The Rising Importance of Application Visibility Services

As enterprises host more of their applications off premises and in the cloud, communications service providers (CSPs) are feeling pressure to maintain the performance of and access to these off-site applications. Despite putting in place SLAs and other performance monitoring tools, many still hear from enterprise customers that their application quality is unpredictable, blaming the network for any performance degradation.

To better monitor and report on application performance, some CSPs now offer application visibility services (AVS) to enterprise customers, allowing them to closely monitor the performance of business-critical applications, down to the user, and empower customers with valuable information about their applications. CSPs in Europe and North America especially have seen significant interest in AVS and are now investigating how to make these services simpler and more standardized.

Empowered by AVS, CSPs are becoming much more mature when it comes to application performance management, as these services allow them to better understand customers' needs and the challenges they face, particularly in regards to new technology like cloud computing. As the cloud matures, CSPs will be able to help customers ensure the performance of their offerings, upping the value they bring to these enterprises.

AVS will become a must-have customer reporting capability within the next year, and I forecast a sharp acceleration of these deployments in the next six months due to their ability to holistically report on application performance over their networks and easily troubleshoot user complaints. Application visibility services also represent a significant opportunity for CSPs to better monetize their networks, offering tiers of service to customers that include services like event correlation and threshold alarms tied together in a comprehensive dashboard. All in all, a significant step forward for CSPs and enterprises alike.