Challenges Faced with Application Performance Monitoring (APM) when Migrating to the Cloud

Application Performance Management (APM) is an important software engineering process that is critical to properly assessing the reliability of software in its targeted environment. Of late, migrating applications to the cloud has become increasingly popular for many reasons such as reduced operational costs, scalability, and increased IT productivity. While much has been said about how to migrate applications, relatively less has been said on how to appropriately monitor them in the cloud, which presents its own unique challenges. This article outlines some of the technical challenges that we have faced at AT&T when migrating to the cloud, with a focus on APM, and aims to stimulate further industrial-academic research and collaboration in this area.