APM and Observability: Cutting Through the Confusion — Part 7

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

APM and Observability are often utilized by different teams within an organization, though there is considerable overlap, according to Arun Balachandran, Senior Product Marketing Manager, ManageEngine APM Solutions.

Start with: APM and Observability - Cutting Through the Confusion - Part 6

In Part 7, the experts examine the different roles in IT and how they use either APM and Observability, or both:

APPLICATION OWNERS: DEV AND ITOPS

APM tools, with their guided interfaces and focus on specific application metrics, are often used directly by application developers, operations teams, and sometimes even product managers to understand application health and user experience.
Juraci Paixão Kröhling
Software Engineer, OllyGarden

APM is owned primarily by the application owners and developers, who typically have some latitude over how to monitor their specific applications.
Paul Appleby
CEO, Virtana

APM tools are usually used by teams responsible for developing, deploying, and maintaining software applications. This typically entails software developers, SREs, and QA and performance testing teams.
Douglas James
VP, Solutions & Ecosystem, ScienceLogic

DEVELOPERS

APM tends to be the go-to for developers, application support, and QA professionals focused on application performance and behavior. 
Arun Balachandran
Senior Product Marketing Manager, ManageEngine APM Solutions

APM is a more focused tool for application developers, and while application developers also use observability, other roles also make use of observability. 
Chrystal Taylor
Tech Evangelist, SolarWinds

APM offers granular insights at the code level, such as transaction tracing and end-user monitoring, which are indispensable for developers tackling application-specific challenges. These capabilities are foundational for diagnosing and resolving issues within the application layer.
Gab Menachem
VP ITOM, ServiceNow

The Tech Radar 2025 notes how developers experimenting with observability feel more empowered because it gives them the insight and autonomy to debug and optimize systems independently, not just escalate tickets.
Brian Douglas
Head of Ecosystem, Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)

DEVOPS

Observability is more commonly in the hands of site reliability engineers, DevOps, and platform teams who oversee the overall health and stability of complex, distributed systems. As DevOps practices continue to mature and responsibilities shift further left, these roles are increasingly converging. Today, it's common for engineers across these functions to leverage both APM and observability tools to ensure seamless deployment and smooth operations.
Arun Balachandran
Senior Product Marketing Manager, ManageEngine APM Solutions

Historically, APM and observability have been used in different roles. APM was used more by operations/monitoring teams, while observability was used more by developers/DevOps. However, this division is eroding as DevOps practices take hold and operational complexity increases. The shift from segregated to unified operational responsibility mirrors the broader IT evolution.
Jeff Cobb
Global Head of Product & Design, Chronosphere

SITE RELIABILITY ENGINEERS AND PLATFORM ENGINEERS

Observability practices, requiring deeper interaction with raw data, query languages, and system-wide context, tend to be the domain of more specialized roles like Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) or dedicated observability platform teams who need to perform deeper, more exploratory investigations.
Juraci Paixão Kröhling
Software Engineer, OllyGarden

SREs and platform engineers harness observability for cross-system visibility. Observability's holistic view is a game-changer for managing modern, distributed systems ensuring everything runs smoothly and efficiently.
Varma Kunaparaju
SVP and GM for Cloud Platform and OpsRamp Software, HPE

Observability tools are designed to support SRE-based management objectives focused on error budgets as opposed to generating unneeded alerts. As an example, if a cluster is nearing capacity, should an alert be generated? For traditional IT Ops, this would be a typical alert. However, for SREs and developers already struggling with alert fatigue, there should not be an alert created as the Kubernetes pod should auto scale. The SRE and developer focus should be on what is occurring if this autoscaling is failing when the application error budget is consumed.
Harald Burose
Director, Product Management, Research & Development – Engineering, OpenText

ITOPS

APM is typically used by the business and infrastructure monitoring teams. However, the utilization of more user-friendly observability tools with OpenTelemetry allows the ITOps teams to use the same data with the correlated logs and metrics aligned to traces to triage issues and route appropriately (is it a code issue or a 3rd party latency?) and still allows developers and SREs to use existing toolsets where they have experience.
Harald Burose
Director, Product Management, Research & Development – Engineering, OpenText

CROSS-FUNCTIONAL

The roles in these spaces are fluid to begin with. I have yet to see two SREs in two different organizations with the same job description. Different organizations will have different operational models due to different team structures, team resourcing, tech stacks, etc.
Sven Delmas
VP of Research, Mezmo

