. From changing consumer behavior to new tools and developments in the application performance space — there’s a lot to keep an eye on in the New Year.

Here are five ways application performance monitoring will change in 2016:

1. Changing Consumers and the Device Mesh

Globally, more people are experiencing the internet via mobile devices — completely skipping the desktop-laptop stages. That will not just make mobile APM, but also the "device mesh," more significant than ever in 2016. 

Irrespective of device, ISP, or geography, end users will expect a seamless experience across all the device endpoints they use to access applications. Moreover, they will demand that applications remember their last sessions and let them pick up the session from another device. The device endpoint categories will also explode as wearables and IoT further take off.

Ensuring application performance across such increasingly diverse use cases will be challenging for app providers and APM vendors alike.

2. Changing Role of IT Will Demand for More Intelligent Tools

Today’s application performance monitoring tools collect data from various applications and infrastructure components, and help correlate results. However the last mile of decision making is still left to human intuition.

As the role of IT changes in 2016, the IT operations and DevOps experts will be expected to not just ensure application quality but also perform data-driven decision making. Performance monitoring will be increasingly supplemented by analytics and machine learning — whether in product or via integrations — to help with contextual decision making.

3. APIs Will be Inevitable

Some predictions are very obvious but simply too important to not include.

As mobile apps, wearables, and IoT grow even more, the usage of APIs will grow exponentially. And based on the simple demand-supply law, more APIs — both internal and public — will be created.

API driven acquisition channels will be able to provide 26 percent more CLTV than other traditional channels. Irrespective of the industry, businesses will use APIs as new acquisition channels to turn 3rd party developers into affiliates of their applications or become affiliates themselves.

API providers will proactively care about API performance in order to improve the quality of the APIs they provide and increase adoption. However there will be a healthy mix of proactive and reactive actions to ensure API performance within the API consumers. Vendors in the application performance monitoring space will strive to help customers correlate the API performance with the application performance.

4. Thinning Walls of NOCs

Businesses will increasingly implement the process of continuous deployment — continuous integration. The DevOps motion will be highly visible in both product and process selection changes. This will lead traditional NOCs to interact more with application developers and collectively help deliver better applications.

However, companies are still struggling to identify the DevOps technique that works for them. Cultural and organizational changes will prove to be more significant for achieving DevOps excellence than changes to products or tools.

5. Aftereffects of M&A

The application performance space has seen a series of mergers and acquisitions over the last year. (Hint: Dynatrace acquired keynote and SolarWinds went private).

In the technology industry, where competition is the main underlying construct of innovation, mergers like these affect customers and the market alike. Customers have bittersweet feelings about the new enterprises and their plans.

While those participating in the M&A work on restructuring the companies and reprioritizing product roadmaps, customers will look for stability with the few remaining independent products.