At KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, LightStep announced the findings of their Global Microservices Trends report, based on an independent research study conducted by Dimensional Research that was commissioned by LightStep.Key findings in the research are:
Record Growth of Microservices
- 92 percent of respondents said they increased their number of microservices in the last year.
- 92 percent expect to grow their use of microservices in the coming year.
- Agility (82 percent) and scalability (78 percent), were the top motivators for microservice adoption.
Microservices Widely Used Today
- 91 percent are using or have plans to use microservices.
- 60 percent have microservices in pilot or production.
- 86 percent expect microservices to be the default architecture within five years.
Microservices Introduce New Operational Challenges
- 99 percent report challenges in using microservices.
- 87 percent of those in production report microservices generate more application data.
- 56 percent report that each additional microservice increases operational challenges.
Microservice Performance Management is Critical to Success
- 98 percent of users that have trouble identifying the root cause of performance issues in microservices environments report it has a direct business impact with 76 percent of those reporting it takes longer to resolve issues.
- 73 percent report it is harder to troubleshoot application performance problems in a microservices environment compared to a traditional monolith.
- 74 percent plan to increase their microservice performance management investment next year.
“The adoption trends we see from our customers and in the broader market are absolutely consistent with the findings from the Global Microservices Trends report. The introduction of
microservices makes everyday performance and root cause analysis far more challenging. With traditional APM tools that were built for software monoliths, customers lose track of transactions as they pass from service to service, and that renders those tools completely ineffective in the presence of microservices. That’s why we ended up with a fundamentally different approach to performance management, one specifically designed for this new era,” said Ben Sigelman, co-founder and CEO of LightStep.
“These findings underscore the need for a new class of performance management solutions specifically designed to address the scale and complexity of modern applications,” said Diane Hagglund, principal research at Dimensional Research and author of the Global Microservices Trends report.