Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Broadcom Software just announced the intention to acquire AppNeta, a pioneer in end-user experience over the internet. AppNeta will be integrated with DX NetOps, the network monitoring software portfolio within Broadcom’s Enterprise Software Division. The acquisition marks a key milestone in the DX NetOps vision to assure Network Observability Anywhere. AppNeta adds solutions, technologies, and people that will enable DX NetOps to deliver more value to our customers and partners.

I recently talked with James Kao, Head of Engineering for APM at Broadcom. James leads the global development team to deliver the AIOps and application monitoring solutions that power the world's most successful businesses. He has had a diverse background in application development and monitoring across development, product management, and solution engineering roles over the last 20 years at both large enterprises and startups such as Oracle, ClearApp, and The Middleware Company.

It’s easy to see why developers and IT engineers should care about AIOps, which automates tasks (like incident remediation) that they would otherwise have to perform manually. But what does the business get out of AIOps? How do AIOps-powered tools help improve business outcomes? Those questions are critical to answer for any organization considering an investment in AIOps solutions.

AIOps platforms fall into two main categories: domain-centric and domain-agnostic solutions. What are the differences between domain-centric and domain-agnostic AIOps, and why should you choose one type of solution or the other? Read on for guidance on understanding the respective pros and cons of domain-centric and domain-agnostic AIOps.

Operational monitoring can be like looking down the wrong end of a telescope. There’s no clear picture of the horizon. Everything is blurred, indistinct, and difficult to trace. If you’re relying on traditional, domain-centric monitoring, you’re faced with a similar problem: you can see the performance of individual elements, but you don’t have any visibility into the broader picture.

As a commercial pilot landing at night on an unfamiliar runway, the last thing you want is a cockpit alarm telling you the passenger in 14A wants more ice in their soda. You need to concentrate on the job at hand. At that critical moment in flight, you only want visibility into the alarms that matter. It’s the same with your monitoring environment. Too often, you can be overwhelmed by a tsunami of alarms—thousands of monitoring alerts that all point to the same problem.

DX Unified Infrastructure Management (DX UIM) has more than 150 monitoring probes, which enables IT administrators to monitor everything from traditional mainframe servers to modern hybrid clouds running on a wide range of platforms and operating systems. Traditionally, a separate probe has been required to monitor each specific technology. That’s because the interface that retrieved monitoring metrics was either proprietary or technology specific.