Developers have gravitated towards APM, while operations and site reliability engineers (SREs) have focused on observability. However, as collaboration becomes more critical and systems grow increasingly interconnected, these roles are converging. Teams now require tools that foster a shared understanding and provide insights that transcend individual roles, enhancing collective efficacy. Observability's integration with GenAI further supports this convergence by providing a shared language and insights across roles.
Gab Menachem
VP ITOM, ServiceNow

A lot depends on your team's maturity, scale, personnel and organization. You might have a very large and clearly-delineated team, whereby the microservices team running a D-APM tool, is somewhat removed or walled-off from the database team that's running a database observability tool. Or the mobile client applications team might be far removed from the networking observability team. But in smaller organizations you might need to be a "jack-of-all-trades." Or at a larger organization you might be at that senior role and when those escalations occur, you need to be familiar with drilling down into any system across your organization, using whatever APM or observability tools your team has to troubleshoot, diagnose and resolve the most complex, urgent, bottom-line-impacting and pernicious of problems.
Peter Corless
Director, Product Marketing, StarTree

Platforms that unify telemetry data enable any team member to investigate issues without requiring specialized expertise in multiple tools.
Rakesh Gupta
Head of Product Management, Observe

Go to: APM and Observability: Cutting Through the Confusion — Part 8, exploring whether you need APM, Observability or both.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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APM and Observability: Cutting Through the Confusion — Part 7

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

APM and Observability are often utilized by different teams within an organization, though there is considerable overlap, according to Arun Balachandran, Senior Product Marketing Manager, ManageEngine APM Solutions.

Start with: APM and Observability - Cutting Through the Confusion - Part 6

In Part 7, the experts examine the different roles in IT and how they use either APM and Observability, or both:

APPLICATION OWNERS: DEV AND ITOPS

APM tools, with their guided interfaces and focus on specific application metrics, are often used directly by application developers, operations teams, and sometimes even product managers to understand application health and user experience.
Juraci Paixão Kröhling
Software Engineer, OllyGarden

APM is owned primarily by the application owners and developers, who typically have some latitude over how to monitor their specific applications.
Paul Appleby
CEO, Virtana

APM tools are usually used by teams responsible for developing, deploying, and maintaining software applications. This typically entails software developers, SREs, and QA and performance testing teams.
Douglas James
VP, Solutions & Ecosystem, ScienceLogic

DEVELOPERS

APM tends to be the go-to for developers, application support, and QA professionals focused on application performance and behavior. 
Arun Balachandran
Senior Product Marketing Manager, ManageEngine APM Solutions

APM is a more focused tool for application developers, and while application developers also use observability, other roles also make use of observability. 
Chrystal Taylor
Tech Evangelist, SolarWinds

APM offers granular insights at the code level, such as transaction tracing and end-user monitoring, which are indispensable for developers tackling application-specific challenges. These capabilities are foundational for diagnosing and resolving issues within the application layer.
Gab Menachem
VP ITOM, ServiceNow

The Tech Radar 2025 notes how developers experimenting with observability feel more empowered because it gives them the insight and autonomy to debug and optimize systems independently, not just escalate tickets.
Brian Douglas
Head of Ecosystem, Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)

DEVOPS

Observability is more commonly in the hands of site reliability engineers, DevOps, and platform teams who oversee the overall health and stability of complex, distributed systems. As DevOps practices continue to mature and responsibilities shift further left, these roles are increasingly converging. Today, it's common for engineers across these functions to leverage both APM and observability tools to ensure seamless deployment and smooth operations.
Arun Balachandran
Senior Product Marketing Manager, ManageEngine APM Solutions

Historically, APM and observability have been used in different roles. APM was used more by operations/monitoring teams, while observability was used more by developers/DevOps. However, this division is eroding as DevOps practices take hold and operational complexity increases. The shift from segregated to unified operational responsibility mirrors the broader IT evolution.
Jeff Cobb
Global Head of Product & Design, Chronosphere

SITE RELIABILITY ENGINEERS AND PLATFORM ENGINEERS

Observability practices, requiring deeper interaction with raw data, query languages, and system-wide context, tend to be the domain of more specialized roles like Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) or dedicated observability platform teams who need to perform deeper, more exploratory investigations.
Juraci Paixão Kröhling
Software Engineer, OllyGarden

SREs and platform engineers harness observability for cross-system visibility. Observability's holistic view is a game-changer for managing modern, distributed systems ensuring everything runs smoothly and efficiently.
Varma Kunaparaju
SVP and GM for Cloud Platform and OpsRamp Software, HPE

