Cisco Systems Inc. is making another “acquihire” to strengthen its AppDynamics application monitoring platform, snapping up Germany-based startup replex GmbH for an undisclosed price today.

The acquisition is designed to help AppDynamics “grow its product and engineering talent,” according to Linda Tong, general manager of AppDynamics, who announced the news in a blog post. Ultimately, AppDynamics is looking to accelerate and expand its product capabilities to better observe enterprise-scale, cloud-native computing environments, she said.

Tong didn’t really reveal what plans AppDynamics has in store in terms of integration, but the replex team should provide some useful expertise. The company has built comprehensive governance and cost management tools for Kubernetes, which is open-source software that’s widely used to manage large deployments of cloud-native, container-based applications.

Observability is a fast-growing market segment in information technology that involves monitoring apps by pulling data from logs, metrics, traces and events, so that operators can identify the root cause of any issues and resolve them quickly. Tong said replex provides deep expertise in Kubernetes, real-time data extraction and analytics that AppDynamics can leverage to fulfill its ambition of delivering a full-stack observability platform.

Cisco has been pushing to become a key player in the observability space for a good while already, believing that it is naturally positioned to help companies ensure the consistent availability and performance of their application. In December 2020, Cisco bolstered AppDynamics’ then-nascent observability capabilities by acquiring Dashbase Inc., a provider of events and log analytics software.

Tong cites a recent report sponsored by Cisco, Agents of Transformation 2021, which shows that 96% of technologists recognize the negative consequences of not having genuine visibility into their technology stacks. Of those, 76% also said they can no longer afford to rely on “gut instinct” when it comes to finding the cause of any issues. Rather, what’s needed is accurate, real-time data that can help to the exact source of the problem.

“Together we are delivering a market-leading, enterprise-scale and cloud-native observability platform that will meet the growing demands of global technologists as they navigate increasing IT complexity and data noise,” Tong said. ”The addition of replex’s highly skilled team to AppDynamics will enable us to accelerate and broaden the platform’s capabilities and deliver on this strategy.”

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