DevOps Requires APM

Much of the discussion around cloud DevOps focuses on the speed with which companies need to get new code into production. This focus is important - because in an increasingly digital marketplace, new code enables new value propositions. New code is also often essential for maintaining competitive parity with market innovators.

But new code doesn't just have to deliver the functionality the business requires. It also has to behave well because the behavior of code in the cloud affects performance, cost, reliability, and scalability. For developers to write code that behaves well, they need great cloud APM.

What Cloud APM Tells Cloud Developers
Most people think almost exclusively about what cloud APM tells cloud ops teams. After all, those ops teams need APM tools that empower them to quickly pinpoint performance bottlenecks and the root causes of application outages. With the right APM tools, cloud ops teams can rapidly resolve - and even proactively prevent - capacity issues that can adversely impact the user/customer experience.

Ops teams, however, don't modify code. They have to live with what developers produce. If code is written inefficiently, ops has no choice but to add provisioning as necessary to meet service-level objectives.

Developers, on the other hand, can fix bad code behaviors. The right cloud APM technology can tell them exactly what those behaviors are. In fact, the insights provided by APM tools are indispensable to any development team charged with writing excellent code.

Cloud APM, in other words, is the feedback loop that cloud developers need to ensure that DevOps is not only functionally Agile but also operationally excellent.