The following are five interesting findings from TRAC Research's APM Spectrum report, based on more than 400 survey participants and more than 120 live interviews:

1. Differences in the value of APM capabilities for specific job roles

Research example: IT operations roles are nearly four times less likely to be interested in deploying application instrumentation techniques. The study includes sections that cover the need for APM solutions for IT operations, application developers/QA, CIO and business users.

2. It is not about selecting the best solution, it is about the right mix of products that can close all visibility gaps

Research example: 71% of user organizations are using more than 1 tool for APM. The study includes nine APM submarkets that include between 8 and 23 technology vendors based on their ability to support specific use cases and job roles, and very often using a mix of different underlining technologies to address different aspects of application performance monitoring.

3. Beyond features and functionalities

Research example: CIOs reported that 72% of IT budgets is being spent on operating and maintaining existing IT services. Most of the purchases are driven, not by features and functionalities, but by the ability to solve real business problems. These problems range from reducing the amount of IT resources allocated to firefighting and troubleshooting problems to ensure that performance issues do not cause revenue loss.

4. Supporting different IT initiatives

Research example: 49% of organizations reported that lack of SLAs for user experience is the key challenge for managing application performance in the cloud. Organizations are reporting that their APM capabilities are often defined based on IT initiatives that they are looking to support, such as virtualization, cloud, SaaS, Big Data, Web Services, or mobility.

5. Capabilities relevant for different industry sectors

Research example: Organizations in the Finance sector are 59% less likely to deploy, or are interested in deploying, APM solutions that are delivered as SaaS. When it comes to specific APM capabilities, the research shows major differences across organizations from different industry sectors.

ABOUT Bojan Simic

Bojan Simic is President and Principal Analyst at TRAC Research, a market research and analyst firm that specializes in IT performance management. As an industry analyst, Simic has interviewed more than 2,000 IT and business professionals from end-user organizations and has published more than 50 research reports. His domain knowledge includes insights into end user experiences, best-practices in deploying solutions for IT performance management, and strategies of related solution providers.

Prior to joining TRAC Research, Simic was a lead analyst for Network and Application Performance Management research at Aberdeen Group. He is frequently quoted in leading industry publications and has presented his research findings at more than 30 market facing events.

Simic's coverage area at TRAC Research includes application and network monitoring, WAN management and acceleration, cloud and virtualization management, business service management and managed services.

Bojan holds a BA in Economics from Belgrade University in Belgrade, Serbia and an MBA from McCallum Graduate School of Business at Bentley University.