Table of Contents
- Executive Summary
- The Nature of Application Architectures Today
- Bringing in Observability and Performance
- What To Do? Learning from Leaders
- Conclusion: Unplanned Hybrid is The Worst of Both Worlds
- Annex – Summary Slides
- About Jon Collins
- About GigaOm
- Copyright
1. Executive Summary
This GigaOm survey, of 352 senior and technical decision makers across North America and Western Europe, assessed architectures, challenges, and approaches to building and managing performant applications. The survey was commissioned by SolarWinds, following a similar survey conducted two years ago. This has enabled comparisons to be drawn between evolving behaviors, challenges, and responses.
Key findings are:
- There is an imbalance between strategy and reality for cloud-based versus hybrid approaches. Whereas only 43% of organizations favor a hybrid strategy for their cloud applications, 56% have a hybrid application architecture. 70% of respondents saw customer experience as a primary driver for cloud-first. Only 50% of respondents saw the lower cost of delivery as a primary driver, suggesting a move beyond saving money as a primary criterion.
- Application complexity is the biggest operational challenge organizations face, according to 51% of the overall sample. This is driving organizations that would prefer a cloud-based approach towards unplanned hybrid models.
- Looking at operational management and observability, real-time performance measurement is the highest priority operational capability for 64% of respondents. We can also see the role of large language models (LLMs) and artificial intelligence (AI) to aid operational management.
- Drilling into features, existing tooling is making a difference: identifying performance improvements is the number one benefit for 64%. Most in need of improvement are higher-order features such as traces and business/retail metrics.
- For organizations struggling with their cloud-first aspirations, we learn from more advanced organizations regarding DevOps adoption and success in adopting cloud-based models.
- We found 60% of organizations with limited DevOps experience face complexity challenges to operations, compared with 46% that are optimizing their DevOps use. Similarly, 51% of those with limited DevOps experience struggle to build a picture of performance, compared with just 41% of the more advanced group. This can be associated with skills investment. 46% of the limited DevOps group say they lack operational skills, compared with 30% of the optimizing group.
- Similarly, 81% of the cloud-native group prioritize a real-time view of performance, compared to 60% working in legacy/virtualized environments. Meanwhile, 60% of cloud-first and 58% of cloud-native respondents favor a complete picture of performance across apps and infrastructure, compared with 48% of hybrid and 44% of legacy/virtualized groups.
- Some 65% of cloud-native respondents considered linking application performance to business outcomes important. Cloud-native organizations prioritize the business, a lesson all organizations should learn.
From the research overall, we see how performance management tools are being prioritized to address the complexity challenge and deliver on their observability goals. More advanced organizations prioritize an integrated, holistic view of application performance, drawing on measures from the top to the bottom of the stack.
To avoid creating unnecessary complexity by getting stuck in a halfway-hybrid house, we recommend taking such steps in advance. This means building skills around cloud-based and DevOps approaches, such that both become a viable destination, rather than being trapped in an unplanned hybrid state.