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IT Managers in the UAE Say: Lack of Unified Observability Restricts Ability to Meet Business Requirements

More than Half of UAE Survey Respondents Believe that Unified Observability Would Enhance their Ability to Provide Flawless Digital Experiences
Mike Marks
Riverbed

A unified view of digital infrastructure is essential for IT teams that must improve the digital user experience while boosting overall organizational productivity, according to a survey of IT managers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), from Riverbed and market research firm IDC.

The UAE and other countries in the region have clear ambitions to significantly grow their digital economies in the next decade. However, the challenge of an increasingly strained IT talent pool is preventing them from providing the flawless digital experiences that underpin this important vision. The survey found that UAE IT teams need unified observability technology to give them the insight and visibility needed to boost customer experience and employee productivity as well as hasten digital transformation. This is especially important given that the survey revealed that 44% of UAE respondents agree that their organizations struggle to hire and retain highly skilled IT staff.

The survey further revealed that UAE IT teams are finding it difficult to effectively manage distributed digital infrastructures and deliver digital experiences that meet increasingly high customer expectations.

Other key findings include:

■ 93% of respondents currently use observability tools yet 55% of them believe those tools are too narrowly focused and fail to provide a complete and unified view of their organization’s operating conditions.

■ 53% said the lack of unified observability restricts the IT organization's ability to meet business requirements, and 52% said it makes their job and the job of their staff/peers more difficult.

■ 61% of respondents believe that their most well-trained IT staff spend too much time on tactical responsibilities, and 57% of respondents agree their organization needs to find ways to enable lower-skilled IT staff to find and fix issues.

■ 60% of organizations use six or more discrete tools for IT monitoring and measurement, and 59% said the tool limitations hold back productivity and collaboration.

■ 56% of organizations have difficulty analyzing correlations and 45% struggle to derive actionable insights.

As observability becomes the responsibility of C-level technology executives (CIOs, CTOs, CDOs, etc.), companies in the UAE are also investing more dollars in observability solutions. In the survey, 86% of UAE respondents said their observability budgets will rise in the next two years, and 41% said their budget will increase more than 25%.

UAE tech workers that must overcome increasingly complex IT environments and sprawling data as well as deliver more seamless and secure digital experiences to users everywhere are demanding new technologies that will help accelerate their performance and "do more with less" resources. In fact, many are gravitating to cloud-native, SaaS-delivered services that help them better address these challenges, such as resource constraints and data silos through AI and machine learning.

Methodology: IDC surveyed more than 1,400 IT professionals from across 10 countries on the current and future state of observability. The survey respondents came from seven industries (financial, manufacturing, healthcare, energy, technology, government, and professional services). Over 75% of respondents represented large enterprises (1000+ employees) and 70% held Director or above positions within their respective IT organizations. All had managerial responsibility for observability and/or IT performance management functions, use, staff, and budgets.

Mike Marks is VP of Product Marketing at Riverbed

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IT Managers in the UAE Say: Lack of Unified Observability Restricts Ability to Meet Business Requirements

More than Half of UAE Survey Respondents Believe that Unified Observability Would Enhance their Ability to Provide Flawless Digital Experiences
Mike Marks
Riverbed

A unified view of digital infrastructure is essential for IT teams that must improve the digital user experience while boosting overall organizational productivity, according to a survey of IT managers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), from Riverbed and market research firm IDC.

The UAE and other countries in the region have clear ambitions to significantly grow their digital economies in the next decade. However, the challenge of an increasingly strained IT talent pool is preventing them from providing the flawless digital experiences that underpin this important vision. The survey found that UAE IT teams need unified observability technology to give them the insight and visibility needed to boost customer experience and employee productivity as well as hasten digital transformation. This is especially important given that the survey revealed that 44% of UAE respondents agree that their organizations struggle to hire and retain highly skilled IT staff.

The survey further revealed that UAE IT teams are finding it difficult to effectively manage distributed digital infrastructures and deliver digital experiences that meet increasingly high customer expectations.

Other key findings include:

■ 93% of respondents currently use observability tools yet 55% of them believe those tools are too narrowly focused and fail to provide a complete and unified view of their organization’s operating conditions.

■ 53% said the lack of unified observability restricts the IT organization's ability to meet business requirements, and 52% said it makes their job and the job of their staff/peers more difficult.

■ 61% of respondents believe that their most well-trained IT staff spend too much time on tactical responsibilities, and 57% of respondents agree their organization needs to find ways to enable lower-skilled IT staff to find and fix issues.

■ 60% of organizations use six or more discrete tools for IT monitoring and measurement, and 59% said the tool limitations hold back productivity and collaboration.

■ 56% of organizations have difficulty analyzing correlations and 45% struggle to derive actionable insights.

As observability becomes the responsibility of C-level technology executives (CIOs, CTOs, CDOs, etc.), companies in the UAE are also investing more dollars in observability solutions. In the survey, 86% of UAE respondents said their observability budgets will rise in the next two years, and 41% said their budget will increase more than 25%.

UAE tech workers that must overcome increasingly complex IT environments and sprawling data as well as deliver more seamless and secure digital experiences to users everywhere are demanding new technologies that will help accelerate their performance and "do more with less" resources. In fact, many are gravitating to cloud-native, SaaS-delivered services that help them better address these challenges, such as resource constraints and data silos through AI and machine learning.

Methodology: IDC surveyed more than 1,400 IT professionals from across 10 countries on the current and future state of observability. The survey respondents came from seven industries (financial, manufacturing, healthcare, energy, technology, government, and professional services). Over 75% of respondents represented large enterprises (1000+ employees) and 70% held Director or above positions within their respective IT organizations. All had managerial responsibility for observability and/or IT performance management functions, use, staff, and budgets.

Mike Marks is VP of Product Marketing at Riverbed

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According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

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 ...

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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 ...

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