September 2019 Summaries

The New Relic Synthetics team has recently delivered several new capabilities to enhance monitoring applications, including role-based access control (RBAC), GDPR-compliant location monitoring in the European Union, and improved audit logging. Additionally, new features such as recheck functionality, environment variables in private minions, and updated Chrome runtime have been added. However, some legacy capabilities are being retired, including private minions, Linode public locations, and Synthetics alerts, to be replaced by more secure and efficient alternatives, effective June 2020.

In recent months, the New Relic Synthetics team has introduced several enhancements to improve the monitoring of applications critical to businesses, while also phasing out some legacy capabilities. Key updates include the implementation of role-based access control (RBAC) to manage user permissions, the ability to conduct GDPR-compliant monitoring from public and private locations within the EU, and the introduction of audit logging for major actions. Additionally, new functionalities such as monitor recheck and environment variables for private minions have been added, alongside updates to the Chrome runtime for better compatibility with recent web development technologies. The team also announced the end-of-life for legacy private minions, Linode public locations, and legacy Synthetics alerts, urging users to transition to newer alternatives for improved security, efficiency, and functionality.

New Relic's partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a strategic and valuable collaboration that helps over 200 companies migrate to the cloud since December 2018. The partnership ensures faster, lower-risk migrations with compelling business outcomes by leveraging observability, integrating with AWS management tools, and providing a culture of accountability. New Relic's Cloud Adoption Solution (CAS) framework manages complexity and gives customers a thorough understanding of the entire migration process from inception to implementation and operation. The platform also enables customers to build custom applications that align to their business requirements and ensure even greater value from their cloud migration investments. With its innovations, dedicated to enabling innovation, New Relic continues to expand its capabilities and offer deeper integration with AWS services.

Since December 2018, New Relic and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have collaborated to help over 200 companies migrate to the cloud, emphasizing the importance of observability in successful cloud software deployment. This partnership focuses on reducing complexity and risk during cloud migrations through integrations with AWS tools like Service Catalog and Migration Hub, providing a seamless experience for customers. New Relic's Cloud Adoption Solution (CAS), aligned with the AWS Migration Acceleration Program, offers a structured framework for cloud migration, supporting effective planning, data-driven decisions, and performance monitoring through pre-built dashboards. The collaboration also facilitates the transition from cloud migration to modernization by leveraging New Relic's observability platform, which aids in optimizing application performance and infrastructure utilization. Additionally, New Relic's presence in the AWS Marketplace simplifies procurement and adoption of cloud-native services, further enhancing the partnership's value by making cloud solutions more accessible to customers.

Today at New Relic, we stand at an inflection point as expectations and demands on modern software teams are higher than ever before, requiring developers to make decisions faster and use business data in ways that give a distinct competitive advantage. To help customers win with software, New Relic has made its platform programmable by enabling users to build custom user interfaces deployed in New Relic One that connect observability data from various sources. This move massively accelerates the ability to move applications from idea to production quickly, as seen in the development of a simple application to visualize customer experience and satisfaction scores in just two days. The platform now provides more power for customers to help them take critical steps such as connecting observability data to business outcomes. New Relic One applications are built using React components and offer access to all New Relic data, allowing developers to build customized data visualizations and interactive interfaces.

New Relic has announced the general availability (GA) release of New Relic Logs, a log aggregation and management tool for its One observability platform. This solution addresses common log management challenges, providing scalability, cost-effectiveness, and cloud-based deployment. The first GA release focuses on basic log management capabilities, while an upcoming public beta will introduce "logs in context" features, which aim to bring context, curation, and intelligence into the logging conversation by correlating log data with application, infrastructure, Kubernetes, and Lambda errors and events data. New Relic Logs is designed to work seamlessly with other components of the New Relic One platform, providing a unified view of performance events and logs, as well as tools for staying focused and efficient. The solution is built on top of a scalable, cloud-native architecture, allowing developers to work confidently that their logging tools will scale to handle complex workloads.

New Relic has extended its list of open source integrations built on the Telemetry SDK to include Node/TypeScript and .NET, providing a single observability platform for modern software teams to combine log data, agent-based APM and infrastructure data, and third-party telemetry data from disparate sources. The company has introduced two new APIs, New Relic Metrics and New Relic Traces, which can be used directly via their HTTP endpoints or via the Telemetry SDK, facilitating the sending of telemetry data to these APIs. These capabilities aim to deliver more complete observability, reduce costs, avoid vendor lock-in, and enhance simplicity and transparency for customers. The new integrations support popular open source tools such as Prometheus, OpenCensus, Zipkin, and statsd, enabling teams to collect metric and trace data from any number of open source, vendor-agnostic tools.

New Relic has launched its new platform, New Relic One, which aims to provide a single platform for observability, allowing customers to instrument, measure, and improve their software, experiences, and businesses. The platform is open, connected, and programmable, enabling users to build custom applications on top of it, harness the capabilities of New Relic One to instrument, measure, and improve the performance of their applications, and gain a unified view of their customers' experience across their digital properties. The platform includes various features such as entity explorer, dashboards and chart builder, Kubernetes cluster explorer, and more, designed to help modern software teams increase observability and reduce unnecessary toil. New Relic One is available to all New Relic customers with a Pro subscription or those engaged in a free trial.

