Full-stack observability with VNQ Systems: Empowering IT leaders in 2023

In today's technology-driven business landscape, every technology decision is a business decision. The dependency of business operations on IT has elevated the role of IT leaders, who can no longer rely solely on monitoring the IT stack. They must embrace a business perspective on full-stack observability to cut through the noise, identify critical data and contextualise IT performance insights with real-time business data.

Full-stack observability is crucial for businesses in 2023 as it provides complete and real-time visibility across the entire IT estate. From traditional IT systems to new hybrid cloud environments, technologists require a unified observability platform to monitor the full technology stack instead of relying on multiple disjointed monitoring solutions.

As more customers expect flawless digital experiences, enterprise teams can't afford to waste time pointing fingers.

Today, 49% of customers will switch to a different application at the first sign of an issue, and 63% expect reliable and consistent performance for every application they use. Application downtime and a longer MTTR are causing customers to abandon brands they once loved – and search for better service elsewhere.

Cisco AppDynamics recognises the importance of full-stack observability and has developed a comprehensive solution that addresses the needs of IT leaders. VNQ Systems is a partner of Cisco AppDynamics, and our full-stack observability (FSO) solution stands out in several ways:

* End-to-end visibility: Cisco AppDynamics FSO offers complete visibility across the entire IT estate, enabling IT leaders to monitor the health of applications, services, networks and infrastructure. It provides a holistic view from customer and employee-facing applications to the lowest-level infrastructure components.

* Business impact: Our FSO solution goes beyond technical metrics by providing a business perspective. By connecting IT performance with real-time business data, IT leaders gain insights into the impact of technology on user experience and business outcomes. This empowers them to make informed decisions, prioritise actions and align technology investments with business objectives.

* Streamlined operations: Cisco AppDynamics FSO eliminates the complexity of managing multiple monitoring tools. With a unified platform, IT leaders can streamline operations, simplify processes and increase operational efficiency. They no longer need to navigate through disjointed solutions but can rely on a single comprehensive platform.

* Actionable insights: Leveraging advanced analytics capabilities, Cisco AppDynamics FSO helps IT leaders identify patterns and trends in data. By providing accurate, real-time data, IT leaders can make data-driven decisions and take proactive measures to optimise system performance.

In the current environment, IT leaders cannot afford to be blind to the impact of technology performance on customer experience and business success. The cost of failure is too great. Without full-stack observability, businesses face difficulties prioritising IT innovation, creating silos across the organisation and losing customers and revenue due to technology performance issues.

Full-stack observability is not just a buzzword, it is a critical methodology that enables IT leaders to gain insights into their entire system. By implementing full-stack observability, IT leaders can improve system performance, enhance the user experience and reduce costs. In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses must prioritise full-stack observability to navigate complexity and ensure success.

VNQ Systems is a certified partner of Cisco AppDynamics, and we've assisted one of Africa's largest financial institutions with visibility and a real-time view of the infrastructure, network, database and user/systems impacting issues. Our solutions have provided a view into what was causing slow transactions and affecting the systems. We've also assisted one of Africa's top telecommunications companies in reducing the MTTR (mean time to recovery) of service-affecting incidents by 10% in a business-critical telecoms application one month after project closure.

1. What is full-stack observability?

Full-stack observability is a methodology that enables IT teams to gain insights into their entire system, including applications, infrastructure and networks. It involves collecting data from various sources, such as logs, metrics and traces, and using sophisticated tools to analyse and correlate this data to identify issues and inefficiencies.

2. Monitoring vs visibility vs full-stack observability: What's the difference? 

• Monitoring uses tools to track elements' ongoing performance and health within your IT environment. Monitoring helps alert teams to performance problems as they occur.
• Visibility gives teams further insight into an IT environment to recognise dependencies and find potential performance concerns before they become problematic. End-to-end visibility offers insight into how every element of an application operates to deliver an end-user the intended experience.
• Full-stack observability gives teams a single glass view across an application's components, dependencies and performance metrics. Leveraging business telemetry helps teams better understand application behaviour, performance and health.

3. Why is full-stack observability important for IT leaders?

Full-stack observability is vital for IT leaders because it enables them to detect and resolve problems before they become critical proactively. By gaining insights into the entire stack, IT teams can optimise the system to deliver a faster and more reliable user experience, improve system performance and reduce costs. It empowers IT leaders to make informed decisions and align technology investments with business objectives.

4. Can the AppDynamics FSO be implemented in cloud and on-premises technologies?

How it works

With a hybrid IT environment, monitoring end-to-end performance comes with new challenges. Even once you've isolated an issue, identifying where the issue is happening across distributed infrastructure and determining the business impact of the issue demands additional context. The AppDynamics full-stack observability solution makes it easier to gain deep insights across the entire IT landscape to diagnose the root cause of a problem and identify dependencies.

How to apply it

With full-stack observability from the end-user to the application, teams can clearly see how legacy and cloud technologies work together to deliver an exceptional application experience. For example, a cloud-based application is integrated with SAP on-premises, but the application starts experiencing performance issues. With hybrid monitoring, your teams have full visibility across on-premises and cloud technology, so it's as easy to pinpoint the root cause of the application issue in legacy software as in modern applications.

5. What are the benefits of full-stack observability?

Full-stack observability offers several benefits for IT leaders:

• It improves system performance by allowing IT teams to identify and resolve issues quickly. They can proactively take measures to prevent downtime by analysing data from multiple sources.
• It enhances the user experience by identifying and addressing issues that may impact the performance of applications or services. This leads to a faster and more reliable user experience.
• Full-stack observability helps IT leaders reduce costs by identifying inefficiencies and optimising resource usage.
• By analysing data from various sources, they can identify areas where resources are under-utilised or over-utilised and take corrective action.

6. How does full-stack observability differ from traditional monitoring approaches?

Full-stack observability differs from traditional monitoring approaches by providing a holistic view of the entire stack, including applications, infrastructure and network. Traditional monitoring approaches often rely on fragmented data from different sources, making identifying the root cause of issues challenging. Full-stack observability enables IT teams to proactively detect and resolve problems by analysing data from multiple sources, improving system performance and a better user experience.

For more information on AppDynamics full-stack observability, contact info@vnqsystems.co.za.