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90% Report Reducing Engineering Toil to Scale Tools Puts Focus on Business Bottom Line

Stela Udovicic
Era Software

Modern IT and security organizations often need to manage petabytes of observability (logs, metrics, traces) data in real time. The adoption of cloud, modern application architectures, Kubernetes, and edge is behind this massive growth in observability data volumes. And for some organizations, log data volumes are approaching the exabyte range.

IT teams face many obstacles when managing massive amounts of observability data, from siloed tooling to prolonged incident resolution and security risks such as accidental exposure of personal identifiable information (PII) or credential data.

To shed light on key trends, challenges, and approaches these teams take to resolve those challenges, in Feb 2022, we ran a survey of professionals across various industries and roles within IT organizations. We are excited to share today the results of our 2022 State of Observability and Log Management report.

Over 315 IT executives, cloud application architects, DevOps, and site reliability engineers (SRE) took the survey, sharing perspectives on the current state of exploding data and the struggle to gather valuable insights from the data. These professionals are responsible for managing the availability of cloud application and infrastructure environments with at least 10 TB of log data, and their companies have at least 100 employees.

The survey results show that IT teams have difficulty with the massive growth of log data and use various methods to manage data volumes and their associated costs. These include only storing the most critical data to prematurely deleting log data. However, according to 78% of the respondents, attempts to manage volumes of log data have had mixed or unwanted results, such as increased incident response times or inability to access needed data.

Two-thirds of IT organizations require engineering time to manage their log management tools; larger organizations with more log data are more likely to have dedicated teams for tool management.
For the purposes of our survey, we defined observability as an evolution of traditional monitoring towards understanding deep insights from analyzing high volumes of log, metrics, and trace data, collected from a wide variety of modern applications and infrastructure environments.

Compared to similar research conducted in 2021, organizations report that observability adoption jumped by 180%. In addition, as organizations mature in implementing observability, the value of critical insights from their log data is more significant.

Participants also shared details about their current streaming data use. Streaming data connects, filters, processes, and routes log data between different observability tools (commercial or open source) or offline cold storage (S3, Google Cloud Services, etc.) and is sometimes called observability pipeline or observability data management. According to responses, streaming observability pipelines adoption is a work in progress, with 20% of organizations reporting full deployments while 36% are evaluating or considering options.

Report findings also reveal:

■ Observability log data is critically important for organizations. 83% of respondents report that business stakeholders outside of IT use insights from log data. In addition, 68% say log data is necessary, but it's tough to work with.

■ IT continues to struggle to keep up with data volumes. 78% work to reduce volumes and costs, but they miss needed data or troubleshooting, and security analyses are impacted.
■ Existing log management tools present challenges and risks related to scalability, 97% of respondents report.

■ Log data is key to observability, and innovation is needed. 79% of respondents believe the overall cost of observability data management, including log management activities, will skyrocket in 2022 if current practices and tools don't evolve.

■ Problems are beyond storing data. For example, 96% report the need also to use the data to solve business problems.

■ 90% report reducing engineering toil to scale tools helps IT focus on more important work.

■ Volumes of log data in organizations are exploding, according to 96% of IT professionals surveyed.

Survey Demographics: Roles include a third IT executives, a third enterprise (cloud or application) architects, and a third in DevOps/SRE/Ops roles. Companies are in the following regions: AMER (77%), followed by EMEA (20%) and APAC (3%), and include a variety of industry verticals, including financial, technology, healthcare, service, retail, manufacturing, etc.

Stela Udovicic is SVP, Marketing, at Era Software

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90% Report Reducing Engineering Toil to Scale Tools Puts Focus on Business Bottom Line

Stela Udovicic
Era Software

Modern IT and security organizations often need to manage petabytes of observability (logs, metrics, traces) data in real time. The adoption of cloud, modern application architectures, Kubernetes, and edge is behind this massive growth in observability data volumes. And for some organizations, log data volumes are approaching the exabyte range.

IT teams face many obstacles when managing massive amounts of observability data, from siloed tooling to prolonged incident resolution and security risks such as accidental exposure of personal identifiable information (PII) or credential data.

To shed light on key trends, challenges, and approaches these teams take to resolve those challenges, in Feb 2022, we ran a survey of professionals across various industries and roles within IT organizations. We are excited to share today the results of our 2022 State of Observability and Log Management report.

Over 315 IT executives, cloud application architects, DevOps, and site reliability engineers (SRE) took the survey, sharing perspectives on the current state of exploding data and the struggle to gather valuable insights from the data. These professionals are responsible for managing the availability of cloud application and infrastructure environments with at least 10 TB of log data, and their companies have at least 100 employees.

The survey results show that IT teams have difficulty with the massive growth of log data and use various methods to manage data volumes and their associated costs. These include only storing the most critical data to prematurely deleting log data. However, according to 78% of the respondents, attempts to manage volumes of log data have had mixed or unwanted results, such as increased incident response times or inability to access needed data.

Two-thirds of IT organizations require engineering time to manage their log management tools; larger organizations with more log data are more likely to have dedicated teams for tool management.
For the purposes of our survey, we defined observability as an evolution of traditional monitoring towards understanding deep insights from analyzing high volumes of log, metrics, and trace data, collected from a wide variety of modern applications and infrastructure environments.

Compared to similar research conducted in 2021, organizations report that observability adoption jumped by 180%. In addition, as organizations mature in implementing observability, the value of critical insights from their log data is more significant.

Participants also shared details about their current streaming data use. Streaming data connects, filters, processes, and routes log data between different observability tools (commercial or open source) or offline cold storage (S3, Google Cloud Services, etc.) and is sometimes called observability pipeline or observability data management. According to responses, streaming observability pipelines adoption is a work in progress, with 20% of organizations reporting full deployments while 36% are evaluating or considering options.

Report findings also reveal:

■ Observability log data is critically important for organizations. 83% of respondents report that business stakeholders outside of IT use insights from log data. In addition, 68% say log data is necessary, but it's tough to work with.

■ IT continues to struggle to keep up with data volumes. 78% work to reduce volumes and costs, but they miss needed data or troubleshooting, and security analyses are impacted.
■ Existing log management tools present challenges and risks related to scalability, 97% of respondents report.

■ Log data is key to observability, and innovation is needed. 79% of respondents believe the overall cost of observability data management, including log management activities, will skyrocket in 2022 if current practices and tools don't evolve.

■ Problems are beyond storing data. For example, 96% report the need also to use the data to solve business problems.

■ 90% report reducing engineering toil to scale tools helps IT focus on more important work.

■ Volumes of log data in organizations are exploding, according to 96% of IT professionals surveyed.

Survey Demographics: Roles include a third IT executives, a third enterprise (cloud or application) architects, and a third in DevOps/SRE/Ops roles. Companies are in the following regions: AMER (77%), followed by EMEA (20%) and APAC (3%), and include a variety of industry verticals, including financial, technology, healthcare, service, retail, manufacturing, etc.

Stela Udovicic is SVP, Marketing, at Era Software

Hot Topics

The Latest

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...