Observability Tools

Early monitoring tools focused on tracking clearly defined metrics related to technical systems, a reactive approach that provided technical professionals information and alerts about system performance. Conceptually, observability emerged later, with attention paid to understanding not just what was happening in a system but also why, a proactive posture that helps IT teams root out issues across an increasingly complex stack of tools in the enterprise. Today, observability products track logs, traces, and metrics across networks, infrastructure, applications, data management systems, IoT devices, mobile devices, and more. Modern tools strive to balance a broad reach across complex, multifaced tech stacks with user-friendly interfaces, data visualizations and dashboards, and nuanced administrative controls. Of course, and as with every other technology domain, AI has transformed the observability space, surfacing more nuanced insights that cut through the firehose of information and are able to act agentically to shore up problems before they develop. The prominent observability tools in the market today can tap into multiple functions of an organization’s technical system; offer usable controls, dashboards, and interfaces; and have AI-enabled features that improve performance and streamline the job of technical professionals overseeing these systems. As one IT decision maker remarked in an ETR Insights interview, “the observability space has gotten ridiculously crowded.” Sorting through these vendors is an important task for end users. The ETR Observatory for Observability Tools captures data from IT decision makers about the major enterprise-grade players in the observability and monitoring market. These tools range from observability products that are part of broader cloud platform offerings, to stand-alone observability platforms that boast of robust native integrations and cutting-edge AI wizardry. Given the expansiveness of many organizations’ tech stacks today, it is no surprise that most enterprises deploy multiple observability tools, whether that reflects an organization’s “best-of-breed” approach to vendor management or the realities of legacy footprints blending with newer offerings. This report captures spending intentions, relative product strengths, usage plans, ROI, and more about 20 observability tools. It is worth noting that the observability market is embracing open standards, most prominently OpenTelemetry, as organizations push back against the vendor lock-in and risk that can occur with proprietary data formats. OpenTelemetry is itself a bundle of APIs and SDKs for handling observability data and metrics, and further complicating the market are open-source tools like Prometheus, OpenObserve, or SigNoz. While open-source observability tools are widely deployed in enterprises, these have been excluded from the present study given its focus on spending plans.

In many measures of spending plans and ROI, the observability offerings from the three major public cloud vendors held the top spots: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. This is a clear indicator that the observability and monitoring capabilities baked into broader cloud stacks are seeing widespread uptake.

The report categorizes vendors across different categories, reflecting their Momentum and Presence within the Observability Tools space:

1. Leaders like Amazon CloudWatch, Microsoft Azure, Grafana, and Datadog show strong adoption and market share, driven by broad capabilities and ease of use.
2. Sole Advancing vendor Google Cloud Observability is gaining Momentum but still lags in Presence compared to market leaders.
3. Tracking vendors Elastic and Splunk are long-established names in enterprise tech stacks, with stronger Presence but relatively lower Momentum.
4. Pursuing vendors, including ManageEngine, Cisco’s AppDynamics, and SolarWinds Observability, are experiencing slower growth, with less impact in the market.

The observability space has gotten ridiculously crowded...I think there’s only a number of those that are actually innovating in the market.

Organizations invest in observability platforms for a variety of reasons, and often they invest in more than one. Understanding which vendors are seen as the innovators in the market sheds light on where the market may be going in terms of its technical features, while knowing which vendors are the most desired for centering in a tech stack speaks more to deeper strategic needs for organizations as they evolve with the market. In the Observatory study, we ask respondents to provide open-ended answers to which vendor they view as the most innovative, and which vendor they could most prioritize if given the opportunity to rebuild their observability program. Analyzing these open-ended responses shows that the same band of vendors occupies the top spots, but in a different rank order.

Many factors are driving growth and transformation—and the blurring of boundaries—in the observability and monitoring space. The rise of AI has spurred more automation and new features within observability products that further transform observability into a proactive, rather than reactive, practice where IT staff and AI bots can act to curb problems more quickly. The increasing reliance on data to make business decisions combined with the availability of more sources of data add considerable complexity to the scope of observability platforms, and vendors are extending their products into new technical domains. Increased regulatory requirements and growing attention to information security more generally has elevated observability tools into broader business concerns as well. The rising popularity of open standards and maturation of open-source observability offerings have pushed observability vendors to proactively embrace these developments too, refocusing product roadmaps to better fit the expectations organizations have to avoid perpetual vendor lock-in.