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“End-to-End Application Management” is one of those terms everybody uses but nobody stops to think about. What does it really mean? Since “inquiring minds need to know”, I started nailing down answers to this question with a 3 part research study back in 2008. I continue to follow up each year, and in doing so I’ve discovered something really interesting—the scope of “end-to-end” continues to expand, and likely will do so for the foreseeable future.

Back in the good old days, applications were essentially encapsulated in the data center, and user access was via “dumb” terminal—a pretty simple configuration to manage. Web access and client/server extended manageability requirements to geography management and the desktop, and the “last three feet” became part of the end-to-end scenario. SOA and virtualization extended scope on the execution side, as execution was abstracted from hardware. Most recently, Cloud has extended the scope of “end-to-end” execution even further. The term is starting to look more like a carrot on a stick than a stake in the ground.

With these factors in mind, the inquiring mind reconsiders anew the age old technical question dogging application management teams: “How in the heck do we get a handle on this dog’s breakfast?” (terminology taken directly from thesaurus.com definition of “mess”).

In this research, I will be asking the same question in more respectable terminology. The research will be survey-based, and I will be posting the URL on this blog so readers can respond if they care to. I anticipate that the answers will surprise me as well as everyone else.

Since I am creating the survey at the moment, here are some examples of the questions I will be asking:
• Which types of cloud services are you using today, and which are you planning to use within the next year?
• How has cloud computing impacted your application management strategy?
• Are you integrating multiple SaaS services? If so, how are you managing the integrated service?
• Are you running transactions that span on-premise and the cloud? If so, how do you manage them?
• Which types of products are most important in enabling IT to quickly resolve application-related problems, regardless of where they execute?
• Where are your most glaring product gaps when it comes to managing cloud-dependent services?

My intent is to determine how today’s companies are using the cloud, how they are managing it, and how they would like to manage it in the future. I think the findings will be very interesting for vendors and IT organizations alike.

Heads-up to vendors: sponsorships are available, please contact Kevin Hecht at: khecht@emausa.com for details.

Heads-up to IT profs: watch for the link on this blog, I would love to have your input.