With the application experience and observability market reaching $36 billion in 2021 and the adjacent market opportunity approximated at an additional $140 billion, there’s a compelling opportunity for Cisco AppDynamics partners to build an observability practice that supports customer growth. In today’s application economy, users expect always-on, flawless app experiences and that demand has forever changed the complexity across development, operations and security as companies clamor for strategies and comprehensive tools that assist.
Building an observability practice: Turn challenges into advantages
Quality digital experiences have never been more critical to brand reputation. With the cumulative nature of application complexity, when each component has 99.9% uptime, the user’s uptime experience may only deliver at 95%. While seemingly small, that 5% lag can be enough of a reason for users to go elsewhere.
And that’s just the tip of the complexity iceberg. The rush to cloud delivered promise of scale and agility but it also came at the cost of spreading applications across networks and devices. Now, with over half (58%) of workers anticipating they’ll work from home at least eight days a month — performance issues and security risks are scattered across the internet — into millions of remote workers’ homes. As a result, three-quarters of technical professionals are experiencing spiraling complexity and overwhelming data noise that actively drains productivity, which in turn impacts business. Thankfully, observability is the antibiotic needed to resolve digital productivity drains on remote workers.
Partners operational maturity model
Partners have the unique opportunity to listen and tailor observability solutions that address needs and goals of current customers and provide additional expertise in prospect-facing conversations. The maturity model framework is designed to equip partners with the knowledge to support a service engagement for that process. When used, it evolves from stabilizing a solution to an optimized customer experience and business results. At each level of the maturity model, operational processes improve, delays are reduced, internal collaboration accelerates and a unified view of issues and details comes into focus to help determine action steps.
Additionally, it represents an opportunity for partners to deliver high-value consulting services with measurable results. When partners quantify the value of the operational improvements, it clarifies the positive impact of an observability opportunity for customers and prospects and with assistance from Cisco provided training and templates partners can easily track progress at each customer milestone.
From ITOps to business transformation
Most companies spend the bulk of IT budgets on operations or “keeping the lights on.” Observability solutions improve operations holistically, releasing budget for other innovation investments. As technical capabilities and business processes evolve throughout the maturity model, many customers see a quick 40% reduction in severity-1 technical issues with some attaining 90% reduction in less than two years. That translates into fewer war rooms, outages and interruptions for critical teams and overall improvements to business performance.
Additionally, as customers move up through the levels, they can reduce time to market and gain insights into customer experiences. For instance, observability can see into application shopping cart totals in real time plus conversion rates and perhaps more importantly, provide insights into why a customer abandoned a purchase. This level of visibility helps companies accelerate their business transformation timelines.
Assisting customers in achieving their goals
As observability experts, partners deliver value at critical intersections between business, technology and customer experience. For example, imagine if a company could keep its website speedy and responsive while also understanding where along an interaction, a customer lost interest. Cisco full-stack observability enables customers to identify where and when users disengaged, delivering powerful data that enables partners to consult with customers on improvements to digital experiences that align with their business goals.
Building an observability team
With observability as a fundamental part of customers’ digital journeys, partners are uniquely equipped to provide consulting services and broad technical capabilities at each step. The Cisco commitment to a 100% channel-led model with observability enables partners to lead these consulting engagements while delivering remarkable results through technical and sales assistance or working with channel account teams for business development.
Whether it’s a router, switch and wireless refresh; a firewall sale, hybrid work solution or a cloud migration conversation, observability is the platform that helps partners deliver outstanding value for any technical investment — and make customers’ digital transformations a reality.
Customers and partners looking to develop an observability practice: Read Five tips for developing an observability mindset on the AppDynamics blog.
Charlie DeMarco is a technical business leader with over 20 years of experience in systems engineering, worldwide sales, service, customer success, business development, operations and marketing in enterprise, commercial and public sector verticals. His focus on creating a culture of shared success with partners, customers and teams is the cornerstone of his work. Charlie combines extensive experience in full-stack observability, cloud, mobility, networking, security and data center operations with a history of exceptional results, building thriving teams, delighting customers, strategic planning and sales execution.
