Intelligent Observability Platform company New Relic has released its 2024 Observability Forecast, a comprehensive report on observability. Surveying 1,700+ technology professionals across 16 countries, the report highlights key growth areas, challenges, and external trends influencing observability investments.
This data reveals a median annual downtime from high-impact outages of 77 hours, with an hourly cost of up to $1.9 million. These findings demonstrate a strong correlation between full-stack observability and reduced downtime, fewer interruptions, and lower annual outage costs, reinforcing observability’s critical role in maximizing operational efficiencies and business performance.
According to the research, engineering teams spend 30% of their time to addressing interruptions—equivalent to 12 hours out of a standard 40-hour work week. Over the last two years, the leading causes of unplanned outages have included network failure (35%), third-party or cloud provider services failure (29%), and human error (28%).
This report highlights that observability practices can significantly reduce downtime. And key practices that have helped minimize downtime include root cause analysis (RCA) and post-incident reviews (37%), monitoring DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) metrics (34%), tracking the golden signals (33%), and managing Mean Time to Detect and Resolve (MTTx) outages (33%).AI and security are driving investment in observability.
AI and security drive the growing need for observability, with 41% of respondents citing both AI adoption and increased focus on security, governance, risk, and compliance as key trends. And security monitoring was the most deployed capability (58%), followed by AI monitoring (42%), machine learning (ML) model monitoring (29%), and AIOps (24%). Additionally, 39% plan to deploy AIOps within the next year, 36% expect to implement AI monitoring, and 34% anticipate adding ML model monitoring.
The organizations deploying these AI-related observability capabilities reported a higher annual total value from observability and a stronger return on investment (ROI).
The other key findings from the report include:
– 4 times ROI on observability investment – The median annual spend on observability was US$1.95 million, while the median annual value received was $8.15 million—a 4x ROI (295%), doubling year-over-year. Those who deployed at least five observability capabilities reported a higher value and ROI from their observability investment than those who deployed four or fewer.
– Shift to consolidated platforms – A 2-to-1 preference emerged for a single, consolidated platform over multiple-point solutions. The number of respondents using a single tool increased by 37% year over year, while the average number of tools decreased by 11%. In addition, 41% plan to consolidate tools within the following year.
– Open-source is utilized, but not – Over half of respondents (51%) used an open-source solution for at least one observability capability, but only 1% used open-source. Typical uses of open-source observability include AI monitoring (31%), synthetic monitoring (28%), distributed tracing (28%), and AIOps capabilities (26%).
– Business observability is on the rise – Correlating business outcomes with telemetry data (business observability) was a top priority for IT professionals, with 40% already deploying it and 47% planning to deploy it within the next three years. Those with business observability reported 25% less time addressing interruptions than those without it.
New Relic and ETR surveyed 1,700 technology professionals in 16 countries across the Americas, Asia Pacific, and Europe. Of the respondents, 65% were practitioners (developers and engineers), and 35% were ITDMs (C-suite executives and non-executive managers). The research firm ETR conducted the survey in April and May 2024.
KEY QUOTE:
“Investing in intelligent observability—and doing it right—pays off. This year’s Observability Forecast shows how observability delivers tangible benefits impact—less downtime, fewer critical outages, and a higher ROI. As more organizations increasingly adopt AI, observability will be key to achieving core business goals.”
- Nic Benders, Chief Technology Strategist at New Relic
