First Abu Dhabi Bank

FAB initially onboarded 60 business applications onto AppDynamics, but strong results and positive feedback from employees saw that figure increase to 120 applications just one year after going live. Today, the company uses AppDynamics to monitor more than 180 applications, delivering value to teams across the organisation. Perform IT supports the local FAB team in their effort to standardize onboarding and enable application teams in the right usage of the tool.

"We saw instant results from AppDynamics, and the speed with which we continue to onboard new applications onto the solution is a testament to the value it delivers," says Navid Thakur, vice president of enterprise tools and automation at FAB. "It's also a testament to our employees and their commitment to continuous improvement of our services."

The impact of AppDynamics as part of the journey to full-stack observability has been widespread, enhancing the performance of FAB's business, IT operations, and development and testing teams. Importantly, the solution broke down silos between these functions, which now work together to detect, alert, and resolve performance issues in record time. 

"By managing application performance more proactively with Cisco AppDynamics as part of our effort toward full-stack observability, we're providing concrete value to the entire business. More than 180 applications now run with fewer incidents and improved availability, which means less effort for our teams and a better experience for customers," says Thakur.

Adopting a DevOps mindset

AppDynamics is also supporting FAB's effort to pioneer a new approach to IT among UAE banks. FAB is one of the first banks in the country to migrate from on-premises IT applications to software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud technologies, all while maintaining visibility across these services. Perform IT brought their expertise with AppDynamics and cloud-native applications to deliver the right support to FAB and its digital transformation journey.

In parallel, the bank is moving toward a DevOps mentality in its application management and development. Instead of pure project delivery, where applications go into production as soon as they're ready, FAB now encourages teams to take ownership of the apps they build and optimise new services that take the customer experience to the next level.

"Our goal is for every service team at FAB to have AppDynamics open all day, every day—not only to deal with performance issues and keep our business running smoothly, but also to dive deeper to better understand how our systems behave and uncover new ways to make our applications stronger than ever," says Lewis. "How can we reduce response times? How can we eliminate blips and service issues at peak demand periods? How can we make the experience better for customers? These are the questions that can transform the way we work and serve the market, and now we have a solution that can help us find the answers we need," she adds.

FAB also plans to shift its application development to cloud microservices in the long term, managed and deployed via Kubernetes. Visibility into application performance will be essential in the new environment—yet another reason the bank has adopted AppDynamics to help modernise its IT operations.

Going the extra mile with AppDynamics and Perform IT

Lack of visibility is often a challenge for application performance monitoring solutions. Using AppDynamics and the trusted system integration expertise of Perform IT, FAB has been successful at minimising the impact of a typical distributed business flow.

AppDynamics integrates with third-party tools to take data out of—or bring data into—the system, which is becoming business-as-usual as AppDynamics starts to take a central place within the bank's monitoring suite of tools. Having the ability to immediately react and address an integration opportunity proved beneficial for the DevOps mindset where sprints can be aggressive to meet delivery timelines.

Automating the deployment of agents is an important leg in the overall monitoring adoption strategy for the FAB team. Working closely with AppDynamics and Perform IT enables FAB to seek and implement automation opportunities that work in the environment.

Trailblazing a better experience for customers and employees alike

The first phase of FAB's undertaking, which aimed to reduce downtime and performance incidents across its application portfolio, has been a resounding success. Following a recent benefit realisation exercise, dozens of employees reported improved uptime and faster issue resolution due to their use of AppDynamics to monitor and manage application performance.

For instance, FAB saw:

• A 61 percent reduction in downtime for a business-critical service providing point-of-sale and integrated self-service banking
• An 87 percent reduction in downtime for internet and mobile banking
• An impressive 98 percent reduction in downtime for the multicurrency bank account service

The team responsible for FAB's instant credit decision engine also reported it can now respond to requests from business stakeholders and find the root cause of performance issues more quickly. Instead of 120 milliseconds, responses now take as little as 70 milliseconds—a 42 percent improvement.

Equally important to Thakur is the fact that teams gained new insights into FAB's performance at a granular level. Looking through the AppDynamics dashboards has made DevOps and support teams aware of anomalies that previous monitoring solutions never picked up and empowered them to proactively address them, preventing major incidents.

"We transformed the way we work, and it all started with the visibility we gained with AppDynamics," says Thakur. "We're totally in sync with our application performance, which has made us proactive and keeps our service lines one step ahead to detect and analyse faster and pinpoint at the probable, and in various scenarios, exact root cause."

Continued Thakur, "The partnership with Cisco AppDynamics as product vendor and Perform IT as a partner to implement and onboard services to the platform has been very valuable. To operate these advanced technologies, companies need the right skills to be in place, and we experienced that with Perform IT to be the right partner for accelerating our journey with AppDynamics product."

Building a proactive culture

In addition to optimising performance, FAB's focus today is on training employees to take full advantage of AppDynamics, create their own reports and dashboards, and uncover insights that will inspire them to go even further to perfect the customer experience.

Proactivity has become the new standard for the bank's IT teams, which now monitor their systems and application code with remarkable vigor. AppDynamics allows them to detect gaps and opportunities for improvement more easily than ever, inspiring a cultural shift to accompany FAB's technology transformation. Whether it's seeing and quickly resolving a five-second delay in the payment system or fixing a coding error, AppDynamics gives the teams the tools to address issues before they impact the business in major ways.

FAB's mobile banking application, for example, notified the team of a potential service degradation, allowing the team to quickly address the issue before customers were impacted. AppDynamics also detects anomalies and proactively notifies teams, enabling them to quickly identify root cause and fix potential issues within minutes.

"We're changing the way we manage the bank's performance with a commitment to improvement and empowerment for our teams," says Lewis. "With AppDynamics, we can incentivise our application owners and recognize them for what they truly are: trailblazers who keep our business connected to its customers."

Looking ahead to full-stack observability

FAB continues its quest for solutions that allow for optimising customer experiences even further. Most recently, the company added Cisco ThousandEyes to its technology stack for comprehensive digital experience monitoring.

"The combination of AppDynamics and ThousandEyes will give us deeper visibility across the full digital supply chain. As we continue on our path to full-stack observability, we'll be equipped to deliver stellar experiences for our customers," concludes Lewis.