Remember the days when having a security monitoring tool was a luxury? Now they’re obsolete. But let’s reminisce on those days for a second.
Security monitoring solutions scanned for viruses when asked and alerted us to any vulnerabilities found in the system. These tools were good at reacting but were usually limited in expertise and/or what part of the infrastructure they covered.
To tell the full story, security monitoring is just one small example of a bigger issue.
A typical business has massive complexity in its infrastructure. Hundreds or even thousands of applications are in different clouds with multiple dependencies, and new innovations like generative AI are pushing the requirements of infrastructure performance, cost and resourcing to the brink. And these businesses know that they need to keep up and deliver seamless experiences to their customers, or risk losing business. It’s becoming that cut and dry. Simple monitoring solutions aren’t cutting it anymore.
What’s needed is observability. What’s needed is proactiveness. Observability solutions are powering the future’s hybrid cloud infrastructure and the main difference between monitoring and observability is proactiveness. It’s also a massive competitive advantage.
VP Product Management, Observability for IBM Automation.
Full stack vs siloed
How can organizations know how everything is performing, everywhere, all at once?
Monitoring only tells teams when something is wrong. Observability can proactively tell teams what’s happening, why it’s happening and fix it automatically before it becomes a bigger issue.
It’s this proactivity in observability that’s causing the obsoletion of traditional monitoring solutions.
And perhaps the most exciting aspect is that observability can also spot anomalies in traditional or typical patterns and trends in data and can then suggest changes or action plans to get ahead of a potential issue.
Omdia lays out their maturity model for IT operations on a scale from “ad-hoc” as step 1 (least mature) and “Customer-centric, operationally oriented” as step 6 (most mature).
Noting that Omdia says the top IT initiative for 2025 is automating operational processes, we can see how observability becomes a factor in how organizations can progress through the maturity model.
In fact, generative-AI powered solutions that observe the full tech stack can help alleviate potential IT issues at all times, especially during busy seasons or peak times.
OTel standardization
The IT landscape is changing and so are the standards by which these technologies operate.
OpenTelemetry (OTel) has solidified itself as the backbone of modern observability as an open-source data collection by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation that eliminates the need for vendor-specific agents deployed in the customers’ infrastructure.
As of last quarter, OTel is gaining momentum. IDC shares in its latest report that 37.3 percent of companies are already using the standard.
A quick nod to OTel is important in the larger observability conversation.
OTel is doing two main things for the observability industry. It’s removing vendor lock-in from the data collection and it forces companies to deliver more value in what they do with the data.
While Otel is just a data source, it’s more what the vendor does with the data that matters. Pairing Otel with an AI-powered incident detection and remediation solution can help create more value quickly. With hybrid cloud and AI pushing pace, OTel observability matches the pace by generating and streamlining the data quicker than ever before.
Because of this, OTel is pushing the observability market forward to become more dynamic.
Meeting customer and business demands
IT departments should no longer be seen as cost centers internally. In fact, I’m seeing that IT teams can drastically focus more on innovation and growth with the right tools, especially with generative AI moving up the value curve.
The shift we’re seeing is that business units are making their technology selections and investments based on their needs. If a solution can work seamlessly across the business functions, it’s more likely to be selected. If it has integrations to other applications that employees use regularly, shared processes and outcome-based targets, the solution is more likely to be chosen.
Companies that didn’t have any observability tools prior are now expecting to buy this year, with IDC stating that market spending will double in 2025. And 80 percent of those that have multiple solutions are looking to consolidate into one or two that benefit the company the most.
Unlocking more potential and visibility
The true potential of observability is seen through a deep understanding of the relationship between all the infrastructure components – systems, workloads, networks and infrastructure. We also need tools that help businesses deflect or avoid issues all together, which observability does in real-time by pinpointing and fixing performance bottlenecks, resource anomalies and operational issues.
Monitoring solutions can be mature in their lanes but are incredibly siloed across the tech stack. Maturity matters, but so does access, proactivity and integration with the new IT landscape. Observability solutions are quickly marking the end of the road for monitoring solutions.
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