Too fast, too furious: The side effects of rapid digitalization

At this point, after more than a year, we already know how the story goes: In early 2020, Covid-19 hit businesses fast and hard, pushing many to scramble in an uncharted digital territory in order to survive.

This rapid move to digital also meant that tech teams are essentially being asked to realize years’ worth of major digitalization within months. Ninety-five percent of respondents in a recent report say their organizations’ technology priorities have dramatically shifted. The influx of customers onto digital platforms has forced companies to dramatically scale up their reliance on new technologies, with many adopting cloud-based services at a rapid clip in order to meet the rising demand for speed and service. In one example, the report cites technology projects being implemented 3x faster than before.

While it solves some problems, the rapid influx of tech has also created new ones. The report, which surveyed 1,050 technologists across 11 global markets, found respondents struggling to cope with the “overwhelming ‘data noise’” – huge swathes of information – created by these new technologies, leaving them unsure of which problems to prioritize.

Connecting the dots between the stack and customers

In many ways, the new responsibilities that IT practitioners are taking on are the result of the unfortunate collision between Covid-19 and a business world in transition.

According to Jim Cavanaugh, the Asia Pacific, Japan, and China president of Cisco AppDynamics, a leading provider of full-stack observability solutions, most organizations were already trying to break up traditional “monolithic” IT systems into a patchwork of smaller parts that are easier to manipulate or fix.

However, in doing so, the tech stack as a whole became more complex to navigate and maintain, and teams were taking longer to pinpoint the source of individual problems.

The pandemic has magnified those problems: Remote teams struggle with troubleshooting while floods of new users have raised security risks. As if that weren’t enough, they’re also expected to get everything done much faster.

Jim Cavanaugh, the Asia Pacific, Japan, and China president of Cisco AppDynamics / Photo credit: Cisco AppDynamics

The impact of not managing these issues can be significant. Cavanaugh gives the example of mobile banking apps that previously accounted for only a sliver of banks’ transactions. In Southeast Asia, these apps have seen their monthly active usage spike, and if banks are ill-prepared to handle the surge, existing bottlenecks in the system could result in slow service and damage users’ experience. The firms’ reputations take a hit as well.

“Maybe before, [the app] was a small source of revenue, but now it [brings in] the majority of the revenue if you’re a retail bank,” says Cavanaugh. “The pressure to support that application has gone from being a relatively high priority prior to Covid-19, to business critical now.”

Cutting through complexity

Technologists need to focus on building systems that connect to their customers’ needs by focusing on solving problems with the biggest business impacts, says Cavanaugh. That way, new technologies won’t create more “data noise” – instead, they’ll create more efficient and effective systems.

To do so, companies need to start investing in “full-stack observability” capabilities that can monitor the entire IT environment from customer-facing applications down to core network and infrastructure. This can empower technologists to glean granular real-time information from across their IT stack.

While still a nascent technology, full-stack observability is becoming a very popular solution for solving these challenges. However, on its own, full-stack observability isn’t enough to tackle the layers of complexity now engulfing IT departments. Cavanaugh adds that an effective system also provides tech teams with the relevant business context to make changes that tangibly improve their business performance. Technologists can cut through data noise to pinpoint where the most pressing issues are happening and ascertain their impact on key business outputs, such as sales or customer experience.

“When our customers say full-stack observability, what they want to know is why didn’t [something] work? What went wrong? Where did it go wrong, and how did it affect user behavior?” he says. “When you talk to IT practitioners, they’ll usually say that the long pole in the tent is usually identifying where the exact problem is in the complex system.”

For example, if an end user’s food delivery order fails to go through, the problem could have come from several places, such as failed database connections or a mistake with a third-party plug-in. With a fully observable stack, tech teams can quickly identify the source of the issue they need to fix while also collecting data on similar problems to get a sense of the problem’s wider impact.

Photo credit: Pexels

This information can be extremely valuable as it helps teams understand how to prioritize fixes that would bring about the largest positive impact on the business as a whole. The game-changing benefits for technologists are when they are able to observe what matters and connect full-stack observability with business outcomes, explains Cavanaugh.

Tying the whole business together

The majority of respondents to the AppDynamics Agents of Transformation report anticipates that their ability to respond to the challenges of 2021 will hinge on their capacity to gain absolute observability into every facet of the business and IT stack, as it’s no longer enough to rely on gut instinct. In fact, 95% say that as the world becomes more digitalized, the more important it is for companies to gather insight from every interaction with its IT stack.

Rather than relying on multiple reports that consist of historical information, full-stack observability acts like a GPS for companies, providing real-time insights. With this tool, tech teams can gain a holistic view of how their IT capabilities can align with business goals before they make big decisions that will impact the company in the long term. This is absolutely key, according to three-quarters of the respondents who expressed fear that the failure to link up business and IT performance could be “detrimental” to businesses.

Additionally, technology isn’t the only crucial part of this process. Cavanaugh points to the need for organizations to take a long hard look at their business as a whole and identify where and how they can create a culture that both supports and leverages the full potential of full-stack observability.

Observability technology is great for “breaking a hole in the wall” between siloed teams that are already great on their own, he says, but the most successful users are the ones who use the platform as an enabler of their goals.

“Our technology provides some magical insights and does a bunch of great things – but the people that leverage it are obviously a critical component of that.”

AppDynamics’s pioneering Business Observability platform brings real-time granular insight into organizations’ increasingly complex IT systems. The platform aims to help companies view every tech decision as a business decision and prioritize the ones that can create impactful digital transformations.

To learn more about how tech teams are coping after a year of urgent and rapid digital transformation, download and read the firm’s report The Agents of Transformation 2021: The rise of full-stack observability.

This content was produced by Tech in Asia Studios, which connects brands with Asia’s tech community. Learn more about partnering with Tech in Asia Studios.