Cisco unveils AI-powered tools for on-premises observability

In a significant development for industries with stringent security needs, Cisco has unveiled a suite of AI-powered capabilities designed to enhance its AppDynamics On-Premises solution. The new features promise improvements in application observability and security for self-hosted environments, automating the detection of anomalies, accelerating root cause analysis, and proactively securing applications by identifying and addressing vulnerabilities. This update is crucial for sectors like finance, healthcare, and government, where data residency and security are critical concerns.

In the announcement, Cisco introduced a new virtual appliance for the AppDynamics On-Premises offering, allowing customers to leverage advanced AI-powered intelligence. This includes tools for anomaly detection, root cause analysis, application security, and SAP monitoring. With these enhancements, IT operations teams can more swiftly detect performance issues, address security risks, and maintain optimal application performance, particularly in SAP environments.

Additionally, Cisco launched AppDynamics Flex Licensing to facilitate the transition from on-premises observability solutions to SaaS-based models, providing flexibility to accommodate the evolving needs of IT infrastructure.

"Many of our customers continue to rely on self-hosted observability to manage business-critical applications, and we are thrilled to deliver these AI-powered innovations as part of Cisco AppDynamics On-Premises for the first time," said Ronak Desai, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco AppDynamics and Full-Stack Observability. "Customers can now use this virtual appliance together with our Smart Agent capability to deploy new innovations faster and simplify lifecycle operations."

The new features introduced are comprehensive. The AI-powered detection and Remediation tool, driven by the Cognition Engine, enhances the accuracy of anomaly detection by leveraging historical trend data to differentiate normal versus abnormal performance, thus significantly reducing the mean time to identify (MTTI) application performance issues. Further, automated transaction diagnostics facilitate faster root cause analysis by continually analysing transaction snapshots, enabling proactive troubleshooting.

Cisco Secure Application will empower users to detect and highlight application vulnerabilities with detailed context, allowing these risks to be prioritised based on their potential business impact. A Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) feature adds an extra layer of defence against exploits targeting application weaknesses.

For SAP landscapes, the new capabilities ensure service availability and performance with a full-stack observability approach. AI-powered intelligence for the Java stack will help SAP developers and BASIS administrators ensure that performance aligns with business needs, improving both security and reliability.

Cisco's self-hosted observability offerings will also extend to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, allowing customers to deploy observability solutions on these platforms. This option is particularly beneficial in regions without a local SaaS presence or for enterprises wishing to maintain complete control over their observability data and operations.

"Many workloads today remain on-premises due to low-latency requirements, high cost, or higher-security requirements of performance-intensive computing workloads, especially for the government and finance sectors," said Stephen Elliot, Group Vice President for IDC. "Many technology executives are interested in on-premises, self-hosted observability solutions. Incorporating AI to automatically detect anomalies and suspected root causes in application performance is a huge step forward for on-premises customers who prefer to retain full control of their observability deployment."

The new virtual appliance for Cisco AppDynamics On-Premises will be generally available in May 2024, with further enhancements such as Automated Transaction Diagnostics and cloud-based deployment packages in AWS and Azure available in Q3 of 2024.