Observability tools are designed to support SRE-based management objectives focused on error budgets as opposed to generating unneeded alerts. As an example, if a cluster is nearing capacity, should an alert be generated? For traditional IT Ops, this would be a typical alert. However, for SREs and developers already struggling with alert fatigue, there should not be an alert created as the Kubernetes pod should auto scale. The SRE and developer focus should be on what is occurring if this autoscaling is failing when the application error budget is consumed.
Harald Burose
Director, Product Management, Research & Development – Engineering, OpenText

ITOPS

APM is typically used by the business and infrastructure monitoring teams. However, the utilization of more user-friendly observability tools with OpenTelemetry allows the ITOps teams to use the same data with the correlated logs and metrics aligned to traces to triage issues and route appropriately (is it a code issue or a 3rd party latency?) and still allows developers and SREs to use existing toolsets where they have experience.
Harald Burose
Director, Product Management, Research & Development – Engineering, OpenText

CROSS-FUNCTIONAL

The roles in these spaces are fluid to begin with. I have yet to see two SREs in two different organizations with the same job description. Different organizations will have different operational models due to different team structures, team resourcing, tech stacks, etc.
Sven Delmas
VP of Research, Mezmo

Developers have gravitated towards APM, while operations and site reliability engineers (SREs) have focused on observability. However, as collaboration becomes more critical and systems grow increasingly interconnected, these roles are converging. Teams now require tools that foster a shared understanding and provide insights that transcend individual roles, enhancing collective efficacy. Observability's integration with GenAI further supports this convergence by providing a shared language and insights across roles.
Gab Menachem
VP ITOM, ServiceNow

A lot depends on your team's maturity, scale, personnel and organization. You might have a very large and clearly-delineated team, whereby the microservices team running a D-APM tool, is somewhat removed or walled-off from the database team that's running a database observability tool. Or the mobile client applications team might be far removed from the networking observability team. But in smaller organizations you might need to be a "jack-of-all-trades." Or at a larger organization you might be at that senior role and when those escalations occur, you need to be familiar with drilling down into any system across your organization, using whatever APM or observability tools your team has to troubleshoot, diagnose and resolve the most complex, urgent, bottom-line-impacting and pernicious of problems.
Peter Corless
Director, Product Marketing, StarTree

Platforms that unify telemetry data enable any team member to investigate issues without requiring specialized expertise in multiple tools.
Rakesh Gupta
Head of Product Management, Observe

Go to: APM and Observability: Cutting Through the Confusion — Part 8, exploring whether you need APM, Observability or both.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

Related Links

Hot Topics

The Latest

Keys to Building a Partner Ecosystem That Scales

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

How AI Agents Are Reshaping DataOps for the Always-On Enterprise

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

AI Deepfakes: Rethinking Trust in the Workplace

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Nine in Ten Enterprises Plan Cloud Data Repatriation amid Rising Cloud Costs and Data Sovereignty Mandates

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Why ITOps Need Right-Sized AI, Not Bigger Models

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

The End of Reactive DevOps: AI-Driven Observability for Zero-Defect Digital Systems

For years, DevOps teams operated under a simple assumption: collect enough telemetry, and you can find and fix any problem. That assumption is breaking down. Modern enterprises now operate across microservices, hybrid cloud environments, APIs, Kubernetes, and highly automated delivery pipelines. Releases happen continuously, dependencies shift constantly, and failures spread faster than teams can diagnose them ...

5 Takeaways from the Observability Forecast for Media and Entertainment

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Why Moving Off the Cloud Is the Easy Part and What Comes Next Is Where Things Get Hard

Let me start with something I've seen play out more times than I can count. A team hits a wall with the cloud. Costs creep up, then spike. Performance starts to feel inconsistent. Someone in finance asks a simple question like "why did this double?" and nobody has a clean answer ... Maybe this isn't the right place for everything. That realization feels like a breakthrough, like you've identified the problem. In reality, you've just identified the starting line ...

MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Podcast - Episode 24: Network Observability Tool Sprawl

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 24, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network observability tool sprawl ... 

Capacity Isn't a Guess: Observability-Driven Sizing for On-Prem Databases

In cloud-native systems, scaling is often as simple as moving a slider. For on-premise databases, the stakes are different. Over-provisioning hardware is expensive. Under-provisioning leads to performance bottlenecks that are difficult to fix once the equipment is in the rack ...