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SLOs Drive Operational Efficiencies, Visibility and Improved Business Benefits

As SLOs (service level objectives) grow in popularity their usage is becoming more mature. For example, 82% of respondents intend to increase their use of SLOs, and 96% have mapped SLOs directly to their business operations or already have a plan to, according to The State of Service Level Objectives 2023 from Nobl9, based on a survey of more than 300 IT professionals and executives conducted with Dimensional Research.


In addition, 95% of respondents say SLOs help them make better business decisions with 27% of companies stating that SLOs have saved them $500,000 or more.

SLOs are becoming an essential way to increase operational efficiency and improve business processes

"It was incredibly impressive to see the year over year growth in the market and the consistency of responses from our survey last year," said Marcin Kurc, co-founder and CEO, Nobl9. "The responses align with what we are seeing in the market. Enterprises across all industries are increasing their focus on system reliability to ensure customer experience, and doing this by finding new ways to leverage their new and legacy monitoring and observability tools. SLOs are becoming an essential way to increase operational efficiency and improve business processes."

Companies use observability tools to provide visibility and enable key functions such as security, operational efficiency, capacity planning, customer support, and increase development velocity. With fragmented tools — 72% use more than six observability tools — companies need to gain visibility not by consolidation that would hurt productivity, but by creating consistent definitions of reliability and expectations for various services.

"The survey responses are indicative of the broader trends we are seeing in the market around companies focusing on operational efficiency and business agility," said Stephen Elliott, Group VP, I&O, Cloud Operations and DevOps, IDC. "The pandemic drove more companies to the cloud, and with that, we have identified observability and monitoring to be key areas of focus. SLOs are one way for companies to manage their resources and get the most out of them."

Other key findings include:

■ 80% have an increased focus on system reliability due to the pandemic driving cloud adoption, remote workers and supply chain issues.

■ 94% are pursuing system reliability engineering, with most tasks being assigned to IT operations.

■ The ways companies are using monitoring and observability tools is increasing. More than 13 initiatives rely on monitoring and reliability with the most common being security, operations performance (uptime, performance, efficiency) and capacity planning.

■ Respondents identified 10 areas that require monitoring beyond networks, applications and databases, but most lack visibility, and the number is expected to grow.

■ 72% of companies use six or more monitoring and observability tools.

■ 76% prevented business interruptions using SLOs — but 9% have not implemented thresholds yet.

Methodology: All respondents had observability and monitoring responsibilities, and were IT professionals and executives at medium to large enterprise companies representing all seniority levels. Participants represented dozens of countries from five continents providing a global market perspective.

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SLOs Drive Operational Efficiencies, Visibility and Improved Business Benefits

As SLOs (service level objectives) grow in popularity their usage is becoming more mature. For example, 82% of respondents intend to increase their use of SLOs, and 96% have mapped SLOs directly to their business operations or already have a plan to, according to The State of Service Level Objectives 2023 from Nobl9, based on a survey of more than 300 IT professionals and executives conducted with Dimensional Research.


In addition, 95% of respondents say SLOs help them make better business decisions with 27% of companies stating that SLOs have saved them $500,000 or more.

SLOs are becoming an essential way to increase operational efficiency and improve business processes

"It was incredibly impressive to see the year over year growth in the market and the consistency of responses from our survey last year," said Marcin Kurc, co-founder and CEO, Nobl9. "The responses align with what we are seeing in the market. Enterprises across all industries are increasing their focus on system reliability to ensure customer experience, and doing this by finding new ways to leverage their new and legacy monitoring and observability tools. SLOs are becoming an essential way to increase operational efficiency and improve business processes."

Companies use observability tools to provide visibility and enable key functions such as security, operational efficiency, capacity planning, customer support, and increase development velocity. With fragmented tools — 72% use more than six observability tools — companies need to gain visibility not by consolidation that would hurt productivity, but by creating consistent definitions of reliability and expectations for various services.

"The survey responses are indicative of the broader trends we are seeing in the market around companies focusing on operational efficiency and business agility," said Stephen Elliott, Group VP, I&O, Cloud Operations and DevOps, IDC. "The pandemic drove more companies to the cloud, and with that, we have identified observability and monitoring to be key areas of focus. SLOs are one way for companies to manage their resources and get the most out of them."

Other key findings include:

■ 80% have an increased focus on system reliability due to the pandemic driving cloud adoption, remote workers and supply chain issues.

■ 94% are pursuing system reliability engineering, with most tasks being assigned to IT operations.

■ The ways companies are using monitoring and observability tools is increasing. More than 13 initiatives rely on monitoring and reliability with the most common being security, operations performance (uptime, performance, efficiency) and capacity planning.

■ Respondents identified 10 areas that require monitoring beyond networks, applications and databases, but most lack visibility, and the number is expected to grow.

■ 72% of companies use six or more monitoring and observability tools.

■ 76% prevented business interruptions using SLOs — but 9% have not implemented thresholds yet.

Methodology: All respondents had observability and monitoring responsibilities, and were IT professionals and executives at medium to large enterprise companies representing all seniority levels. Participants represented dozens of countries from five continents providing a global market perspective.

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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 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 ...

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