Cisco this week expanded the scope of its observability platform by adding predictive and generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities along with log analytics and a Core Web Vitals tool to make it simple to ensure web pages don’t lose their search engine ranking because of poor user experience.
In addition, Cisco is now leveraging extended Berkeley Packet Filters (eBPF) in the kernel of Linux operating systems to provide visibility into Kubernetes workloads and a session replay capability for cloud-native applications. In addition, Cisco has allied with Komodor, a provider of a Kubernetes management platform, to gain additional visibility into these environments.
Cisco also added digital experience monitoring (DEM) capabilities based on real user monitoring (RUM) and the full-stack observability it provides following its recent acquisition of Accedian, a provider of an analytics platform for monitoring end-user experiences.
Finally, Cisco added a Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) Observability module to the company’s Business Risk Observability platform based on the same core platform.
Announced at a Cisco Live EMEA event, these latest updates are part of an ongoing Cisco effort to extend the reach of its observability platform well beyond DevOps workflows.
Gregg Ostrowski, executive CTO for Cisco AppDynamics, said as part of that effort, Cisco is making it simpler to aggregate telemetry data for the AI for IT operations (AIOps) capabilities it provides by pulling directly from platforms such as Cisco ThousandEyes and Cisco DNA Center as well as from third-party partners such as VMware, Zabbix and ServiceNow. Similarly, Cisco is now leveraging eBPF to collect data from Kubernetes environments.
Ostrowski added that the overall goal is to reduce the amount of instrumentation effort that IT teams would have to undertake to instrument highly distributed IT environments.
There will still be a need to instrument applications, but the collection of telemetry data from the underlying IT infrastructure environment is going to be increasingly automated, he noted. In the meantime, it’s become less expensive to instrument applications using open source OpenTelemetry agent software, added Ostrowski.
In general, Cisco, in addition to enabling organizations to rationalize existing tools, is also making a case for improving collaboration by, for example, making use of natural language capabilities enabled by generative AI to launch queries and provide summarizations.
At the same time, Cisco is partnering to add additional capabilities, such as the ability to monitor machine learning algorithms via an alliance with Aporia and AS/400 systems via an alliance with Perform IT.
Ultimately, Cisco is betting that observability across the entire enterprise IT environment is going to become more unified as organizations increasingly look to correlate business processes with specific IT events, including indications of cybersecurity breaches. It’s not clear how far down that path enterprise IT organizations are just yet, but given the total cost of observing and monitoring IT environments today, there is more pressure than ever to find more cost-effective approaches to holistically managing IT. The challenge, as always, is unifying all the existing fiefdoms in IT organizations that have already embraced a wide variety of tools and platforms they are hesitant to give up.
