Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2020. Read them in this 12th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Nik Koutsoukos, CMO and User Experience Evangelist for Catchpoint
User Experience Monitoring Matures
2019 has been a year to remember from a number of advancements including the increased use of Cloud, 5G becoming a reality and the growing implementation of AIOps. I wanted to take a few minutes to highlight just a few of the trends and predictions in 2020 as these will have a direct impact on the network and user experience.
1. Digital Consumers and Digital Professionals Behave the Same: In the past year, we have seen a real shift in how digital consumers and digital professionals use web-based technologies to the point where it is hard to tell the difference between the two groups. They both behave the same online and at work, creating a greater need for network insights and monitoring to understand the differences. In 2020, we will see a greater investment in monitoring internet-based services and network delivery to ensure user-based services like apps in the cloud and SaaS solutions are available and meet end-user expectations.
2. Availability Monitoring keeps Industrial IoT Connected: Industrial IoT (IIoT) brings many elements together, including machines, cloud computing and analytics to increase the performance of industrial processes. Ensuring connectivity will require industrial organizations to research and implement enterprise- class solutions to avoid operational disruptions and security breaches. The advancements and usage of 5G will only compound these challenges as the tech is still immature. In 2020, we expect to see more IIoT organizations leveraging availability monitoring solutions to ensure they don’t have any disruption that could be financially devastating.
3. AIOps Doubles Down on Data Analysis: Enterprises will be looking for even more Data Insights and AIOps Analysis than just data analysis from tool vendors. Enterprise organizations are already dealing with too much data being over collected and under analyzed. In 2020, we will see the need for greater data visibility and management across the organizations. One trend will be a number of APM vendors merging as they have failed to be the single pane of glass for enterprises.
4. Customer and Employee Experience Monitoring Matures: Enterprises will continue investing in digital tracking of customers and employees to deliver high-class experiences. The challenge is data privacy, protection and regulation will complicate the effective delivery of digital services. This will cause vendors to jump through hoops to deal with an increasingly more complex set of privacy and protection rules. We expect to see monitoring evolve to meet the user experience needs while meeting regulatory and privacy needs.
5. High-Profile Outages Will Continue: In 2019, major brands like Target, British Airways, Facebook and Twitter all experienced major IT outages. 2020 will be no different as we expect to see some high-profile project failures and/or outages. Digital transformation opportunities are encouraging companies to take risks, but the stakes are high as the technology is being stretched to its limits. The deployment and use of multi-cloud/hybrid service architectures are creating fragile environments where many accidents are just waiting to happen.
I am an optimist and see what can be and will be based on the conversations with customers and those in the know. 2020 will not disappoint when it comes to the evolution of the network, cloud and connectivity to everything.
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About the Author
Nik Koutsoukos, VP of Marketing at Catchpoint
Nik leads all marketing functions at Catchpoint. He’s a seasoned marketing and product management executive with extensive knowledge and experience in the enterprise IT monitoring industry. He has extensive hands-on experience in building and launching commercially successful product lines and leading marketing organizations in developing and executing winning GTM strategies. He was previously Vice President of Product and Solutions Marketing at Riverbed Technology, a position he held for over five years. Prior to Riverbed, Nik held senior-level positions at Empirix, Crossbeam Systems (acquired by Blue Coat) and 3Com. Nik holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and master’s degree in Marketing.
