The global economy is in a state of flux, with companies, leaders and employees bracing for continued uncertainty. But with every downturn comes an opportunity to rein in spending and review technology investments.
All-in-one observability platforms are comprehensive and enable businesses to monitor, analyse, and optimise their software. By consolidating monitoring, logs, and performance management tools into a single platform, businesses can streamline their operations, reduce overheads, and improve performance; putting teams in an enviable position to weather the storms ahead.
Reduced costs and overheads
Software pricing can be complex, with some vendors sneaking hidden costs, penalties and overage fees into their contract terms. Add to this the fact that as infrastructure scales up and down with customer demand, charging at a peak rate during these times becomes predatory and spikes have the potential to double the cost of monthly bills.
By looking for an observability vendor that offers usage-based pricing and billing - as well as a low data cost per gigabyte - technology teams can find clarity in their investments, and don’t need to predict upfront how much data they will use in the coming years.
The benefits of usage-based pricing are compounded when tool consolidation initiatives are undertaken.
By no longer needing to manage multiple tools from different vendors, teams can reduce their software expenses significantly. This frees up resources to be directed into more strategic initiatives, such as product development or customer success.
New Relic customer, Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) reduced logging and monitoring spend by 58 percent by consolidating its observability needs to New Relic.
Another New Relic customer, Simply Business, was using multiple tools for logs. After switching to New Relic log management, former DevOps engineer Mikio Tsunematsu at Simply Business said, “Focusing on one tool has saved us money as well as mental energy.”
Increased developer productivity
When technology companies consolidate the number of tools they have, increased developer productivity is a major benefit. Instead of individual teams being responsible for monitoring, logging, and performance management, observability allows for the formation of one team that’s responsible for managing an entire platform.
This improves collaboration, resulting in better communication, faster issue resolution, and stronger overall performance.
Technology teams can better allocate resources, such as personnel and budgets, to areas of the business where they are most needed. This ensures that the most important issues are addressed first and removes the need for manual troubleshooting.
For companies like the GoTo Group, having a live feed of data via New Relic dashboards provides executive teams with a greater understanding of the value observability brings.
Their teams are able to streamline communication by utilising observability integrations, including errors inbox. They are also able to connect via Slack and Microsoft Teams. This facilitates cross-team collaboration and is essential to the creation of a cohesive remote workforce.
Observability provides a unified platform for monitoring and analysing real-time data which enables developers to identify and resolve issues faster; reducing the time needed to deliver new features and services. This can result in a more efficient development process, faster time to market, and improved customer satisfaction.
Respond quickly to changing market conditions
Being provided with real-time information is critical in order to adapt to the current macroeconomic climate.
Our customer Tokopedia has some of the most comprehensive dashboards in the world, and over 1,000 widgets that light up in red, green and yellow. When a red alert is lit up, the team is able to easily click to see what the issue is.
These dashboards are absolutely crucial, not only for executives to make real-time decisions, such as where to invest, but also for technology teams to prioritise resources and provide updates to relevant internal stakeholders.
By monitoring and analysing data across the software stack in real time, businesses can detect and address anomalies before they turn into problems, helping to stay ahead of the competition and maintain a strong market position, all while delivering the best possible experience to customers.
Observability is integral to businesses across Asia, and while the decision to invest in these initiatives was once driven by technology teams, the CIO is becoming more and more involved in an effort to save on costs and provide significant business value.
This has been recognised by Gartner, who suggest in their Tech Trends for 2023 report, that while observability tools themselves are not new, the need for an applied observability strategy is greater than ever, and tool consolidation being a critical part of that, with applied observability listed as number two in their top technology trends list for 2023.
With increasing pressure to do more with less and reduce technology spend, observability’s relevance will only continue to grow in the months and years ahead.
