I am on my way back home on a jam packed Friday night subway. The subway chugs along stations and inside I hold on to the horizontal bar for dear life. As I swing along with a crowd on my back, my mind races to the dinner time conversation I just had with one of my friend who works for a startup.
It all started over a picture on the wall having a caption that said, “Are you too busy to notice?”
Do big companies really innovate? He arrowed! Aren’t big companies too busy to care about innovation? Do they really change their ways? I barely had time to respond before these three seemingly familiar questions were darted at me at a fast pace! Before I could even answer…”Leave it”….he said!
Back on the subway, it set my mind thinking. Are we really changing to be in tune with the ever changing nature of the market? Or are we really too busy to care about our customers? Are we innovating? My mind looks back at the events over the past one year.
- We interviewed 80 actual users of APM spread across 17 cities and understood their pain points to come out with a persona based approach towards APM.
- APM 10 was delivered, in what was the biggest ever release since CA acquired Wily, with patent pending features.
- CA made massive changes to bring in folks who have had 15+ years of experience on CA APM to head the future direction of APM.
- CA APM 10 delivered its first set of promised features in the E.P.I.C strategy, it wasn’t merely a marketing gimmick and was rooted in deep research.
- CA APM 10 aims to ensure that Pete (L1 Analyst) gets back to his home on time and spend time with his family, it touches my emotions
- CA APM leaders travelled several days on the trot, staying away from their own family, to ensure customers, that we were there to listen and take the appreciation and brickbats with all humbleness.
- Shewart developed an algorithm that reduced noise in underground telephone lines and CA APM applied that to ensure you never would be bothered with false alerts and having to set manual baselines.
- Prescriptive CA APM Team Center ensured there are no more descriptive spaghetti like application maps anymore.
- New technologies like Docker, Node, Microservices were supported in no time, suggesting that being a startup is not a benchmark to adoption of new technologies and big companies can innovate and accelerate at the same time!
- And 9.6, 9.7 and 10 that were delivered within a space of 6 months with patent pending features in APM 10, proving just that!
My station arrives. I adjust the laptop bag on my shoulder and have a lingering smile on my face….knowing that we were indeed busy, too busy to care about stereotypes. Have we changed? Maybe not!......maybe we are redefining the APM space! I am Introscoped! Are you too?
Truly Introscoped,
Chaitan
CA APM Product Management