The coronavirus has forced many businesses to close their doors to the public and redirect customer traffic to their websites, highlighting the importance of a website or business app’s overall health and inner workings.
The past several weeks have been loaded with conversations about this subject with organizations approaching it with wobbly legs for the first time, according to Luke Rogers, general manager, Canada at AppDynamics, a Cisco company.
“There were certain organizations that were at the forefront of that digital transformation wave over the years, and there were others that needed work to get there. And I think what’s happening right now, is that wave of digital transformation is forcing some of those businesses that didn’t anticipate transformation yet to accelerate plans,” Rogers told the publication. “They’re coming to us and saying ‘our IT has become our business, and our applications have become the storefront, and our ability to deliver a digital experience is everything. How can you help me?’”
AppDynamics sells software that offers companies a comprehensive overview of their apps’ inner workings, allowing them to find pain points and other issues that might be holding up transactions, for example.
It also wasn’t that long ago that the company released a study surveying roughly 7,000 consumers globally, nearly 70 per cent of whom indicated that their use of digital services is akin to an involuntary reflex.
But the recent strain on the Canadian telecommunications grid is impacting even the most digitally savvy mom-and-pop shop or grocery store chain, and as page load times go from one second to 10 seconds, the probability of a mobile site visitor bouncing increases 123 per cent. It’s these types of numbers that’s getting a lot of people’s attention, Rogers explained.
“They’re looking at themselves and going, ‘okay, as I welcome more people onto my website, am I increasing my page load time because I haven’t built a system that’s able to scale and cope with that demand?’” he said.
AppDynamics is offering resources to IT teams, asking themselves these questions for the first time or presenting the information to leadership that is suddenly exposed to the fact that IT is driving the business forward. Its COVID-19 Assist Program includes free use of AppDynamics software, free calls with expert consultants, and free access to a vast library of educational resources.
For the past several weeks, the company has been hosting user group sessions to talk about business challenges in an open environment that’s absent of any AppDynamic product pitch, Rogers said. The previous user group session for Canadian users was on Tuesday. Rogers said there have been a lot of questions about data regulations and data sovereignty in recent meetings.
For organizations looking to improve their online posture, Rogers stressed the importance of seeing the big picture.
“You need something that provides that full-stack visibility of everything. From the compute storage system layer all the way up to the application layer. There’s real value in that.”
AppDynamics’ deep integration with Cisco leads to compelling offerings in the application performance management (APM) space. But it’s a crowded arena. According to IDC*, the APM market grew from $4.3 billion in 2018 to $5.8 billion in 2019. That trend is expected to continue.