July 2023 Summaries

New Relic's former CEO, Bill Staples, announced the company's acquisition by Francisco Partners and TPG, which will accelerate its strategy without changing its vision or values. The acquisition is expected to bring more value to customers efficiently, with customer, revenue, and operating income growth rates increasing. The change in ownership does not affect New Relic's focus on its customers' success, and the team remains committed to delivering a trusted partner experience. The transaction has been announced with a special stockholder meeting planned, and investors are advised to read the definitive proxy statement for important information about the proposed merger.

This article discusses the importance of identifying and troubleshooting host performance and configuration issues in IT systems. Recognizing signs such as slow system performance, frequent crashes and errors, inability to access resources, high CPU and memory usage, and other issues is crucial. The causes of these problems are often outdated hardware and software, inadequate system resources, incorrect configuration, software bugs and compatibility issues. To resolve these issues, it's essential to use infrastructure monitoring platforms like New Relic, which provide a holistic view of the system and help identify correlations between configurations and performance. Implementing best practices such as regular system audits, timely updates and patches, adequate resource allocation, optimized configuration settings, preventive maintenance, and leveraging monitoring tools can also optimize host performance and configuration. By following these steps, businesses can maximize their IT system's potential, maintain operational efficiency, and boost overall business productivity.

New Relic Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST) is a tool designed to address the limitation of traditional static and dynamic application security testing methods. It provides a comprehensive view of an application's security by simulating real-world attacks, identifying exploitable vulnerabilities, and offering actionable and repeatable testing procedures. This approach enables developers to identify and fix security issues early in the development lifecycle, reducing the risk of exploits. The tool integrates with New Relic APM agents and provides features such as vulnerability prioritization, proof of exploitability, and replay tests to validate fixes. By leveraging IAST, organizations can enhance their observability, improve their security posture, and accelerate continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.

New Relic, a company known for pioneering cloud-based Application Performance Management (APM), has announced its acquisition by technology investors Francisco Partners and TPG. This acquisition is intended to accelerate New Relic's strategy, although the company's mission and business operations are to remain unchanged. The former CEO, Bill Staples, highlighted New Relic's transformation over the past three years, including unifying its platform and introducing a consumption pricing model, which has led to increased customer engagement and revenue growth. While the acquisition marks a new chapter for New Relic, it maintains its commitment to customers, and a special stockholder meeting will be held to approve the transaction. The announcement also emphasizes the forward-looking nature of the acquisition, with potential risks outlined, and urges investors to review the forthcoming proxy statement for detailed information.

Businesses increasingly depend on IT systems for critical operations, making it essential to address host performance and configuration issues to maintain productivity and customer satisfaction. These issues can manifest as slow system performance, frequent crashes, and high CPU or memory usage, often caused by outdated hardware, inadequate resources, or incorrect configurations. Tools like New Relic infrastructure monitoring can help identify and resolve these issues by providing a comprehensive view of system performance, allowing for timely updates, resource optimization, and proactive management. Implementing best practices such as regular system audits, timely updates, and leveraging monitoring platforms ensures maximum IT system potential, boosting overall efficiency and productivity.

New Relic's Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST) offers a comprehensive approach to improve the security of first-party code by detecting and addressing exploitable vulnerabilities within applications. Unlike static and dynamic analysis tools, New Relic IAST integrates with New Relic's Application Performance Monitoring (APM) to deliver real-time insights into code execution, providing proof of exploitability for vulnerabilities such as SQL injection. By simulating real-world attacks in pre-production environments, it allows developers to pinpoint and rectify security issues before deployment, thereby reducing false positives and enhancing DevOps and security team collaboration. The tool includes actionable testing procedures, such as using curl commands to verify fixes, which streamlines the process of securing applications early in the development lifecycle and supports continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. This methodology not only mitigates risk but also allows organizations to focus on innovation by embedding security into the development process.

The text discusses how to introduce observability concepts and techniques using a game as an example, specifically the game "Dangerous Dave" created by John Romero. The author aims to show that observability can be fun and accessible, even for those without prior experience with monitoring and observability tools like New Relic. The blog post covers various aspects of custom instrumentation in Python, including registering the agent, instrumenting non-web transactions, sending log data, defining custom events, and displaying metrics on a dashboard using New Relic's query builder. By following these steps, readers can create their own custom solution for monitoring and observing an application, such as a game or a business application. The post concludes by emphasizing that learning about observability can be fun and encourages readers to take the next step of creating a free account with New Relic.