When Lew Cirne, founder and CEO of New Relic, spoke at FutureStack19 in New York City, he emphasized the importance of "magic" in software, highlighting its ability to transform businesses by measuring everything that runs in production. He introduced the concept of observability, which involves collecting telemetry data about technology through metrics, events, logs, and traces. Lew noted that traditional tools often present a proliferation of disparate data sources, making it challenging to achieve sustainable, scalable, end-to-end observability. To address this challenge, he outlined three key qualities of an ideal platform: open, connected, and programmable. New Relic's One platform aims to deliver these capabilities, with recent announcements including new product releases, beta releases, and overarching capabilities that build on the existing platform. These enhancements focus on making it easier to collect data from third-party sources, providing log data management, adding AI-powered incident alerting, and offering programmability through access to tools used by New Relic's own engineers. The goal is to provide a platform where businesses can adapt and connect observability data to achieve true observability.

New Relic is advancing its platform by introducing programmability to New Relic One, empowering developers to create custom applications that integrate observability data from various sources. This initiative aims to help users make faster decisions and gain a competitive edge by moving beyond traditional dashboards. The platform allows the creation of applications using React components, APIs, and other tools, enabling users to visualize and interact with data within New Relic One. These new capabilities are designed to enhance business outcomes by offering a more dynamic approach to data monitoring and analysis. New Relic has also open-sourced several applications and provides resources for developers to build applications efficiently, emphasizing the importance of connecting observability data to business objectives.

At FutureStack19 in New York City, New Relic founder and CEO Lew Cirne emphasized the transformative power of software, describing observability as essential for modern businesses to measure everything running in production. He outlined the need for a comprehensive observability platform characterized by openness, connectivity, and programmability, which allows companies to treat telemetry data from any source as first-class data and build custom applications. Cirne introduced several new products and features for the New Relic One platform, including New Relic Metrics, Traces, Logs, and AI, each designed to enhance data collection and analysis from third-party sources without relying solely on New Relic's agents. Additionally, the platform's programmability enables the development of open-source applications, further demonstrating its flexibility and commitment to open standards, ultimately aiming to help businesses deliver superior software solutions.

Over recent months, New Relic has developed a comprehensive log management solution for the New Relic One observability platform, introducing New Relic Logs, a tool that simplifies the complexity of log management for modern software development. This tool, now generally available, offers a scalable, cloud-based solution that addresses common challenges like steep learning curves, management burdens, and performance issues associated with traditional logging tools. It integrates seamlessly with existing open-source log shippers and correlates log data with performance data, providing developers with faster queries and a unified view of their application environments. The accompanying "logs in context" beta release enhances the ability to identify trends and correlations by integrating log data with other performance metrics. This initiative aligns with New Relic's mission to enhance observability, enabling developers to efficiently manage and analyze log data within the broader context of their application performance, thus contributing to a more effective and insightful troubleshooting process.

New Relic One is an innovative observability platform designed to enhance the digital experiences and business strategies of its users by offering open, connected, and programmable solutions. This platform allows for the instrumentation and measurement of various software stacks, providing a unified view of telemetry data with APIs that support third-party metrics and trace data. New Relic One empowers developers to construct custom applications and interfaces using React, GraphQL, and NRQL, facilitating the creation of tailored data visualizations and insights. Furthermore, New Relic's offerings include solutions like New Relic Logs for cloud-native applications, New Relic AI for proactive incident management, and the New Relic React Native Mobile Agent for mobile app performance monitoring. The platform also features essential tools such as an entity explorer, serverless monitoring for AWS Lambda, Kubernetes Cluster Explorer, and versatile dashboards with a chart builder, all aimed at enabling seamless observability and enhancing user experiences across diverse digital landscapes.

New Relic has expanded its observability platform by introducing two new APIs, New Relic Metrics and New Relic Traces, to integrate open source telemetry data more efficiently. These APIs are designed to support open instrumentation standards, allowing developers to collect and analyze metrics and trace data from diverse sources, including popular open-source tools like Prometheus, OpenCensus, and Zipkin. By aggregating data into a single platform, New Relic aims to provide a comprehensive view of system performance, reduce costs, and minimize operational burdens associated with managing separate systems. The platform enhances data visualization, querying, and troubleshooting capabilities, while embracing open standards to avoid vendor lock-in. Both APIs are accessible via HTTP endpoints or through the Telemetry SDK, which supports language-specific interfaces for data transformation and transmission, although currently limited to Java, Go, and Python.

As we enter a golden age for software and IT leadership, it's essential to recognize that setting high but attainable goals is crucial, as is preparing for a smooth transition when implementing new technologies. Many successful IT leaders have successfully marshaled the forces of technological advances like cloud computing, open source, and AI to deliver game-changing customer experiences and create new business opportunities. By taking a strategic approach to digital transformation, including setting clear objectives, starting smart by laying a strong foundation, partnering with vendors, and staying ahead of emerging trends, IT leaders can play offense with software and drive growth for their companies.

