2025 observability trends: Maturing beyond the hype
Our latest survey of over 500 observability decision-makers reveals how dramatically the landscape has evolved as we move through 2025. What strikes me most is how observability has moved beyond its technical roots to become a true business imperative. Let’s dive into what we're seeing in the industry.
The investment paradox of observability in 2025
Here's something fascinating: 96% of executives in our survey expect observability to remain a key investment area. Yet almost all of them (97%) are hitting roadblocks in realizing full value. And surprisingly, the primary hurdles for observability are not technical or complicated in nature, can you guess what they might be?
For 2025, IT leaders are challenged with financial hurdles for their observability. I'm seeing this tension play out constantly in conversations with leaders - they know they need to invest, but they're grappling with budget constraints, licensing costs, and proving ROI for their organizations. This creates an interesting dynamic where organizations must carefully balance increasing investment with rigorous cost optimization and business metrics.
What's particularly interesting is how this paradox is forcing organizations to become more strategic about their investments. Leaders are no longer just throwing money at the problem - they're thinking carefully about how to maximize value from every dollar spent.
Why observability maturity Is making all the difference
The data really jumps out at me here. The gap between observability experts and newcomers tells a compelling story that I wasn't expecting to see. Expert organizations are significantly outperforming their peers across every key metric:
- 91% of expert organizations are deploying applications and infrastructure faster (compared to just 34% of those in early stages)
- 82% are successfully reducing operational costs (versus 56% of early-stage organizations)
- 71% achieve better MTTR for incidents (while only 40% of early-stage organizations do)
What I find particularly fascinating is how some benefits go beyond just maturity levels. About 80% of organizations report better customer issue response times regardless of their maturity stage. It tells me that even basic observability delivers immediate customer-facing value. This is crucial information for organizations just starting their observability journey - they can expect to see tangible benefits right from the start. But the overarching story may be that observability maturity leads teams from reactive to proactive and allows them to focus on higher level, value-add activities.
Cost management: the new imperative
The numbers around cost management paint a clear picture of where the industry is heading - 97% of IT decision-makers are actively managing observability costs, and 86% feel personally responsible for business outcomes.
I'm seeing a clear trend where leaders are taking concrete steps in their day to day work:
- Consolidating their observability toolset while maintaining capabilities, they don’t want to lose anything
- Implementing usage-based pricing models
- Establishing clear ROI metrics
- Creating cross-functional teams to optimize spending
This isn't just about cutting costs - it's about being smarter with resources. Organizations are learning that more tools don't necessarily mean better observability.
Two technologies reshaping the observability landscape
AI's growing impact
The enthusiasm for AI is remarkable - 94% of respondents see its tremendous potential. What fascinates me is how concerns about Generative AI reliability have actually decreased from 64% to 55% over the past year.
Leaders are particularly excited about:
- Automated correlation of logs, metrics, and traces (72% of respondents)
- Predictive analytics for preventing outages
- Natural language interfaces for querying observability data
- Automated root cause analysis
The key shift I'm seeing for the upcoming year is the move from AI as a buzzword to AI as a practical tool delivering real value in observability workflows.
Generative AI capabilities paired with retrieval augmented generation (RAG) capabilities allow organizations to leverage the power of LLMs and private data (e.g., runbooks, alerts, business data) to deliver relevant and meaningful results and identify and solve problems faster while reducing noise.
OpenTelemetry's continued momentum
Looking at expert organizations, 80% are either experimenting with or have deployed OpenTelemetry. This isn't just about technology adoption - it's about building for the future with open standards. The correlation between OpenTelemetry adoption and overall observability maturity is correlated and unmistakable.
What's particularly interesting is how OpenTelemetry is changing the vendor landscape. Organizations are increasingly demanding OpenTelemetry support from their vendors, seeing it as a way to future-proof their observability investments and avoid vendor lock-in. Thinking back to how Linux shifted the server landscape, can we expect to see the same in the observability domain?
Business integration and insights deepens
Here's what I find most compelling: 64% of expert organizations are frequently correlating operational data with business outcomes, while only 9% of early-stage organizations do the same. This represents a fundamental shift from technical monitoring to business observability.
This isn't just about uptime anymore - organizations are increasingly using observability data to:
- Make informed business decisions
- Improve customer experience
- Optimize resource allocation
- Drive innovation
Looking ahead
As we continue through 2025, I'm seeing observability mature beyond its initial promise. Organizations are focusing less on basic implementation and more on delivering real business value through:
- Deeper business integration, like mapping system performance directly to revenue metrics
- Optimized cost management through new data lake technology, efficient storage and intelligent retention
- AI-enhanced capabilities powered by LLMs and Agentic AI
- Standardized instrumentation through OpenTelemetry, reducing vendor lock-in
The path to success in 2025 isn't just about having the right tools - it's about building mature practices that deliver measurable business value while managing costs effectively. The organizations that can balance these competing demands while maintaining focus on business outcomes are the ones pulling ahead.
What are you seeing in your organization's observability journey? Are these trends aligning with your experience?
If you would like to dig in deeper on emerging observability trends, download our full report or watch the on-demand webinar, 2025 Observability trends: Maturing beyond the hype and delivering results!
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