Observability in 2025: Cutting Complexity, Costs, and Chaos

Observability in Motion: Reflections on the 2025 Landscape

Some surveys give you numbers; others give you a mirror.
When we closed the Grafana Labs Observability Survey 2025, with 1,255 responses from around the globe, I realized this was one of those rare moments where the data wasn’t just a spreadsheet — it was a story about where we’ve been, where we’re going, and the tensions we all live with in observability.

One pattern leapt out first: tool overload. Across industries, companies are using an average of eight different observability tools, but if you work at a large organization with over 5,000 employees, that number jumps to 24 different data sources configured in Grafana alone. Small companies? Six on average. Even at the lower end, it’s still a lot to juggle.

And here’s the kicker — cost is the top factor for 74% of organizations when choosing observability tools. Not ease of use. Not interoperability. Cost. That told me something important: even though the technology is evolving, the financial conversation is still at the center of every decision.

I couldn’t help but think of SailPoint, Kushki, and Flexcity — three very different companies, each standing at a critical moment, each forced to ask: “Do we keep patching together what we have, or do we choose something that actually makes this simpler?”

From Italy to a Nasdaq Reservation

How do you follow record-setting success? Get stronger. Take Pacaso. Their real estate co-ownership tech set records in Paris and London in 2024. No surprise. Coldwell Banker says 40% of wealthy Americans plan to buy abroad within a year. So adding 10+ new international destinations, including three in Italy, is big. They even reserved the Nasdaq ticker PCSO.

Invest for $2.90/Share

_{Paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com. Reserving a ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public. Listing on the NASDAQ is subject to approvals.}

From Fragments to a Single View

The survey confirmed what we’ve been hearing in conversations for months — complexity is the biggest challenge for 39% of respondents. We’re collecting the data, but connecting the dots? That’s where it gets messy.

Take Kushki, a leading digital payments provider in Latin America. Before moving to Grafana Cloud, they had one tool for technical issues, another for business issues, and a separate visualization tool. The result was a slow, fragmented process that made it hard to pinpoint why a transaction failed.

They switched to Grafana Cloud and pulled in data from MongoDB, Prometheus, AWS XRay, and Amazon CloudWatch — creating a single, unified view of their entire transaction flow. With Grafana Alerting, they set up multi-dimensional alerts and instantly cut API response time by three seconds. In payments, that’s huge.

It’s a story that mirrors another survey finding: centralized observability teams are on the rise. 38% of organizations now have a team dedicated to supporting observability platforms, and 23% let that team run both implementation and operations. When that happens, the payoff is big — mean time to resolution (MTTR) drops by 40%, and some organizations report cost savings of up to 67%.

For Kushki, the gains weren’t just technical. They valued transparency — knowing the roadmap, seeing which features were coming, and trusting that they could grow without tripping over their own tools.

AI leaders only: Get $100 to explore high-performance AI training data.

Train smarter AI with Shutterstock’s rights-cleared, enterprise-grade data across images, video, 3D, audio, and more—enriched by 20+ years of metadata. 600M+ assets and scalable licensing, We help AI teams improve performance and simplify data procurement. If you’re an AI decision maker, book a 30-minute call—qualified leads may receive a $100 Amazon gift card.

Book a call

_{For complete terms and conditions, see the offer page.}

Making Observability a Shared Language

Another theme the survey uncovered: open source dominance. 75% of organizations are using open source licensing in observability. Prometheus leads the pack, with 67% running it in production and 71% using either Prometheus or OpenTelemetry in some capacity. OpenTelemetry’s production use is at 41% — but another 38% are actively testing or building proofs of concept.

This commitment to openness reminded me of Flexcity’s story. During Europe’s 2022 energy crisis, they needed a way to stabilize the French national power grid. They leaned on Grafana Cloud’s real-time dashboards to monitor energy consumption and production — and went further by white-labeling dashboards for customers and using Google SSO to make access seamless.

