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Open Source Is Dominating Observability

Open source dominance continues in observability, according to the Observability Survey from Grafana Labs.

A remarkable 75% of respondents are now using open source licensing for observability, with 70% reporting that their organizations use both Prometheus and OpenTelemetry in some capacity. Half of all organizations increased their investments in both technologies for the second year in a row.

The 2025 Observability Survey reveals that OpenTelemetry has continued its trajectory toward mainstream status with half of all organizations increasing their investments in the open source project for the second year in a row.

More than two-thirds of organizations (67%) use Prometheus in production in some capacity and while OpenTelemetry has less production usage (41%), it appears to have more momentum for future growth, with more than a third (38%) of respondents investigating it and only 6% reporting they have no plans to use OpenTelemetry at all. The survey also found that vendor neutrality and flexibility remain the most cited requirements for compatible observability solutions, directly aligning with OpenTelemetry's core value proposition.

"Our survey data confirms what we're seeing in the field — organizations aren't choosing between observability technologies, they're embracing multiple approaches to solve real-world problems," said Ted Young, developer programs director at Grafana Labs, cofounder of OpenTelemetry, and member of the OpenTelemetry Governance Committee. "This includes the growing adoption of both OpenTelemetry and Prometheus, two tools that work great together."

Other report findings include:

C-Suite Sees Importance of Observability

Roughly three-quarters of all companies say observability is business-critical at either the CTO, VP, or director level, with CTO being the most common response (33%). Organizations whose C-suite sees observability as business-critical are more likely to adopt more advanced tools and practices such as traces, profiles, SLOs, OpenTelemetry, and unified application and infrastructure observability.

Desire for AI to Tame Complexity Rises

The number one observability concern for respondents is complexity, while alert fatigue is cited as the biggest obstacle to faster incident response, so it's no wonder training-based alerts and faster root cause analysis topped respondents' AI/ML wishlist for observability.

Cost Management Remains Important, But Not Critical

Three-quarters of companies say cost is an important criteria when selecting observability technologies, though less than a third say they're concerned about observability costing too much — meaning organizations are more focused on getting value from their tools and techniques than just selecting the cheapest option.

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Open Source Is Dominating Observability

Open source dominance continues in observability, according to the Observability Survey from Grafana Labs.

A remarkable 75% of respondents are now using open source licensing for observability, with 70% reporting that their organizations use both Prometheus and OpenTelemetry in some capacity. Half of all organizations increased their investments in both technologies for the second year in a row.

The 2025 Observability Survey reveals that OpenTelemetry has continued its trajectory toward mainstream status with half of all organizations increasing their investments in the open source project for the second year in a row.

More than two-thirds of organizations (67%) use Prometheus in production in some capacity and while OpenTelemetry has less production usage (41%), it appears to have more momentum for future growth, with more than a third (38%) of respondents investigating it and only 6% reporting they have no plans to use OpenTelemetry at all. The survey also found that vendor neutrality and flexibility remain the most cited requirements for compatible observability solutions, directly aligning with OpenTelemetry's core value proposition.

"Our survey data confirms what we're seeing in the field — organizations aren't choosing between observability technologies, they're embracing multiple approaches to solve real-world problems," said Ted Young, developer programs director at Grafana Labs, cofounder of OpenTelemetry, and member of the OpenTelemetry Governance Committee. "This includes the growing adoption of both OpenTelemetry and Prometheus, two tools that work great together."

Other report findings include:

C-Suite Sees Importance of Observability

Roughly three-quarters of all companies say observability is business-critical at either the CTO, VP, or director level, with CTO being the most common response (33%). Organizations whose C-suite sees observability as business-critical are more likely to adopt more advanced tools and practices such as traces, profiles, SLOs, OpenTelemetry, and unified application and infrastructure observability.

Desire for AI to Tame Complexity Rises

The number one observability concern for respondents is complexity, while alert fatigue is cited as the biggest obstacle to faster incident response, so it's no wonder training-based alerts and faster root cause analysis topped respondents' AI/ML wishlist for observability.

Cost Management Remains Important, But Not Critical

Three-quarters of companies say cost is an important criteria when selecting observability technologies, though less than a third say they're concerned about observability costing too much — meaning organizations are more focused on getting value from their tools and techniques than just selecting the cheapest option.

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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 ...