Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring and Observability
Gartner defines the application performance monitoring (APM) and observability market as software that enables the observation and analysis of application health, performance and user experience. The targeted roles are IT operations, site reliability engineers, cloud and platform teams, application developers, and product owners. These solutions may be offered for self-hosted deployment, as a vendor-managed hosted environment, or via SaaS. Gartner's view is focused on transformational technologies or approaches delivering on the future needs of end users, not the market as it is today.
No strategic planning assumptions provided.
Vendors must, among other requirements:
A: This research covers the APM and observability market, defined as software that enables the observation and analysis of application health, performance and user experience. It evaluates 20 vendors across capabilities including transaction behavior observation, automated discovery and mapping, monitoring via browser/mobile/API, performance problem identification, integration with automation tools, business activity monitoring, interactive exploration of telemetry types, and application security functionality. The research assesses vendors on their ability to execute and completeness of vision.
A: This research should be used by IT operations leaders, site reliability engineers, cloud and platform teams, application developers, and product owners who are responsible for monitoring and ensuring application health and performance. Organizations evaluating APM and observability solutions can use this research to understand vendor capabilities, market positioning, strengths and cautions of different providers, and to overcome choice paralysis when selecting solutions. It is particularly valuable for organizations undergoing digital transformation, adopting cloud-native architectures, or seeking to consolidate monitoring tools.
A: To qualify for inclusion, vendors must demonstrate the capability to observe an application's complete transactional behavior through proprietary agent technology and/or distributed tracing. They must support automated data collection from at least three modern application frameworks (such as Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, Node.js, Python, Go, or others). Additionally, vendors must demonstrate at least four of seven core technical capabilities: automated discovery and mapping of applications and infrastructure, monitoring across browser/mobile/API channels, performance problem identification with business impact analysis, native integration with cloud providers and automation tools, business activity and user journey monitoring, interactive multi-telemetry exploration for detecting unknown issues, and application security functionality including vulnerability identification and exploit blocking.
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A: Ability to Execute focuses on current market performance and operational capabilities - including product quality, financial viability, sales effectiveness, market responsiveness, marketing execution, and customer experience. It measures how well vendors are currently performing in delivering and supporting their solutions. Completeness of Vision evaluates strategic direction and future potential - including market understanding, product strategy, business model, innovation capacity, and geographic expansion plans. It assesses vendors' ability to anticipate and meet future market requirements and their vision for transformational technologies rather than current market state.