The pandemic has accelerated the digitisation of customer interactions by several years. As people spend more time online, they are aware of the quality of digital experiences (DX) brands can offer. Consumers have come to understand what an online experience can and should look like in 2022.
The rise of full-stack observability
This shift in consumer behaviour is placing pressure on businesses to deliver the most innovative digital experiences. Technologists now know that users’ tolerance of online performance has decreased substantially. If a company’s digital service does not perform well, they risk losing customers forever.
This realisation has translated into a huge appetite for tools that can help businesses to build on their existing monitoring capabilities. This will achieve greater visibility into performance across the entire IT estate.
The latest Cisco AppDynamics report, The Journey to Observability, has found some new insights. 45% of UK technologists believe soaring customer expectations are making the deployment of full-stack observability a priority for their organisations. Furthermore, 86% report that the desire for full-stack observability has increased over just the last 12 months.
Organisations are increasingly turning to full-stack observability as a critical solution. They believe it will help them deliver seamless DX that can meet customers’ heightened digital expectations. That is, whether it be providing an outstanding eCommerce experience, or offering smooth online access to vital public services.
By providing an overview of performance across the entire IT stack, full-stack observability allows tech teams to identify the issues that might be impacting customers. They’ll also be able to understand how they can respond to these problems before they impact the user experience. When this performance data is linked to business outcomes, technologists can assess issues based on the potential impact on customers business. This will then give them the ability to prioritize their actions accordingly.
Clearly, businesses are beginning to recognise the value of a unified, real-time view of IT availability and performance. This knowledge will allow teams to easily identify anomalies, understand dependencies and prevent issues from undermining DX.
The road ahead in 2022
To realise the benefits of full-stack observability (and meet the changing needs of customers and end-users), firms will first have to advance from the early stages of adoption. The deployment of observability is a complex, multi-stage journey that requires a long-term vision over several years.
As expected in an emerging area of technology, many businesses remain in the initial phases of this transition. 81% of technologists in the UK say they have defined a full-stack observability strategy. Meanwhile, only 24% are in execution mode, and 48% are taking first steps towards this goal.
In order to progress through these stages efficiently, organisations need to overcome the barriers that stand in the way of full-scale adoption. Many businesses of all services and sectors face issues at the early stages of this shift. A great number of these issues require specialist skills to address.
The main hurdles facing businesses in moving away from traditional monitoring solutions at the moment are: implementation challenges (40%); integration issues (42%); and concerns about increasing complexity as they scale (30%). Despite this, the image of determination amongst technologists to drive through the cultural and operational changes is established.
Technologists now understand what is required to deliver the calibre of DX now demanded of them. They know the next 12 months will be crucial in this transition, and are confident that they can achieve their goals in 2022. In fact, 81% state that 2022 will be a pivotal year for their organisation on the journey towards full-stack observability.
Start now!
The urgency to deliver outstanding online experiences has been hammered home by the consequences that service disruption has had on organisations over the last 12 months. A number of leading brands suffered major outages, with 7 in 10 organisations reporting outages in the last three years.
It has become clear that enterprises failing to forward their full-stack observability journey in the next 12 months will face a competitive disadvantage. Any lapse in application performance risks losing customers and revenue. Worse so, these errors may even tarnish the brand’s reputation.
As a result, business stakeholders are strongly backing the transition to full-stack observability. Additionally freeing up the resources for technologists to accelerate their implementation programs is a priority. Overall, 2022 is the year for businesses to get ahead, cement their competitive advantage, and surpass customer expectations.