In the current "golden age" of the software industry, characterized by the transformative impact of SaaS, cloud computing, open-source technology, and AI, IT leaders are tasked with leveraging these advancements to drive business innovation and competitive advantage. Erica Ruliffson Schultz emphasizes that while the rapid pace of change can be daunting, successful IT leaders set ambitious goals, manage strategic transitions, and use partnerships to guide technological transformations. By fostering a culture of innovation and aligning IT strategies with broader business objectives, companies like Ocado and leading airlines have successfully modernized operations and expanded their market presence. In this environment, IT leaders must remain vigilant of potential disruptions from tech giants like Amazon and Google, as these companies can quickly enter new markets. The article underscores the importance of "playing offense" with technology, urging IT leaders to proactively seek growth opportunities rather than merely supporting existing initiatives.

The new version 5.0 of the New Relic Python agent introduces an exciting feature called event loop diagnostics for developers working with Python's asyncio library, providing visibility into transactions that have waited a significant amount of time to acquire control of the event loop, allowing better interpretation of slow asynchronous applications. This feature helps identify why async apps seem slow by tracking wait times and showing what's blocking the event loop, enabling developers to diagnose and resolve issues more efficiently. The new feature is available for popular asynchronous frameworks like Tornado, aiohttp, and Sanic, providing a better understanding of application performance and helping developers optimize their code for faster execution.

For Python developers utilizing asynchronous frameworks such as Tornado, aiohttp, and Sanic, the New Relic Python agent's version 5.0 introduces event loop diagnostics to enhance visibility into their applications. This feature addresses the difficulty of detecting and diagnosing issues related to event loop blocking, which is a common source of slowdowns in asynchronous applications. By tracking all trace segments executing on the event loop, the New Relic APM 360 records wait times and identifies potential blockers, providing detailed insights into transaction execution times. This diagnostic information is accessible through APM and New Relic Query Language (NRQL) queries, enabling developers to better understand and optimize their asynchronous application performance. The integration supports existing instrumentation for frameworks like aiohttp, Sanic, and Tornado, with future plans to expand support for Tornado 5.x.

Three key trends stand out in the programming language landscape: developers are largely satisfied with their current choice of languages, the most popular languages cater to critical "niche" audiences, and successful upstarts focus on integration rather than disruption. The three most popular languages - Java, JavaScript, and C - dominate the top spots across various rankings and have well-established use cases, while newer languages like Kotlin and Python continue to gain traction by catering to specific niches or addressing emerging trends.

Programming languages are a dynamic and evolving field with thousands of languages available, yet a few like Java, JavaScript, and C remain dominant due to their versatility and established niches. Despite the stability at the top of the rankings, there is room for emerging languages like Kotlin and TypeScript, which offer integration benefits without disrupting existing ecosystems. The analysis of language popularity is based on diverse metrics from sources like RedMonk, Stack Overflow, and the TIOBE Index, highlighting trends such as the steady rise of Python, which is favored for its simplicity and growing appeal to newcomers. While traditional languages have a stronghold, the landscape is not static, and developers are encouraged to explore newer languages to stay relevant in the expanding software market. The success of a language is not a zero-sum game; the industry's growth allows for multiple languages to thrive simultaneously, catering to various developer needs and preferences.

New Relic's FutureStack19 event series is an opportunity for industry peers to learn about navigating technology shifts in today's software-driven and cloud-native world. The flagship event, FutureStack New York, will take place on September 19, 2019, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. This free all-day event offers a range of topics, including digital transformation, DevOps best practices, cloud adoption, and optimization. Keynote speakers include Lew Cirne, founder and CEO of New Relic, who will share updates on the company's mission to instrument, measure, and improve the internet. The agenda features insights from innovative businesses and large enterprises transforming their legacy systems to leading-edge technologies. Other speakers and topics include entity-centric observability, DevOps best practices, cloud adoption, and optimization, as well as hands-on training sessions and a Hackers Workshop. The event also offers free pre-conference training and a Hackers Workshop on Wednesday, September 18, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

FutureStack19, organized by New Relic, is a series of events designed to help professionals navigate the evolving landscape of software-driven, cloud-native technology. The first event, FutureStack New York, takes place on September 19, 2019, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel and offers a comprehensive agenda for developers, IT professionals, and executives. Attendees will gain insights into digital transformation, DevOps best practices, and cloud strategies, with sessions covering topics like entity-centric observability, site reliability engineering, and modernizing applications for the cloud. Keynote speaker Lew Cirne, New Relic's founder, will discuss the company's mission and its platform, New Relic One. The event features participation from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and other notable speakers from companies like Genesys and McGraw Hill. Additionally, New Relic University offers pre-conference training sessions to help participants enhance their skills with New Relic tools. For those unable to attend, FutureStack events are also scheduled in London, Sydney, and Melbourne later in the year.