This blog post explores the concept of observability and how it can be made engaging by integrating it with a video game, specifically using the 1980s game Dangerous Dave as an example. The post outlines how New Relic, a monitoring tool, can be configured to track and display telemetry data from the game, effectively transforming an old-school game into a learning tool for observability. It details the process of setting up New Relic to monitor the game, using Python for custom instrumentation, and showcases how various metrics, logs, and custom events can be captured and visualized on dashboards. The aim is to demystify observability by providing a fun, hands-on experience, encouraging users to apply these techniques to monitor real-world applications. Authors Rachel Foster and Leon Adato guide readers through using New Relic's features like custom dashboards and events, emphasizing the potential to enhance understanding of application performance monitoring in a playful yet informative manner.

New Relic's Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST) is now available, aiming to improve application security testing practices by providing real-time visibility and context into security findings, unmatched detection accuracy with near zero false positives, and proof of exploit. This feature goes beyond current approaches, enabling DevOps teams to focus on high-priority security risks and confidently ship code faster. IAST is fully integrated with New Relic Vulnerability Management, allowing continuous finding, fixing, and verifying high-risk vulnerabilities across the software development lifecycle. It provides 360 visibility, near-zero false positives, proof of exploit, guided remediation, and comprehensive dashboards to help developers identify vulnerabilities, take immediate action, and improve security posture. With IAST, developers can save time by testing vulnerabilities and validating whether they are real with proof of exploit, remediating security issues faster, and avoiding critical mistakes that could lead to potential security incidents.

New Relic introduces its Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST) as part of its all-in-one observability platform, addressing the prevalent issue of vulnerabilities in applications. The IAST solution offers real-time visibility, context into security findings, and near-zero false positives by using a patented deterministic technique that simulates real-world attacks to validate vulnerabilities, thus enabling developers to prioritize security risks and confidently ship code faster. Fully integrated with New Relic Security RX, it provides comprehensive dashboards and step-by-step guidance for remediation, ensuring developers can identify and fix high-risk vulnerabilities across the software development lifecycle. The platform's capabilities include risk-prioritized insights, proof of exploit, and seamless integration with tools like Jira, facilitating enhanced security posture and trends analysis against compliance standards such as OWASP Top 10. New Relic IAST is available in North American and EMEA regions, empowering developers with automated security measures and continuous feedback to improve code security without hindering the development process.

The author discusses the challenges of implementing "shift left" security practices in software development, where developers are expected to identify and fix security issues early in the development process. The problem is that many developers lack built-in tools or experience to identify security threats as they're being coded, leading to impossible workloads or unachievable results. To address this issue, the author advocates for integrating security tools into monitoring and observability systems, such as New Relic Vulnerability Management and CodeStream, which provide real-time insights and alerts to developers. These tools enable developers to identify vulnerabilities in their codebase, understand how they impact performance and security, and make informed decisions about how to fix them, all within the developer's normal workflow. By using these tools, developers can effectively "shift left" security responsibilities and improve the overall quality of their code.

Developers face the challenge of integrating security into their workflow without being overwhelmed by additional responsibilities, as the "shift left" approach suggests transferring the responsibility for identifying security issues to them. This integration is feasible through tools like New Relic and CodeStream, which allow security vulnerabilities to be detected and fixed as part of the regular coding process, rather than as interruptions. By incorporating these tools into existing monitoring and observability systems, developers can address security issues alongside other code quality concerns, thereby streamlining the development process and ensuring that security becomes a natural part of it. New Relic provides a platform that goes beyond traditional monitoring by offering capabilities like Security RX, which helps identify vulnerabilities in both static code and production environments, all within the developer's integrated development environment (IDE). This approach not only reduces the risk of overlooking security issues but also ensures that developers can make informed decisions about necessary code upgrades and fixes without significant disruption to their workflow.

You can customize which features of the New Relic browser agent you ship to your customers by using an npm package that allows you to import and instantiate the agent in your client-side application, pick specific features to deploy, and include the agent in the same JavaScript build process. This approach eliminates the need to manage a forked repository, reduces the total cost of ownership, and provides easy customization options for shipping a subset of included features, supporting browsers not natively supported by the browser agent, controlling version changes, injecting different configurations into HTML for multiple environments or customers, and more. To get started, create a new browser app in New Relic, copy configuration values from the application settings page, install the npm package, modify your browser application's entry point source file to instantiate the agent, customize instrumentation by passing an array of features to be included, and leverage JavaScript toolchain support for integrating with client-side build tools.

