Can you name a common promise that never comes to fruition? We have one – technology will eventually get simpler. Take the cloud for instance. At one point, this technology sounded as straightforward as could be. Just lift and shift business-critical applications from a legacy data center to a cloud provider! No more hardware or virtual infrastructure to manage and support!
Truth is, modernized cloud application environments are highly complex, so much so that internal IT and data center monitoring tools can’t handle it without the right resources. Without these, IT operations teams run blind.
Why The Complexity?
Why are modern applications so complex today? Unlike monolithic applications that were hosted by individual VMs in an on-prem environment, modern applications are broken down into microservices that are each assigned a defined task or capability. Each container acts like a tiny server, which multiplies the number of endpoints that require monitoring. On top of that, many companies utilize multiple clouds to match each of their critical apps with their optimum cloud environment.
Companies believe this complexity is worth it because it allows for incredible agility to respond to fluctuating dynamic workloads and to serve users at a scale that monolithic applications could never achieve. For all these wonderful benefits, however, there are some real challenges:
- Container Orchestration: Applications are hosted within so many containers running in different environments.
- Security: Containers are more prone to security threats due to vulnerabilities, insecure configurations, and supply chain attacks
- Integration: Modernized container applications often integrate with other applications and services that require a deep understanding of different systems and interactions.
- Monitoring and Troubleshooting: Companies have invested heavily in monitoring tools over the years, but traditional monitoring tools don’t work in the dynamic world of speed and scale that cloud computing enables.
- Multiple Clouds: The use of multiple clouds creates learning curves for support personnel that must rotate through portal admin consoles.
The complexity of container ecospheres doesn’t stop there. Most companies that employ the cloud still utilize on-prem environments. Some of this is due to legacy applications that cannot be modernized. To avoid cloud lock-in, some organizations store their data in a separate data center adjacent to the cloud to avoid data transfer costs if they change cloud providers. Despite the complexity of it all, the benefits that modernized applications bring cannot be ignored. It is one of the reasons why Gartner predicts that almost two-thirds of spending on application software will be directed toward cloud technology in 2025.
Internal IT Requires The Right Tools To Support The Cloud
There’s no doubt that IT teams are developing legitimate value-added innovation and containers can make this process easier. Developers can deploy microservices in different languages and technologies while time to market is reduced with added functionality. But all this innovation can’t be fully leveraged without the proper support from IT operation teams. For many organizations, IT operations aren’t modernized to do the job because the data center monitoring tools they are saddled with are not applicable to cloud applications.
- Infrastructures of data centers and cloud environments are fundamentally different. Data centers reside in a fixed location with dedicated hardware while cloud environments are distributed across shared hardware over dispersed locations.
- Data center applications often have static predictable workloads whereas cloud applications are highly elastic and scalable. Traditional monitoring tools may not be designed to keep up.
- Cloud applications are API-driven, and many traditional monitoring tools aren’t optimized for them.
- Traditional monitoring tools can’t act fast enough due to their reliance on human intervention and dashboard rotation.
When you consider everything, you begin to understand why 72% of CIOs say that monitoring containerized microservices in real-time is almost impossible.
How AIOps Makes Monitoring Containerized Microservices A Reality
It is possible to monitor containerized microservices to ensure that your cloud-based applications run optimally. But how? The answer is AI automation. Gartner states that many IT organizations who fail to adapt AI will no longer be operationally viable. Only automated AI systems can handle the scale, speed, complexity, and dynamic nature of today’s modernized applications that rely on cloud-hosted containers and microservices.
- AI monitoring can perform root cause analysis, enabling problems to be identified and resolved at speed.
- AI monitoring can handle large data sets from disparate systems and recognize when related anomalies occur within an environment. This helps prevent alert storms.
- When implemented into your integration and deployment pipelines, AI monitoring can ensure that problems are detected so that remediation or roll back processes can be implemented instantly.
In 2022, Forrester evaluated 11 AI for IT Operations (AIOps) providers and named Dynatrace a leader in that industry, giving them top scores in the Current Offering and Strategy categories. AIOps provides the ability to leverage machine learning and other AI technologies to automate and improve the performance, availability, and security of IT systems and applications. It only makes sense that a new application architecture requires a new operational approach.
Contact WEI to find out more how Dynatrace has the solutions you need to keep your IT operations in pace with your application innovations.
Next Steps: Thanks to Dynatrace, full stack application analytics and observability is fully achievable for your AWS-hosted application environments. Converting terabytes of data about your cloud application environment and converting it to real answers and actionable, intelligent automation, companies can maximize their modernized application strategies.
In this tech brief, we expand on:
- Application Modernization
- Cloud scalability
- Monitoring vs. observability
