Learn how Splunk AppDynamics optimizes hybrid and on-prem application performance with full-stack observability linked to business performance.
A proactive performance platform
With AppDynamics, MultiChoice gained a detailed view of application performance across its mobile app, web, and other digital services. Van Aswegen and her team can now monitor the performance of key customer services in granular detail, giving them new insights to improve and enhance the end-to-end digital experience.
For instance, MultiChoice uses AppDynamics to monitor every transaction in its self-service and payments application. If a process slows to below acceptable thresholds, the issue is immediately brought to the team’s attention and swiftly investigated. Speed and reliability are crucial to MultiChoice’s self-service application, which both web and mobile customers use for a variety of convenient interactions.
“If our self-service applications don’t work, it has significant customer impact. If they’re working too slowly, we risk losing customers’ trust,” says Van Aswegen. “AppDynamics has made us more proactive in managing these applications, cutting our issue response and resolution time substantially.”
As for payments, AppDynamics helped MultiChoice support self-service billing in numerous African markets, many with their own unique fiscal regulations and practices. “Serving 50 different markets means understanding how our self-service application is performing at all times, and AppDynamics gives us that visibility,” says Van Aswegen.
Significant enhancements and optimizations
The move from reactive to proactive performance and incident management has made a world of difference. For example, by using AppDynamics to see which IT processes or transactions consume the most memory or CPU, the Platform Support team can focus on the exact script or line of code causing the issue and fix it.
“Finding the underlying cause of performance issues in our applications used to be difficult and time-consuming, but now a quick glance at an AppDynamics flow diagram and we can pinpoint the problem area almost immediately,” says Van Aswegen. “That inevitably changes people’s mindsets and results in the teams being more effective.”
MultiChoice made significant enhancements and optimizations throughout the system landscape, all driven by deeper and more extensive insight into its application performance. AppDynamics provides the organization with data-rich dashboards with a real-time view of how services are running, where performance issues might arise, and how customers are engaging with its digital channels.
“Four years ago, we didn’t have the data we needed. With AppDynamics, we now have the relevant data that we can analyze to address performance issues across the customer journey,” says Van Aswegen.
By proactive monitoring of its core applications, MultiChoice improved customer experience across several channels. The performance and reliability of certain core services have increased tenfold in some cases.
“Managing business applications without AppDynamics is like starting a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle from scratch. With all the pieces laying around on the floor, it’s impossible to find the one you’re looking for or know which pieces are missing,” says Van Aswegen. “The visibility we’ve gained into each piece of our application puzzle has been of exponential value, and the best part is that we can pay that forward to customers.”
Racing together into the cloud
MultiChoice’s primary objective with itsAppDynamics initiative was to migrate its on-prem application performance management capability into the cloud. With support from the AppDynamics team, MultiChoice managed to complete this six-month project in just two months.
“It’s impossible to overstate the collaboration achieved between the AppDynamics and Devcon Solutions teams and our team at MultiChoice,” says Van Aswegen. “They went out of their way to help us with our cloud migration, and we could not have moved as quickly as we did without guidance and support from them.”
The partnership between MultiChoice and AppDynamics will grow as the business continues to enhance the monitoring and performance of its core services. MultiChoice’s Enterprise Business Solutions COO, Craig Coetzer, highlighted the importance and purpose of the AppDynamics team, as well as optimizing the underlying investment in the AppDynamics toolset, as the catalyst to driving out proactive application performance management and system performance optimization across all mission critical services.
Leaders across the technology and engineering teams at MultiChoice see AppDynamics as an invaluable early warning system, and their teams are proactively catching many of these performance issues before Van Aswegen’s dedicated resources even get to them, a shift she is more than happy to see.
“The level of empowerment and accountability we achieved with AppDynamics is the reason we were able to make more improvements to our customer experience in the past year than we had in the previous three,” she says. “Whenever you think it has revealed everything about your business, you learn something new.”
“The true beauty of AppDynamics is that when a performance issue arises, we can actually find the ‘needle in the haystack,’” she adds. “We know what’s causing a problem and can proactively fix it. This translates to better, more reliable services for our customers. And that positive experience is why customers choose MultiChoice again and again.”
