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Need proof to set up observability, here are 33 stats to show why!

· 7 min read
Ankit Anand

Observability is the new buzzword. Or is it already a necessity for your software development? There is a lot of debate around observability and all its aspects. How do you define observability? How does it differ from monitoring? Does it replace or complement your monitoring practices?

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We are not here to get into that debate. Keeping the jargon aside, let's look at what stats say about observability. Is it making a difference for its adopters?

Hybrid multi-cloud systems have become the norm. It is one of the driving forces behind the need for observability. We have compiled 33 stats that show observability is the answer to cloud-native software development.

Let's start by looking at how the cloud ecosystem is shaping up.

Cloud adoption will increase, along with its complexity​

  1. The global cloud computing market size is expected to reach $1,251.09 billion by 2028, registering a CAGR of 19.1% over the forecast period, 2021-2028. (Researchandmarkets)

  2. 92% of enterprises have multi-cloud strategy; 82 percent have hybrid cloud strategy. (Flexera)

  3. 96% of software leaders have adopted a cloud-native approach to software development. (New Relic)

  4. 30% of organizations are using 3 or more clouds today. (IBM)

  5. 83% of IT execs had cloud adoption as a key priority in 2021. (Security Compass)

  6. 58% of leaders believe the complexity of managing hybrid/multi-cloud environments is their leading challenge. (IBM)

  7. 74% of CIOs believe increased complexity could make it extremely difficult to manage performance. (Dynatrace)

  8. 76% of CIOs say that they don't have complete visibility into application performance in cloud-native architectures. (Dynatrace)

  9. 33% of the IT team's time is spent tackling digital performance problems. (Dynatrace)

Impact of cloud complexity​

The advantages that the cloud brings come at the cost of increased application complexity.

  1. 37 is the average number of technology systems that a single web or mobile transaction crosses. (Dynatrace)

  2. 6 is the average number of outages experienced by businesses in the last 12 months where user experience, revenue, or operations were impacted. (Dynatrace)

  3. 91% of surveyed data center facility managers have experienced at least one disruptive incident during the last 12 months, including downtime related to an outage(54%) or unplanned downtime (34%). (Honeywell)

  4. 95% of applications in enterprise organizations are not monitored due to siloed tools and burdensome manual effort. (Dynatrace)

  5. 84% of surveyed engineers report using hundreds or even thousands of compute instances across a single organization, with a large number of containers and microservices in use. (Tanzu VMware)

  6. 70% of CIOs say monitoring containerized microservices in real-time is almost impossible. (Dynatrace)

  7. Cloud-native apps on average extend across 2.25 public cloud environments. The most common observability tools are those provided by the public cloud providers which can only monitor their own cloud services. (Splunk)

  8. For 90% of surveyed engineers, highly distributed apps create monitoring challenges an order of magnitude greater than what traditional monitoring tools can handle. (Tanzu VMware)

  9. 57% of respondents found lack of context a top challenge with their existing monitoring tools. (Observe)

Leaders believe observability is the key to unlocking cloud complexity​

What you need is visibility into your hybrid cloud infra and rich context for every user requests. A robust observability stack can get engineering teams the context to resolve issues faster and earlier.

  1. 94% of software leaders say observability is key to developing software. (New Relic)

  2. 99% of leaders say their culture and observability technology allow developers to make quick decisions, without fear of repercussions. (New Relic)

  3. 78% of software leaders learn about service interruptions through observability solutions versus just 12% for laggards. (New Relic)

  4. Organizations identified as observability leaders are 6 times more likely to have accelerated root cause identification after adopting observability. (Splunk)

  5. More mature observability teams are 3x more likely to deliver higher customer satisfaction. (Honeycomb)

  6. 92% of surveyed engineers believe observability tools enable more effective decision-making. (Tanzu VMware)

  7. 86% of respondents say they will be prioritizing observability within the next year. (Observe)

  8. 70% of observability leaders believe they have excellent visibility into their org's security posture versus only 31% of beginners. (Splunk)

  9. 45% of observability leaders report launching eight or more new products/revenue streams in the last year compared with 15% of beginners. (Splunk)

Challenges in setting up observability​

But there are also challenges to setting up observability.

  1. 86% of respondents cite difficulties related to tech, including inadequate legacy tools, lack of platform options, concerns about open-source tools, and tool fragmentation as a challenge to observability adoption. (Splunk)

  2. 87% of respondents say it’s important that observability solutions work regardless of the architecture. OpenTelemetry, for example, is a vendor-agnostic instrumentation library that is becoming a world-standard for application instrumentation. (Splunk)

  3. 38% cite lack of resources, 29% cite lack of skills, 27% cite lack of instrumentation as challenge to maximize the value of their observability practices. (New Relic)

  4. Monitoring is fragmented. To gain end-to-end observability, 13% of respondents use more than 10 tools, 18% use 6-10 tools, and 31% use 2-5 tools. (New Relic)

But orgs want to set up mature observability practices sooner than later​

The journey to gain end-to-end observability might seem daunting. But the key is to start now.

  1. 81% of C-suite executives expect to increase their observability budget next year, with 20% expecting budgets to increase significantly. (New Relic)

  2. 74% of respondents note there is room to grow their observability practices, with only 26% claiming a mature observability practice. (New Relic)

The verdict is in! And it says you need to start your observability journey or make it more mature sooner for modern-day software development.

So when are you starting your observability journey?

You can check out SigNoz - our open-source full-stack observability platform to get started. It is an all-in-one platform to address your observability needs.