Cisco ties AppDynamics to Microsoft Azure for cloud application management

Cisco is now offering its AppDynamics application management suite as part of Microsoft Azure cloud services.

The integration will offer customers tools to optimize the performance of applications, virtual machines and other resources hosted on the Azure platform, identify bottlenecks, and troubleshoot more effectively, according to Ronak Desai, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco AppDynamics and full-stack observability, who wrote a blog about the news.

AppDynamics is Cisco’s core application management suite, providing real-time monitoring of application response times, error rates, and resource utilization, among other capabilities.

“AppDynamics enables organizations to deliver exceptional digital experiences while improving business resiliency. It delivers comprehensive Application Performance Management (APM), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM), SAP solution monitoring and observability, network intelligence, and contextualized insights correlated with key business metrics for applications running in hybrid and self-hosted environments,” Desai wrote. 

Through the integration with Azure, it can provide comprehensive visibility into the performance of applications running on Microsoft’s cloud platform. In addition, AppDynamics development is now part of Cisco’s broader portfolio of Splunk observability offerings, so customers can observe and secure their applications across any environment to optimize business outcomes, according to Desai. (Read more about network observability tools in our buyer’s guide)

“Together, we continue to expand our partnership with Microsoft. You can look forward to a rapid pace of observability innovations enabling full-stack observability capabilities from AppDynamics and Splunk, a Cisco company, coming to Azure later this year,” Desai noted.

Some of that integration work has already begun. For example, one new development will let customers integrate logs from Splunk Platform with Cisco AppDynamics and Splunk Observability Cloud for faster troubleshooting across on-prem and hybrid environments, Cisco stated at its Live event this summer.

Another new feature will integrate application performance and business transaction metrics as well as alerts from Cisco AppDynamics with Splunk IT Service Intelligence to reduce alert noise and correlate IT health with business KPIs.

By integrating Cisco AIOps with Splunk IT Service Intelligence, alerts and events from Cisco networking devices and infrastructure can be correlated alongside the broader IT estate, for more accurate in-context troubleshooting inclusive of network signals, Cisco stated.

In addition to Splunk integration, Cisco recently added AI features to its AppDynamics observability platform that promise to help customers more quickly detect anomalies, identify performance problems, and resolve issues across the enterprise. The new features will be implemented in a virtual appliance, available this month, for Cisco AppDynamics On-Premises, which gives customers the ability to see and manage their entire application stack, including application code, runtime, infrastructure (servers, databases, networks, VMs, containers), and user experience.

The virtual appliance includes an AI-based detection and remediation capability that learns and detects anomalies and can determine root causes in application performance issues, wrote Aaron Schifman, senior technical product marketing manager at Cisco AppDynamics, in a blog. The package combines threat detection, threat intelligence and business impact to create a composite risk score that identifies which threats must be addressed first based on likely business impact, Schifman stated.

AppDynamics can run on AWS and SAP services as well as Azure.  

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