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8 Takeaways on the State of Observability for Energy and Utilities

Peter Pezaris
New Relic

In June, New Relic published the State of Observability for Energy and Utilities Report to share insights, analysis, and data on the impact of full-stack observability software in energy and utilities organizations' service capabilities.

  

Source: National Grid

Here are eight key takeaways from the report:

1. Outages Cost Energy and Utilities Companies More than Any Other Industry

The report found that high-impact-outages affect energy and utilities more than any other industry, with 40% experiencing outages at least once per week compared to 32% across all other industries surveyed. Consequently, the median annual downtime for energy and utility organizations was 37 hours, with 61% of respondents reporting that their mean time to resolve (MTTR) is at least 30 minutes to resolve outages. Each second during an outage comes with a price tag. More than half of energy and utilities organizations (52%) shared that critical business app outages cost at least $500,000 per hour, and 34% indicated that outages cost at least $1 million per hour.

2. Observability Increases Productivity

Since adopting observability solutions, energy and utilities companies have experienced substantial productivity improvements. Of those surveyed, 78% said their MTTR has somewhat improved. Further, organizations with full-stack observability noted even more significant MTTR progress, with 87% reporting improvements.

3. Increased Focus on Security, Governance, Risk, and Compliance is Driving Observability Adoption

For energy and utility organizations, the top technology trend driving the need for observability was an increased focus on security, governance, risk, and compliance (44%), followed by the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies (36%) and customer experience management (36%).

4. Observability Tooling Deployment is on the Rise

Organizations are prioritizing investment in observability tooling, which includes security monitoring (68%), network monitoring (66%), and infrastructure monitoring (60%). Notably, energy and utility organizations reported high levels of deployment for AIOps (AI for IT operations) capabilities, including anomaly detection, indecent intelligence, and root cause analysis (55%). In fact, by mid-2026, 89% of respondents plan to have deployed AIOps.

5. Energy and Utilities Companies are More Likely to Use Multiple Monitoring Tools

Energy and utilities organizations showed a higher tendency than average to utilize multiple monitoring tools across the 17 observability capabilities included in the study. In fact, three-fourths (75%) of respondents used four or more tools for observability, and 24% used eight or more tools. However, over the next year, 36% indicated that their organization is likely to consolidate tools.

6. Organizations are Maximizing the Value of Observability Spend

Out of all industries surveyed, energy and utilities organizations indicated the highest annual observability spend, with more than two-thirds (68%) spending at least $500,000 and 46% spending at least $1 million per year on observability tooling. In turn, organizations are planning to maximize the return on investment (ROI) on observability spending in the next year by training staff on how best to use their observability tools (48%), optimizing their engineering team size (42%), and consolidating tools (36%). Energy and utility companies stated that their organizations receive a significantly higher total annual value from observability than average, with 76% reporting receiving more than $500,000 from its observability investment per year, 66% stating $1 million or more, and 41% attaining $5 million or more per year in total value. The numbers reported around annual spending and annual value received reflect nearly a 3x median ROI, or 192%.

7. Observability Increases Business Value

Energy and utilities companies reported that observability improves their lives in several ways. Half of IT decision-makers (ITDMs) expressed that observability helps establish a technology strategy, and 46% said it enables data visualization from a single dashboard. Practitioners indicated that observability increases productivity so they can detect and resolve issues faster (43%) and allows less guesswork when managing complicated and distributed tech stacks (35%). Respondents also noted benefits enabled by observability, including increased operational efficiency (39%), improved system uptime and reliability (35%), security vulnerability management (35%), and improved real-user experience (29%). Ultimately, organizations concluded that observability provides numerous positive business outcomes, including improving collaboration across teams to make decisions related to the software stack (42%), creating revenue-generating use cases (35%), and quantifying the business impact of events and incidents with telemetry data (33%).

8. The Future is Bright for Observability Tooling Deployment

Energy and utilities companies are enthusiastic about their observability deployment plans over the next one to three years. By mid-2026, 99% of respondents expect to have deployed several monitoring tools, including security monitoring, database monitoring, and network monitoring, followed by 96% of organizations anticipating alerts and application performance monitoring. Methodology: New Relic's annual observability forecast offers insights into how observability influences organizations and their decision-makers. To gauge the current observability landscape, professionals from various industries and regions were surveyed. Among the 1,700 technology practitioners and decision-makers surveyed, 132 were associated with the energy and utilities sectors.