The blog post discusses the benefits and process of using the New Relic browser agent npm package to customize browser monitoring features without the complexities of maintaining a forked repository. It explains how developers can import the package into their client-side applications, selectively deploy features, and incorporate the agent into existing JavaScript build processes. The post provides detailed instructions on setting up a browser application in New Relic, obtaining necessary configuration values, and modifying the application entry point to instantiate the agent. Additionally, it highlights the flexibility offered by the npm package for customizing instrumentation, supporting older or unique browsers, and controlling browser agent versions. The post encourages exploring further resources, joining discussions in the New Relic community, and suggests using build tools like webpack for additional customization. The author, Patrick Housley, shares his expertise in real user monitoring and emphasizes that solutions are specific to individual environments.

Flutter is a popular cross-platform mobile application development framework that allows developers to create robust and efficient solutions. To get the most out of Flutter, it's essential to implement a thorough application monitoring system, which can help identify performance bottlenecks, track and debug errors in real-time, optimize user experience, utilize distributed tracing, and analyze event trails. New Relic provides an SDK for Flutter application instrumentation, allowing developers to monitor their app's performance data, including CPU/memory usage, network requests, and rendering performance. By using New Relic's mobile monitoring features, developers can gain valuable insights to improve their app's performance and user experience, ultimately delivering a competitive edge in the market.

In the digital age, mobile applications have become essential, with Flutter emerging as a popular choice for cross-platform development due to its robust capabilities. This blog emphasizes the importance of monitoring Flutter applications using New Relic to ensure optimal performance and user satisfaction. The process involves instrumenting the app with New Relic's Flutter agent to collect and analyze data on performance bottlenecks, real-time error tracking, user experience optimization, distributed tracing, and event trails. These insights help developers address issues quickly, enhancing app stability and user experience. The blog also highlights the authors' expertise, providing guidance on configuring mobile monitoring settings and leveraging New Relic's pre-built dashboards for comprehensive analytics.

To ensure logs are correctly forwarded to New Relic, it's essential to establish network connectivity between your environment and New Relic domains, verify that you have selected a supported log forwarder, and send troubleshooting logs. This involves checking for proper permissions, verifying infrastructure agent connectivity, accessing designated log files and services, implementing appropriate log parsing, and avoiding issues with invalid JSON format or "stringified" JSON content. By following these five tips, you can gain valuable insights into your application behavior and quickly identify potential issues, allowing you to troubleshoot and verify your log forwarding configurations effectively.

In a detailed guide, the blog emphasizes the importance of effective log management using New Relic to monitor and troubleshoot complex systems by ensuring logs are correctly forwarded. It outlines five essential tips for successful log forwarding, starting with confirming network access to New Relic domains, using supported log forwarders, sending troubleshooting logs, accessing designated log files with appropriate permissions, and implementing correct log parsing. The guide provides practical solutions such as using JSON for structured log data and consulting technical communities for parsing issues. Additionally, it highlights troubleshooting steps for networking and permission issues and the significance of using New Relic's NrIntegrationError event for visibility into data ingestion challenges. Written by Steve Ng, the blog serves as a resource for developers to understand log forwarding basics and improve their system's observability and reliability, with a focus on New Relic's capabilities in the SaaS environment.

The mobile development industry is shifting towards hybrid and cross-platform applications that can be deployed for both iOS and Android operating systems simultaneously, offering benefits such as reusable code, shorter development timelines, and cost-effectiveness. Industry giants like Microsoft and Shopify are adopting hybrid platforms like React Native and Flutter to build their apps. Despite the trend, monitoring mobile apps remains crucial to identify and resolve issues quickly, with observability tools like New Relic providing insights into customer behavior and needs. New Relic offers guided quickstart installations for popular hybrid apps, making it easy to set up and monitor mobile applications, including those built with Flutter, React Native, or Cordova. By installing the New Relic agent and exploring the summary page of your app, you can gain real-time insights into performance, crashes, and user behavior, allowing you to improve your product and deliver a consistently positive digital experience to your customers.

The Kubernetes operator concept was introduced by CoreOS Linux in 2016 to simplify the management of complex Kubernetes applications by abstracting resources into custom configurations, or custom resources (CR). This allows for tasks like deploying, scaling, and upgrading without needing direct access to resources. The New Relic operator is a tool that simplifies the process of installing the integration, including multiple modules, to monitor and manage Kubernetes clusters, while also providing automation features such as redeploying secrets or pods if needed. To use the operator, one needs minikube, a New Relic account, and follows specific steps to install and configure the operator in their cluster, which then deploys the Kubernetes integration. The operator provides visibility into Kubernetes clusters and workloads, and can help ease the burden of monitoring and automating processes like scaling applications and upgrading versions.

