In the ever-evolving landscape of cloud-native operations, organizations face a multifaceted challenge in delivering reliable and resilient experiences at the intersection of their customers and their digital experience.
The world is now at a juncture where a seemingly simple user action, such as checking the status of an order for a customer, initiates a series of calls and requests on the backend. This intricate journey encompasses stages like API gateway validation, authentication, product availability confirmation, shopping cart and credit card processing, payment validation, order preparation, and delivery logistics. Imagine this process multiplied by the countless actions executed across various applications in a single day. The outcome is astounding and yet, applications not only function but manage to complete this process so often.
However, there are some critical challenges that enterprises can encounter when faced with the problem of complex, large, volatile environments – used for modern application delivery – impacting the customer’s digital experience and, ultimately, business revenue. This complexity can create obstacles for businesses striving to ensure flawless customer experiences in an environment defined by distributed applications and varied touchpoints.
Addressing these challenges requires end-to-end visibility – starting with direct observations of the digital experience from the Internet stack through to debugging lines of code in the application stack. Traditional tools can often fall short in the face of cloud-native complexities because they only indirectly attach to a user’s full digital experience, ignoring critical Internet stack components. But with an Internet-centric tracing solution, which provides detailed insights within the broader scope of Internet Performance Monitoring (IPM) platforms, the software that has emerged is a game-changer in navigating the intricacies of modern application delivery.
Tracing enables end-to-end monitoring of distributed applications, regardless of their deployment on physical devices, virtual machines, or containers. As a component of IPM, Tracing offers detailed insights into interactions between services and associated resources, such as databases, caches, and queues. This empowers organizations to analyze resource usage, troubleshoot issues, and debug applications with a level of granularity that complements the broader performance metrics provided by IPM.
Director of Product Marketing, Catchpoint.
The Everest of modern software development
The surge in cloud computing and cloud-native practices has introduced unparalleled complexity and distribution. Effectively monitoring this complexity is the Everest of modern software development. The complex nature of a single user action, and the resulting intricate journey it then traverses through backend processes, has spurred the evolution of monitoring solutions as IPM has become even more critical.
Integrating tracing capabilities within IPM offers true end-to-end management and visibility. This integration spans from the user's experience to the backend, providing solutions to the following pain points for organizations:
Overcoming visibility blind spots: One of the foremost challenges in cloud-native operations is overcoming visibility blind spots. As enterprises extend their workforce into diverse environments or extend to new markets for their customers, ensuring comprehensive visibility becomes increasingly complex. IPM, enhanced with tracing data, helps in streamlining incident management, allowing teams to understand dependencies, assess migration or update impacts, and identify specific sections of the application in incident, thus providing a more complete view of the system’s performance.
Balancing innovation and reliability: There is a delicate balance required between innovation and reliability. As businesses push for more innovative features, ITOps teams must maintain the reliability of applications. End-to-end monitoring through IPM, augmented with tracing insights, facilitates a harmonious relationship between development and operations, reducing finger-pointing and fostering a blameless culture. This integration also enables ITOps to gain valuable insights for delivering resilient and fast application experiences. Managing this balance, breaking down silos, and fostering a culture that harmonizes the demands of development and operations is critical to success.
Optimizing application speed: In an era where speed is paramount, the importance of optimizing application performance cannot be overstated. While traditionally falling under the developers' domain, application performance optimization is now a collaborative effort between developers and ITOps teams, supported by insights from both IPM and tracing. IPM, with its tracing component, empowers ITOps to assess factors influencing application speed, complementing the developers' expertise. This collaborative approach ensures that application performance is not only innovative but also meets the speed requirements crucial for a superior user experience.
Navigating ecosystems with data-driven insights: Within modern ecosystems, the demand for a data-driven approach has become more pronounced than ever. IPM, integrated with tracing and supported by standards like OpenTelemetry (OTEL), navigates these ecosystems effectively. ITOps teams should be equipped to support multiple protocols, adopt standards like OpenTelemetry (OTEL), and break free from proprietary lock-ins. By adhering to OTEL standards, which provide a unified method for tracing and performance data collection, ITOps teams ensure interoperability and enhanced visibility. This approach streamlines the monitoring and management of diverse elements within the IT infrastructure, leveraging both IPM and tracing data for comprehensive insights.
Overall
As enterprises seek to enhance their application monitoring strategies in this cloud-native era, the integration of tracing within IPM becomes crucial. This integration supports the delicate balance between innovation and reliability, required by ITOps teams. The collaboration of developers and ITOps, supported by both IPM and tracing, optimizes application speed. Finally, navigating ecosystems with data-driven insights, underpinned by both IPM and tracing capabilities, becomes essential in today's dynamic computing landscape. This comprehensive approach provides organizations with the capabilities needed to overcome challenges and ensure a seamless, high-performance digital experience for customers.
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