Harzog described AppFirst as having the best infrastructure MaaS solution on the market, particularly for multitenant cloud environments. Other players include Akorri, Xangati, Virtual Instruments and CA, whose product is called Virtual Assurance. Harzog identifies New Relic as an application performance management MaaS provider that supports Java, PHP, Ruby, and Microsoft .Net environments.
Harzog identifies New Relic as an application performance management MaaS provider that supports Java, PHP, Ruby, and Microsoft .Net environments. AppFirst also considers itself an APM based on a definition that differs from Harzog's. He defines APMs as vendors that operate in the run-time of various application programming languages, while AppFirst notes that it analyzes applications at the system level.
AppFirst has partnership agreements with Amazon, GoGrid and Rackspace, as well as one pending with SoftLayer. AppFirst also has deals with CloudSigma, a European cloud provider, and IBM.
Harzog downplayed the Cloudkick acquisition by Rackspace, saying that Cloudkick "provided nothing but commodity monitoring functionality as a service." He also doesn't see a trend of other acquisitions of monitoring services. He considers partnerships with cloud providers and companies like AppFirst more likely.
As cloud computing becomes more prevalent, customers need more assurance that they have control over IT resources that they can access through a cloud provider, says Roth. That concern about control is one of the impediments to wider adoption. "The common nature about IT is [cloud providers] finding out about problems from their users in a reactive fashion," he says. "And even when issues are found, they're lucky if they can solve them in days."
