When New Relic FutureStack 2016 wrapped up in San Francisco last week, I flew home with a tall stack of business cards and plenty of meeting notes. So what's going on in the worlds of application performance management (APM) and monitoring across browsers, mobile and infrastructure? Plenty. Here are 10 updates for partners moving into this new generation of IT management.
1. Customer Experience: In addition to supporting APM and monitoring across browsers, mobile and infrastructure, New Relic is now pushing into artificial intelligence. The company's Project Seymour platform is central to that effort. But what do all of those technologies have in common? "For us, the customer experience is the defining item that drives our business and our focus," says Bharath Gowda, senior director of product marketing at New Relic. The company's software, in turn, helps developers and partners to optimize and improve the customer experience.
2. IT Consultants Join In: Roughly 150 to 160 partners attended a New Relic Partner Day ahead of the conference. Among those on hand: Joel Rosenberger, managing director of Slalom, a major IT consulting firm. Dozens of employees within Slalom leverage New Relic to assist software development for customers. As a more formalized New Relic Partner Program emerged, it helped Slalom to better understand how to go to market with end-customers. Slalom now embeds New Relic in its application development, and the capabilities get passed onto the customer.
3. End-to-End Monitoring: New Relic's recently expansion from APM to infrastructure monitoring is a big deal for Slalom. With many monitoring tools, the metrics stop at the server. But what about the browser, the infrastructure and the end-user experience? That end-to-end visibility is key to Slalom and its clientele, Rosenberger says.
4. Standardizing on Best Practices: Slalom has software development and delivery centers in five locations -- Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Houston and Toronto.
5. More Than Reselling: New Relic's alliances are "really starting to move now," says Kempton Izuno, global alliance manager. New OEM models are emerging where partners are saying "let's embed your service in my service." Examples include Rackspace, which embedded New Relic into its managed services practice. Most partner conversations no longer involve software reseller margins. Instead, New Relic's partners are focusing on application development and/or leveraging New Relic for new forms of managed services, he says. "We’re evangelizing that you do need this for proactive monitoring and diagnostics," he says.
6. From Cloud to On-Premises Monitoring: New Relic's tools are mostly designed to monitor and manage cloud services -- areas like Amazon Web Services and more. But what about on-premises hardware from Cisco, Dell EMC, NetApp and other major providers? That's where Blue Medora enters the picture. The company makes multiple plugins for on-premises hardware. The plugins, in turn, forward on-premises information to New Relic's cloud dashboard.
7. Channel Friendly: Yes, New Relic ecosystem members like Blue Medora are channel friendly and partner savvy. Blue Medora Chief Revenue Officer Chris Noordyke and VP of Channel Sales Charles Bass walked me through their business strategy last week. Sure, you can resell Blue Medora. But I get the sense that MSPs can leverage the company's software to deliver hybrid cloud monitoring....
8. Built to Last?: New Relic CEO Lew Cirne insisted that his company won't stumble or fall the way many legacy IT management companies lost their way over the past decade. Among the reasons why: New Relic was built from the ground up to manage web-scale applications, he asserts.
9. Channel Chief and CEO Alignment: During separate meetings with Cirne and Channel Chief John Gray, it became clear that the executives have similar visions for New Relic's IT consulting, OEM and MSP ecosystems.
10. Next Moves: I get the feeling that New Relic will be on hand at Amazon re:Invent 2016 in Las Vegas next week. New Relic's software has already surfaced in Amazon's new AWS Marketplace for SaaS providers. More moves surely are coming.
Any what about New Relic FutureStack 2017 conferences? We're watching for dates and locations.
