Observability contributes to digital transformation success

The research finds that observability delivers tangible, essential results and high maturity observability practices are correlated with:

• Much greater visibility across hybrid, multi-cloud infrastructures, resources and performance areas. Mature observability users are 2.9 times as likely to report better visibility into application performance and enjoy almost two times better visibility into public cloud infrastructure.

• Accelerated root cause identification, meaning complex, service-crashing crises are fixed much more quickly, or averted entirely. Leaders are 6.1 times likelier to have accelerated root cause identification (43% of leaders versus 7% of beginners).

• Faster digital transformation, with more successful results. Organizations with the most advanced observability practices are 4.5 times more likely to report successful digital transformation initiatives.

• Exploding innovation, with leaders reporting 60% more new services, products and revenue streams than organizations with beginner-level observability.

“The pandemic accelerated digital transformations this past year and observability simply is no longer optional in a real-time economy where multicloud complexity has become standard,” said Sendur Sellakumar, Senior Vice President, Cloud and Chief Product Officer, Splunk. “Having a robust observability practice means fewer service disruptions, better customer experiences and more successful digital transformations. Observability means full fidelity data visibility not only at the infrastructure level, but also at the application and service level, with end-to-end transaction visibility no matter the technologies involved. ”

A significant percentage of respondents also say they have suffered material consequences for service failures that better observability practices could have prevented:

• Lower customer satisfaction (45%)

• Loss of revenue (37%)

• Loss of reputation (36%)

• Loss of customers (30%)

Additionally, gaps in observability hurt the bottom line and customer satisfaction:

• 53% of leaders reported that app issues have resulted in customer or revenue loss.

• 45% reported lower customer satisfaction as a result of service failures. 

o 30% reported losing customers as a consequence.

The report is the second in a series, after Splunk recently released The State of Security 2021, which included early input from security leaders after the revelation of the SolarWinds attacks. The State of Observability 2021 also highlights concrete recommendations for organizations as they look to improve their observability practices, including prioritizing data collection and correlation, as well as making use of AI, ML and automation.