Cisco's AppDynamics Launches Integration Partner Program To Deepen Visibility For IT Teams

AppDynamics unveils its Integration Partner Program, an ecosystem of technology companies that integrate its own application visibility tools.

Cisco Systems' application performance monitoring software arm, AppDynamics, is introducing a new technology partner program that will help pair partners and customers with the right visibility tools.

Launched on the Tuesday ahead of Cisco Live, the Integration Partner Program is a "curated" ecosystem of technology companies that integrate with AppDynamics' application visibility tools. The end result is end users will have a better view of their applications, network and infrastructure, said Brian Paul, senior director of ecosystem, strategy and development at AppDynamics.

A better view into IT teams’ environments will let them optimize their networks and remediate issues faster, sometimes without manual intervention at all thanks to technologies such as artificial intelligence, Paul said.

The end customer's experience, said Paul, was the impetus for the new partner program.

[Related: Cisco's AppDynamics Injects Greater Visibility, Insight Into Application Monitoring]

"The problem we are solving for goes well beyond application performance and into the entire IT landscape, including the database, containers, IT automation equipment and ticketing systems," he said. That's important because IT environments are growing exponentially and IT is having a hard time keeping up with the rate of change through traditional manual methods, he added.

AppDynamics has rigorously assessed each vendor that is a part of the new partner program, which is based on Cisco and AppDynamics' "Central Nervous System for IT," a strategy that combines network visibility, data and automated actions across every technology environment that an enterprise might have. These include applications, cloud or premises-based infrastructure, and the network. Initial partners in the new program include Apica, BigPanda, Evolven, Harness, Moogsoft, PagerDuty, Turbonomic, Virtual Instruments and xMatters.

AppDynamics has core AI and machine-learning capabilities to make sense of data, so the company now is focused on adding more "visibility" partners and "action" partners, or vendors that can automate mundane IT tasks. The company has plans to quickly grow its partner program and expects an uptick in membership now that the program is live, Paul said.

The program isn't bringing solutions looking for a problem to the table, according to Paul.

"We are creating intentional integrations,” he said. “The goal is to really enhance the level of visibility we can give our customers. We're now able to connect the dots between the solutions that customers need."

Cisco purchased AppDynamics in 2017 for $3.7 billion.