Not every observability strategy is the same. Companies vying to develop the next big thing in technology may discover that they are outmatched by competitors who have more mature observability strategies.
The technology landscape is changing. The convergence of technology innovations like AI, 5G connectivity, Web3, and Blockchain has brought the tech industry and society at large to the brink of new realities and experiences. The ways in which people communicate, work, create and relax are changing.
These new technologies require unparalleled computational power and technical expertise. Engineers and developers should be able to depend as much as possible on their tools while focusing on the vision and creativity required to create new solutions to keep up with these technical demands.
Observability is crucial to keep up with the rapidly evolving technology stacks and perform consistently for even the most ambitious new solutions and technologies. Achieving observability gives teams a real-time view of all data from all sources in one location, facilitating collaboration and problem-solving, ensuring more effective operations, and developing high-quality software for the enhanced customer experience.
Three Strategies for Success
Companies must modify their operations to comply with best practices to enhance return on investment in observability. These three strategies can help put businesses on the right track toward success.
Select the Appropriate Pricing Structure
Even the best product in the world won’t produce a strong ROI if it is too expensive, and the pricing structures for observability solutions vary greatly. These tools must provide predictable spending and transparent pricing to deliver good value.
High-growth organizations need to be able to scale automatically without incurring a penalty and pay only for the services that they really utilize.
The two main strategies for selling observability platforms and tools are consumption-based pricing and subscription-based pricing. Subscription-based pricing has the advantage of providing a predictable and stable expense; however, these models are less flexible when a company needs to quickly decrease or increase the amount of telemetry data they’re monitoring or ingesting. With a price structure that always meets their requirements, consumption-based pricing enables businesses to adapt to macroeconomic developments.
Create the Conditions for Widespread Adoption
The return on that investment will obviously be lower if the company doesn’t take the time to train each team member on how to use the tools. Many businesses find it difficult to integrate observability solutions into their overall business operations and deploy them across their entire organization.
Businesses will never get the maximum value out of their investment if it chooses to spend money on observability and telemetry data but does not make those tools available to their workforce. When developing a strategy, organizations must take into account all the potential benefits this data may have for the company.
The success of observability platforms depends on funding and a committed workforce, and businesses with a forward-thinking mindset will set aside resources to enable rapid scalability. Above all, businesses need to spend time teaching the workforce how to utilize the tools so that everyone can have access to this crucial knowledge.
Create Space for Opportunity
There will never be a perfect state of observability. There will always be opportunities to increase data gathering or enhance insights by implementing new practices, even though some businesses could have reached a mature practice.
By adopting strategies like incident learning methods, automated incident response workflows, and service-level objectives, businesses can maximize the return on their observability spending. These methods boost overall effectiveness while allowing engineers to focus on more important tasks.
There is a way forward that can lead to a higher return on investment for businesses that are just starting to invest, as well as for those looking to create a more mature practice.
Today’s engineering executives can significantly raise ROI on their observability spending and enhance operations by selecting reasonably priced and transparent tools, carefully planning to deploy them throughout the enterprise, and continuously discovering new apps for telemetry data.
