Need proof to set up observability, here are 33 stats to show why!
Tags: devops, microservices, monitoring, observability
Published: 2021-11-11 12:56:29

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?

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. (<a href = "https://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/5397840/cloud-computing-market-size-share-and-trends" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Researchandmarkets</a>)

2. 92% of enterprises have multi-cloud strategy; 82 percent have hybrid cloud strategy. (<a href = "https://www.flexera.com/blog/cloud/cloud-computing-trends-2021-state-of-the-cloud-report" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Flexera</a>)

3. 96% of software leaders have adopted a cloud-native approach to software development. (<a href = "https://newrelic.com/more-perfect-software/more-perfect-software/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >New Relic</a>)

4. 30% of organizations are using 3 or more clouds today. (<a href = "https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/VKW3RNDP" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >IBM</a>)

5. 83% of IT execs had cloud adoption as a key priority in 2021. (<a href = "https://resources.securitycompass.com/reports/2021-state-of-cloud-adoption#main-content" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Security Compass</a>)

6. 58% of leaders believe the complexity of managing hybrid/multi-cloud environments is their leading challenge. (<a href = "https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/VKW3RNDP" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >IBM</a>)

7. 74% of CIOs believe increased complexity could make it extremely difficult to manage performance. (<a href = "https://www.dynatrace.com/global-cio-report/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Dynatrace</a>)

8. 76% of CIOs say that they don't have complete visibility into application performance in cloud-native architectures. (<a href = "https://www.dynatrace.com/global-cio-report/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Dynatrace</a>)

9. 33% of the IT team's time is spent tackling digital performance problems. (<a href = "https://www.dynatrace.com/global-cio-report/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Dynatrace</a>)

### **Impact of cloud complexity**

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

10. 37 is the average number of technology systems that a single web or mobile transaction crosses. (<a href = "https://www.dynatrace.com/global-cio-report/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Dynatrace</a>)

11. 6 is the average number of outages experienced by businesses in the last 12 months where user experience, revenue, or operations were impacted. (<a href = "https://www.dynatrace.com/global-cio-report/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Dynatrace</a>)

12. 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%). (<a href = "https://www.honeywell.com/us/en/press/2021/10/honeywell-survey-more-than-half-of-surveyed-data-center-facility-managers-experienced-an-outage-in-the-past-12-months" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Honeywell</a>)

13. 95% of applications in enterprise organizations are not monitored due to siloed tools and burdensome manual effort. (<a href = "https://www.dynatrace.com/resources/ebooks/5-challenges-to-achieving-observability/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Dynatrace</a>)

14. 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. (<a href = "https://tanzu.vmware.com/content/blog/the-state-of-observability-2021-key-findings" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Tanzu VMware</a>)

15. 70% of CIOs say monitoring containerized microservices in real-time is almost impossible. (<a href = "https://www.dynatrace.com/resources/ebooks/5-challenges-to-achieving-observability/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Dynatrace</a>)

16. 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. (<a href = "https://www.splunk.com/en_us/form/state-of-observability.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Splunk</a>)

17. For 90% of surveyed engineers, highly distributed apps create monitoring challenges an order of magnitude greater than what traditional monitoring tools can handle. (<a href = "https://tanzu.vmware.com/content/blog/the-state-of-observability-2021-key-findings" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Tanzu VMware</a>)

18. 57% of respondents found lack of context a top challenge with their existing monitoring tools. (<a href = "https://www.observeinc.com/blog/the-state-of-observability-2021/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Observe</a>)

### 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.

19. 94% of software leaders say observability is key to developing software. (<a href = "https://newrelic.com/more-perfect-software/more-perfect-software/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >New Relic</a>)

20. 99% of leaders say their culture and observability technology allow developers to make quick decisions, without fear of repercussions. (<a href = "https://newrelic.com/resources/ebooks/more-perfect-software-gated" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >New Relic</a>)

21. 78% of software leaders learn about service interruptions through observability solutions versus just 12% for laggards. (<a href = "https://newrelic.com/resources/ebooks/observability-21st-century-manifesto" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >New Relic</a>)

22. Organizations identified as observability leaders are 6 times more likely to have accelerated root cause identification after adopting observability. (<a href = "https://www.splunk.com/en_us/form/state-of-observability.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Splunk</a>)

23. More mature observability teams are 3x more likely to deliver higher customer satisfaction. (<a href = "https://www.honeycomb.io/observability-maturity-community-findings-2021-2/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Honeycomb</a>)

24. 92% of surveyed engineers believe observability tools enable more effective decision-making. (<a href = "https://tanzu.vmware.com/content/blog/the-state-of-observability-2021-key-findings" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Tanzu VMware</a>)

25. 86% of respondents say they will be prioritizing observability within the next year. (<a href = "https://www.observeinc.com/blog/the-state-of-observability-2021/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Observe</a>)

26. 70% of observability leaders believe they have excellent visibility into their org's security posture versus only 31% of beginners. (<a href = "https://www.splunk.com/en_us/form/state-of-observability.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Splunk</a>)

27. 45% of observability leaders report launching eight or more new products/revenue streams in the last year compared with 15% of beginners. (<a href = "https://www.splunk.com/en_us/form/state-of-observability.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Splunk</a>)

### Challenges in setting up observability

But there are also challenges to setting up observability.

28. 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. (<a href = "https://www.splunk.com/en_us/form/state-of-observability.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Splunk</a>)

29. 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. (<a href = "https://www.splunk.com/en_us/form/state-of-observability.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >Splunk</a>)

30. 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. (<a href = "https://resources.newrelic.com/2021-observability-forecast" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >New Relic</a>)

31. 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. (<a href = "https://resources.newrelic.com/2021-observability-forecast" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >New Relic</a>)

### 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.

32. 81% of C-suite executives expect to increase their observability budget next year, with 20% expecting budgets to increase significantly. (<a href = "https://resources.newrelic.com/2021-observability-forecast" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >New Relic</a>)

33. 74% of respondents note there is room to grow their observability practices, with only 26% claiming a mature observability practice. (<a href = "https://resources.newrelic.com/2021-observability-forecast" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" >New Relic</a>)

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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](https://signoz.io/?utm_source=learn&utm_medium=observability_statistics)** - our open-source full-stack observability platform to get started. It is an all-in-one platform to address your observability needs.