Hybrid and cross-platform applications are gaining traction in the mobile development industry due to their ability to be deployed on both iOS and Android from a single codebase, which reduces development time and costs. Tools like Cordova, React Native, and Flutter have become prominent as performance concerns have diminished, and many leading companies, including Microsoft and Shopify, are adopting these technologies. Mobile monitoring remains essential for ensuring optimal app performance, and platforms like New Relic provide tools for tracking user behavior and app issues. The blog explains how to install the New Relic agent on hybrid apps, particularly those built with Flutter, and highlights the benefits of real-time monitoring and data analysis for improving user experience. It also provides guidance on setting up New Relic for maximum observability, offering free data ingestion and user accounts to support mobile monitoring.

Introduced by CoreOS Linux in 2016, the operator concept enhances Kubernetes by automating the management of complex applications through custom configurations, known as custom resources. Operators act as controllers within the Kubernetes control plane, continuously aligning the cluster's current state with the desired state defined by custom resource definitions. The New Relic Kubernetes operator simplifies deploying its integration, which includes modules like Pixie and Prometheus for monitoring and automation, and allows tasks like scaling, upgrading, and redeploying secrets or pods to be managed more efficiently. Users can access Kubernetes data and set up alerts through New Relic's features, and the integration can be installed with or without the operator. The blog post offers a detailed guide on setting up the New Relic Kubernetes operator, including prerequisites such as minikube, kubectl, and a New Relic account, and provides a script to configure and deploy the operator, showcasing how it enhances visibility and ease of management in Kubernetes environments.

Engineers face numerous challenges in managing and troubleshooting software issues, including maintaining distributed systems and dependencies, ensuring good user experience, and moving beyond simple software performance. New Relic is used to monitor and improve application performance monitoring (APM), enabling customers to manage all CloudWatch metrics and client-side telemetry data in one dashboard, thereby improving reliability and reducing mean time to resolve incidents by over 80%. The tool also provides actionable insights on issues before they impact users, allowing companies like DAZN and William Hill to quickly identify misconfigurations and solve problems. Additionally, New Relic improves workflows and user experience by powering real-time alert intelligence, lowering deployment times, and freeing up resources previously spent on monitoring and troubleshooting. By rightsizing costs, companies can also take more risks and innovate faster with a live product. Overall, New Relic helps companies overcome application challenges and improve their overall performance.

New Relic is highlighted as a crucial tool for addressing application performance monitoring (APM) challenges, particularly in environments with complex, distributed systems and numerous dependencies. Companies like DAZN, William Hill, and IGS have utilized New Relic to streamline their monitoring processes, consolidating multiple tools into a single dashboard for easier data correlation and incident management. This integration has led to significant improvements in mean time to resolve (MTTR) and overall system reliability, with DAZN and William Hill experiencing over 80% better MTTR and zero downtime, respectively. Moreover, New Relic's ability to provide actionable insights and predictive analytics allows companies to focus on delivering customer value rather than merely maintaining monitoring platforms. The tool's ease of use and cost-effectiveness are underscored by IGS, which cut its monthly expenses on logging and monitoring by more than half, allowing for greater innovation and risk-taking in product development.

New Relic has been recognized by Gartner as a Leader in the 2023 Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring and Observability for the 11th consecutive time, citing its ability to execute and completeness of vision. The company aims to make observability ubiquitous by providing a consumption model that helps customers save money while still realizing value, and has invested in a perpetual free tier and consumption-based pricing model. New Relic also supports open standards such as OpenTelemetry, facilitating insights from data across multiple platforms and vendor neutrality. Additionally, the platform combines over 30 capabilities to enable engineers to understand dependencies across their stack and provide rich insights for every engineer, while offering business observability solutions built specifically for key business performance indicators. The company is committed to innovating to meet the ever-changing needs of its community and continues to research new opportunities to bring more value to its customers through deeper insights and disruptive pricing. New Relic is also embracing Generative AI by enabling customers to monitor their OpenAI GPT application usage and releasing a Generative AI assistant for observability, which will allow engineers to unlock deep insights from mountains of telemetry data using natural language with an approachable chat interface.

New Relic has been recognized as a Leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring and Observability, marking its eleventh consecutive year in this position. The company's transformation over the past three years has focused on enhancing data accessibility and producing actionable insights, which has led to the development of a streamlined data platform and a unique consumption model. New Relic aims to make observability ubiquitous by offering a perpetual free tier and a consumption-based pricing model, while supporting open standards like OpenTelemetry to ensure vendor neutrality and facilitate community collaboration. By integrating security signals and offering a comprehensive observability experience, New Relic provides tools that help engineers understand dependencies, improve service quality, and achieve faster time to value. The company is also embracing Generative AI to enable users to derive insights from telemetry data through a conversational interface, further enhancing its commitment to innovation and customer engagement.