APM and Observability Requirements Template, Checklist and Gathering Document

This requirements table for APM and observability outlines the essential features and capabilities to consider when evaluating vendor options. The table covers key observability features such as distributed tracing, logging, monitoring, and code profiling across different languages and frameworks. It also covers the types of instrumentation available and support for different types of enterprise environments and deployments.

APM and Observability Requirements Table

APM and Observability

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Must be suitable for enterprise setups and environments
Must provide a solution that can handle large-scale, complex enterprise environments.
Enterprise-grade Customer Acquisition and Support, Enterprise-grade Product Suitable for Complex Hybrid Environments, Well-suited to Large Enterprise IT Operations Support Teams
Use Case Fit
Must provide flexible deployment options
Must offer multiple deployment options, such as on-premises, cloud-based, or hybrid.
Available as an On-Premise/Self-hosted Installation, Available as a SaaS
Use Case Fit
Must suit the system architecture
The solution should be compatible with the existing system architecture.
Suitable for Diverse Application Architectures, Suitable for Purely Modern Microservice Architectures
Use Case Fit
Observability
Must resolve problems at scale
Must be able to handle and troubleshoot issues that may arise as the system grows in size and complexity.
Accurate AI-based Problem Detection and Root Cause, Automated Problem Resolution
Problem Resolution
Must have a pricing structure suitable for the use case
Must offer a pricing plan that is appropriate for the specific use case, consumption patterns, and budget.
Lowest Price (Cost) Solution, Consumption (Data Volume) Based Pricing
Pricing
Use Case Fit
Must provide robust observability tools
Must offer a wide range of observability tools, such as metrics, logging, tracing, and profiling, with high cardinality analytics and under developer control. It must also  capture the code profile for every trace/transaction.
Very Flexible Custom Dashboarding, High Cardinality Analytics at Scale, Robust and Mature Observability Platform, Automated and Comprehensive Topology and Dependency Mapping, Comprehensive and Integrated Metrics, Logs and Tracing under Developer Control, Continuous Profiling.
Observability
Must have real-time metrics
Must provide real-time, near real-time, or live metrics in the dashboard to help identify and troubleshoot issues as they occur.
Visible Metrics in <1 Second
Observability
Must have dynamic instrumentation
The solution should allow for dynamic instrumentation, use open source technologies, and enable the monitoring of specific parts of the application on-demand.
Language Independent Agent with Dynamic Instrumentation, Open Platform Supporting Third Party Agents (OTEL/Prometheus), eBPF Agent
Instrumentation
Observability
Must support metrics for diverse languages and frameworks
Must support metrics collection for a wide variety of programming languages and frameworks.
Java Metrics Support, .NET Metrics Support, Node.js Metrics Support, Ruby Metrics Support, PHP Metrics Support, Python Metrics Support, Go Metrics Support, Rust Metrics Support, Perl Metrics Support, Scala Metrics Support, C/C++ Metrics Support
Instrumentation
Must support logging for diverse languages and frameworks
Must support logging for a wide variety of programming languages and frameworks.
Java Logging Support, .NET Logging Support, Node.js Logging Support, Ruby Logging Support, PHP Logging Support, Python Logging Support, Go Logging Support, Rust Logging Support, Perl Logging Support, Scala Logging Support, C/C++ Logging Support
Instrumentation
Must support code profiling for diverse languages and frameworks
Must support code profiling for a wide variety of programming languages and frameworks.
Java Code Profiling Support, .NET Code Profiling Support, Node.js Code Profiling Support, Ruby Code Profiling Support, PHP Code Profiling Support, Python Code Profiling Support, Go Code Profiling Support, Rust Code Profiling Support, Perl Code Profiling Support, Scala Code Profiling Support, C/C++ Code Profiling Support
Instrumentation
Must support tracing for diverse languages and frameworks
Must support tracing for a wide variety of programming languages and frameworks.
Java Tracing Support, .NET Tracing Support, Node.js Tracing Support, Ruby Tracing Support, PHP Tracing Support, Python Tracing Support, Go Tracing Support, Rust Tracing Support, Perl Tracing Support, Scala Tracing Support, C/C++ Tracing Support
Instrumentation
Must monitor container status and usage
Must monitor container status and usage: The vendor's solution should monitor the status and usage of containers, such as Kubernetes.
Open Source Kubernetes, AWS EKS, Azure AKS, Google Cloud GKE, OpenShift, Rancher, Platform 9
Integration
Must integrate with alerting and issue tracking tools
Must integrate with other tools for alerting and issue tracking, such as PagerDuty or Jira.
Slack, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, Splunk On-Call, AlertOps, OpsGenie, ServiceNow, Atlassian Jira
Integration
Authentication
Must meet authentication and access control standards
Must meet industry-standard authentication and access control requirements.
Enterprise SSO/SAML, RBAC
Compliance
Must meet compliance standards
Must meet compliance requirements for the relevant industry or regulatory standards.
ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, SOC 2 Type 1, SOC 2 Type 2, PCI DSS, GDPR, HIPAA, FedRAMP
Compliance

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