Peter Pezaris is Chief Design and Strategy Officer at New Relic

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8 Takeaways on the State of Observability for Energy and Utilities

Peter Pezaris
New Relic

In June, New Relic published the State of Observability for Energy and Utilities Report to share insights, analysis, and data on the impact of full-stack observability software in energy and utilities organizations' service capabilities.

  

Source: National Grid

Here are eight key takeaways from the report:

1. Outages Cost Energy and Utilities Companies More than Any Other Industry

The report found that high-impact-outages affect energy and utilities more than any other industry, with 40% experiencing outages at least once per week compared to 32% across all other industries surveyed. Consequently, the median annual downtime for energy and utility organizations was 37 hours, with 61% of respondents reporting that their mean time to resolve (MTTR) is at least 30 minutes to resolve outages. Each second during an outage comes with a price tag. More than half of energy and utilities organizations (52%) shared that critical business app outages cost at least $500,000 per hour, and 34% indicated that outages cost at least $1 million per hour.

2. Observability Increases Productivity

Since adopting observability solutions, energy and utilities companies have experienced substantial productivity improvements. Of those surveyed, 78% said their MTTR has somewhat improved. Further, organizations with full-stack observability noted even more significant MTTR progress, with 87% reporting improvements.

3. Increased Focus on Security, Governance, Risk, and Compliance is Driving Observability Adoption

For energy and utility organizations, the top technology trend driving the need for observability was an increased focus on security, governance, risk, and compliance (44%), followed by the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies (36%) and customer experience management (36%).

4. Observability Tooling Deployment is on the Rise

Organizations are prioritizing investment in observability tooling, which includes security monitoring (68%), network monitoring (66%), and infrastructure monitoring (60%). Notably, energy and utility organizations reported high levels of deployment for AIOps (AI for IT operations) capabilities, including anomaly detection, indecent intelligence, and root cause analysis (55%). In fact, by mid-2026, 89% of respondents plan to have deployed AIOps.

5. Energy and Utilities Companies are More Likely to Use Multiple Monitoring Tools

Energy and utilities organizations showed a higher tendency than average to utilize multiple monitoring tools across the 17 observability capabilities included in the study. In fact, three-fourths (75%) of respondents used four or more tools for observability, and 24% used eight or more tools. However, over the next year, 36% indicated that their organization is likely to consolidate tools.

6. Organizations are Maximizing the Value of Observability Spend

Out of all industries surveyed, energy and utilities organizations indicated the highest annual observability spend, with more than two-thirds (68%) spending at least $500,000 and 46% spending at least $1 million per year on observability tooling. In turn, organizations are planning to maximize the return on investment (ROI) on observability spending in the next year by training staff on how best to use their observability tools (48%), optimizing their engineering team size (42%), and consolidating tools (36%). Energy and utility companies stated that their organizations receive a significantly higher total annual value from observability than average, with 76% reporting receiving more than $500,000 from its observability investment per year, 66% stating $1 million or more, and 41% attaining $5 million or more per year in total value. The numbers reported around annual spending and annual value received reflect nearly a 3x median ROI, or 192%.

7. Observability Increases Business Value

Energy and utilities companies reported that observability improves their lives in several ways. Half of IT decision-makers (ITDMs) expressed that observability helps establish a technology strategy, and 46% said it enables data visualization from a single dashboard. Practitioners indicated that observability increases productivity so they can detect and resolve issues faster (43%) and allows less guesswork when managing complicated and distributed tech stacks (35%). Respondents also noted benefits enabled by observability, including increased operational efficiency (39%), improved system uptime and reliability (35%), security vulnerability management (35%), and improved real-user experience (29%). Ultimately, organizations concluded that observability provides numerous positive business outcomes, including improving collaboration across teams to make decisions related to the software stack (42%), creating revenue-generating use cases (35%), and quantifying the business impact of events and incidents with telemetry data (33%).

8. The Future is Bright for Observability Tooling Deployment

Energy and utilities companies are enthusiastic about their observability deployment plans over the next one to three years. By mid-2026, 99% of respondents expect to have deployed several monitoring tools, including security monitoring, database monitoring, and network monitoring, followed by 96% of organizations anticipating alerts and application performance monitoring. Methodology: New Relic's annual observability forecast offers insights into how observability influences organizations and their decision-makers. To gauge the current observability landscape, professionals from various industries and regions were surveyed. Among the 1,700 technology practitioners and decision-makers surveyed, 132 were associated with the energy and utilities sectors.

Peter Pezaris is Chief Design and Strategy Officer at New Relic

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AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...