Cisco AppDynamics has several leading observability feature additions to introduce this spring. Read on to learn more:
Enhancing customer digital experience monitoring and application dependency monitoring with Cisco AppDynamics and ThousandEyes
Cisco AppDynamics and Cisco ThousandEyes are releasing a new bi-directional integration of application observability and network intelligence, providing end-to-end insights among applications, network teams and data.
This new innovation expands Cisco Full–Stack Observability capabilities in both customer digital experience monitoring and application dependency monitoring with an out-of-the-box integration of Cisco AppDynamics and ThousandEyes that brings together application observability and network intelligence.
For AppOps/ITOps teams: Within Cisco AppDynamics, real-time ingestion of network metrics and embedded network intelligence data from ThousandEyes allows AppOps customers to understand how network and internet performance affect user experience. It helps correlate business results with application, network and internet performance — in one place.
For NetOps teams: For customers with AppDynamics Real User Monitoring and ThousandEyes Synthetics, this integration is automatically embedded in both products — directly within the troubleshooting workflow. It uses application intelligence to flatten the learning curve by automating test creation and correlation — making it easier for AppOps and NetOps to achieve significant results with less effort:
- Reduce MTTR by correlating network insights with application insights.
- Streamline workflows by providing actionable recommendations with pre-configured test templates.
- Prioritize network remediation based on business impact.
With the general availability of this integration, Cisco is also announcing general availability of the Cisco Full-Stack Observability Advantage package. It provides full stack visibility, insights and actions tied to business context across application monitoring, network and application security.
Learn more about this exciting innovation in the Cisco press release and find out what this means for network teams in this blog from Cisco ThousandEyes.
Simplifying agent management for AppDynamics SaaS and On-Premises deployments
Managing 100s, if not 1,000s, or even 10s of thousands of application agents has been a huge challenge that often causes organizations to lose sight and track of the maintenance of those agents. This can be bad, if not downright dangerous due to the numerous security issues appearing all the time in various language libraries, requiring rapid upgrades.
AppDynamics is making a significant investment in addressing this challenge on SaaS as well as on-premises by launching a simplified way to manage the entire agent life cycle.
This phased rollout has simple goals — ease the process of discovering what is necessary to deploy and instrument the application, including rollbacks, and to support various deployment strategies, customization and of course, a decommissioning process — all in a user-friendly interface.
Some benefits of a simplified agent management process include, but are not limited to:
- Rapid time to value: automate installation across 1000s of hosts and start collecting data in hours.
- Ease of use: automated discovery of existing agents makes upgrades a snap.
- Convenient scheduling: run scripts whenever you want to minimize peak-period disruptions.
- Resilient upgrades: automatically roll back agent upgrades if they fail to avoid unpleasant surprises.
- Secure deployments: deploy from our repository or yours.
- Latest versions: automated upgrades ensure you have the latest features, bug fixes and security patches.
As with many new features or enhancements, there will be a phased rollout approach. Read Simplified agent management for AppDynamics to get an indication of the various phases and what is expected.
This also supports our strive to innovate on-premises which you can read more about in On-premises to cloud: Observability for customers where they are and where they’re going, a blog by Cisco AppDynamics and Full-Stack Observability Senior Vice President and General Manager, Ronak Desai.
Expanded SAP monitoring for S/4HANA
Throughout the years, Cisco, an SAP Platinum Partner, and Cisco AppDynamics have led the way in observing ecosystems running one of the most trusted, heavily used and mission-critical enterprise application software: SAP, the de facto ERP software.
AppDynamics Monitoring for SAP Solutions optimizes performance with AI/ML capabilities, code-level visibility, business transaction correlation, process monitoring and more, leading to quicker root cause analysis and business impact awareness. This is why so many of the largest SAP businesses have relied on AppDynamics to maintain their most critical business application — maximizing uptime, improving visibility and driving adoption.
Read more about AppDynamics Performance Monitoring for SAP Solutions.
There are many recent innovations around SAP; however, two stand out, which we find our customers need today while in a transformative journey to S/4HANA.
Order to Cash for S/4HANA
Order to Cash (OTC) is perhaps the most common business process and is certainly one of the most important financial-to-sales and distribution integrations, as it provides a comprehensive overview of performance and conformity of the entire ordering process. We are talking about the highly important context that gives enterprises visibility into how application performance impacts mission-critical business processes, helping them properly prioritize troubleshooting and resolve issues.
Procure-to-Pay for S/4HANA
Procure to Pay (P2P) is another very common business process in SAP ERP as it supports the requisition, receiving, payment and accounting for all goods and services. This is critical for businesses looking to reduce costs within their procurement life cycle while also strengthening compliance and control with vendors, etc.
With this additional support, AppDynamics brings in relevant context needed to improve the overall business by ensuring procurement processes are streamlined.
In summary
Out-of-the-box Default Business Process Steps for both O2C and P2P on S/4HANA means quicker time-to-value and more customization options, especially when considering implementing new business processes.
AppDynamics understands the compelling reasons to support SAP user needs for flexibility to deploy ready-to-run solutions in the cloud via S/4HANA, the “real cloud ERP” solution. Not only because of the 2027 deadline but because S/4HANA is aimed to streamline processes in the simplest way, reduce costs, enhance user experience, help set the stage for innovation and improve performance and speed.
AppDynamics makes it possible to observe the most business-critical workflows in the context of the business, furnishing the most valuable perspective necessary for business decisions that improve the overall efficiency and, ultimately, the end user experience.
Learn more about how AppDynamics can help build resiliency into your SAP landscape.
What’s next
As we continue to innovate and support all types of environments: on-premises, cloud and hybrid, we do so with an understanding of the challenges our customers face. In the coming months, look for further advancements around the ThousandEyes integration, expansion of services and user experience improvements for simplifying agent management and continued innovations for our industry-leading SAP ABAP solution.
With these latest innovations, we hope you see our momentum in addressing the real challenges our customers face. By observing what matters for the business in the most efficient way and easing tool management to gain valuable perspectives, we are committed to ensuring the right data is ingested to make correlation valuable.
Please reach out to your Cisco AppDynamics sales representative today, sign up for a free trial, send us a question on our Community, check out our many webinars — or read more about our innovations in our blogs, such as Cisco introduces full-stack observability enhancement: Business Risk Observability.
Aaron Schifman is a Senior Technical Product Marketing Manager at Cisco AppDynamics, with over two decades of experience thriving in challenging globally based environments as an engineer, technical product marketing manager, pre-sales consultant, and professional services leader. Having worked with Elastic and Dell EMC in highly technical customer-facing roles, Aaron brings a passion for articulating the role of AppDynamics in helping customers overcome their most pressing business challenges.
