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The Top 5 Benefits of Observability

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

Complexity caused by increased adoption of cloud native technologies, economic challenges slowing down cloud migration efforts, and continued proliferation of both hybrid and on-premises environments are driving more IT organizations to consider application observability for monitoring and optimizing application performance, according to The Age of Application Observability, a new report from AppDynamics.

Jump to the Top 5 Benefits of Observability below

The report says a majority of IT professionals surveyed (97%) point to a critical need to move from a monitoring approach to observability solutions for managing multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

Report findings – the challenge

■ 78% believe increased volume of data is making manual monitoring impossible.

■ On average, 49% of their new innovation initiatives are being delivered with cloud-native technologies, and they expect this figure to climb to 58% over the next 5 years. That means that the majority of new digital transformation programs will be built on cloud-native technologies by 2028.

■ 83% state that adoption of cloud native technologies is leading to increased complexity within their IT department, with microservices and containers spawning a massive volume data from metrics, events, logs and traces.

■ 80% say an increase in silos between IT teams is a result of managing multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

■ 71% report that leaders within their organization do not fully understand that modern applications need modern approaches and tools to manage availability, performance and security.

Report findings – the solution

■ 85% confirm observability is now a strategic priority for their organization.

■ 88% say observability with business context will enable them to be more strategic and spend more time on innovation.

According to respondents, the following are the top five benefits of observability over traditional monitoring solutions:

1. Linking IT performance to business results.

2. Deeper insight and ability to detect and solve root causes of problems.

3. Improved logging, providing early warning of anomalies or unauthorized access.

4. Capability to work across dispersed IT infrastructure, multiple tools and applications.

5. Improved end user experience.

Methodology: The research includes findings from 1,140 IT professionals interviewed across 13 global markets, including the US.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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The Top 5 Benefits of Observability

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

Complexity caused by increased adoption of cloud native technologies, economic challenges slowing down cloud migration efforts, and continued proliferation of both hybrid and on-premises environments are driving more IT organizations to consider application observability for monitoring and optimizing application performance, according to The Age of Application Observability, a new report from AppDynamics.

Jump to the Top 5 Benefits of Observability below

The report says a majority of IT professionals surveyed (97%) point to a critical need to move from a monitoring approach to observability solutions for managing multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

Report findings – the challenge

■ 78% believe increased volume of data is making manual monitoring impossible.

■ On average, 49% of their new innovation initiatives are being delivered with cloud-native technologies, and they expect this figure to climb to 58% over the next 5 years. That means that the majority of new digital transformation programs will be built on cloud-native technologies by 2028.

■ 83% state that adoption of cloud native technologies is leading to increased complexity within their IT department, with microservices and containers spawning a massive volume data from metrics, events, logs and traces.

■ 80% say an increase in silos between IT teams is a result of managing multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

■ 71% report that leaders within their organization do not fully understand that modern applications need modern approaches and tools to manage availability, performance and security.

Report findings – the solution

■ 85% confirm observability is now a strategic priority for their organization.

■ 88% say observability with business context will enable them to be more strategic and spend more time on innovation.

According to respondents, the following are the top five benefits of observability over traditional monitoring solutions:

1. Linking IT performance to business results.

2. Deeper insight and ability to detect and solve root causes of problems.

3. Improved logging, providing early warning of anomalies or unauthorized access.

4. Capability to work across dispersed IT infrastructure, multiple tools and applications.

5. Improved end user experience.

Methodology: The research includes findings from 1,140 IT professionals interviewed across 13 global markets, including the US.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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If AI is the engine of a modern organization, then data engineering is the road system beneath it. You can build the most powerful engine in the world, but without paved roads, traffic signals, and bridges that can support its weight, it will stall. In many enterprises, the engine is ready. The roads are not ...

In the world of digital-first business, there is no tolerance for service outages. Businesses know that outages are the quickest way to lose money and customers. For smaller organizations, unplanned downtime could even force the business to close ... A new study from PagerDuty, The State of AI-First Operations, reveals that companies actively incorporating AI into operations now view operational resilience as a growth driver rather than a cost center. But how are they achieving it? ...

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 23, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses the NetOps labor shortage ... 

Technology management is evolving, and in turn, so is the scope of FinOps. The FinOps Foundation recently updated their mission statement from "advancing the people who manage the value of cloud" to "advancing the people who manage the value of technology." This seemingly small change solidifies a larger evolution: FinOps practitioners have organically expanded to be focused on more than just cloud cost optimization. Today, FinOps teams are largely — and quickly — expanding their job descriptions, evolving into a critical function for managing the full value of technology ...

Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

Nearly every conversation about AI eventually circles back to compute. GPUs dominate the headlines while cloud platforms compete for workloads and model benchmarks drive investment decisions. But underneath that noise, a quieter infrastructure challenge is taking shape. The real bottleneck in enterprise AI is not processing power, it is the ability to store, manage and retrieve the relentless volumes of data that AI systems generate, consume and multiply ...

The 2026 Observability Survey from Grafana Labs paints a vivid picture of an industry maturing fast, where AI is welcomed with careful conditions, SaaS economics are reshaping spending decisions, complexity remains a defining challenge, and open standards continue to underpin it all ...

The observability industry has an evolving relationship with AI. We're not skeptics, but it's clear that trust in AI must be earned ... In Grafana Labs' annual Observability Survey, 92% said they see real value in AI surfacing anomalies before they cause downtime. Another 91% endorsed AI for forecasting and root cause analysis. So while the demand is there, customers need it to be trustworthy, as the survey also found that the practitioners most enthusiastic about AI are also the most insistent on explainability ...