The survey backs this approach: full-stack observability — unifying infrastructure and application monitoring — is now the norm for 85% of organizations. Traces are catching on too, used by 57% overall and 65% in financial services. Why? Because observability isn’t just for engineers anymore; it’s becoming a shared language across operations, development, and even business teams.

Flexcity’s bi-weekly calls with Grafana Labs weren’t just about solving issues. They were about exploring what else is possible. That’s the shift — observability as an enabler, not just an emergency response plan.

Scaling Without Losing Control

Cost came up in almost every survey response — and not just as a budget line item. It’s the quiet anxiety that shapes tool choices and adoption speed. Which is why Adaptive Telemetry and smarter metrics management are resonating so much right now.

SailPoint lived this first-hand. Their Prometheus deployment was scaling too fast, eating up engineering time and pushing bills higher every month. Grafana Cloud’s Adaptive Metrics feature let them aggregate unused and partially used metrics into lower-cardinality versions, trimming away what wasn’t needed. Within months, they’d cut metrics volume by 33%.

Survey data shows why this matters: SaaS adoption is up 42% year over year, with 37% of organizations now primarily or exclusively using SaaS observability. That said, self-managed still dominates in certain regions — especially Europe (69%) and in government and telecom sectors (77%). It’s not one-size-fits-all, but the appetite for managed, cost-efficient platforms is clearly growing.

SailPoint’s “kid in a candy store” comment stuck with me. It’s what happens when you shift from chasing alerts to exploring capabilities. And our survey shows that executive buy-in is key here — 49% said their C-level leaders now view observability as critical, which correlates strongly with the adoption of advanced practices like distributed tracing and SLOs.

Master ChatGPT for Work Success

ChatGPT is revolutionizing how we work, but most people barely scratch the surface. Subscribe to Mindstream for free and unlock 5 essential resources including templates, workflows, and expert strategies for 2025. Whether you're writing emails, analyzing data, or streamlining tasks, this bundle shows you exactly how to save hours every week.

Subscribe for Your Free Bundle

Why Grafana Cloud?

Being named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Observability Platforms for the second year in a row felt like validation — not just of what they’ve built, but of the direction this whole community is heading. Gartner placed us furthest for “Completeness of Vision,” and in the Critical Capabilities report, we ranked among the top vendors for cost optimization, IT operations, platform operations, and software engineering.

But honestly, what means the most is seeing how those capabilities translate into real change:

• Tool consolidation in organizations like Kushki.

• Real-time, customer-facing dashboards at Flexcity.

• Cost and complexity control at SailPoint.

• Open source adoption across 75% of the survey base.

• Centralized teams are driving 40% faster incident resolution.

The challenges aren’t gone. Alert fatigue and complexity remain stubborn barriers. Many survey respondents told us they’re hungry for AI/ML features to enhance root cause analysis and provide training-based alerts. That’s the next frontier — not replacing human insight, but amplifying it.

If there’s one thing I’m taking away from this year’s survey and these stories, it’s that observability is no longer a “nice-to-have” safety measure. It’s becoming the connective tissue between teams, tools, and business outcomes. And for those willing to simplify, standardize, and stay open — both in technology and in mindset — the payoff isn’t just in uptime or metrics; it’s in the confidence to move faster without losing sight of what matters.

So here’s to the next chapter — one where our observability stories aren’t just about what went wrong, but about how we’re building something stronger, smarter, and more connected than ever before.

Stay tuned for the upcoming Grafana Cloud vs Datadog comparison, where we plan to share our insights on why we selected Grafana Cloud and how it confirmed our choice.

What’s your next spark? A new platform engineering skill? A bold pitch? A team ready to rise? Share your ideas or challenges at Tiny Big Spark. Let’s build your pyramid—together.

That’s it!

Keep innovating and stay inspired!

If you think your colleagues and friends would find this content valuable, we’d love it if you shared our newsletter with them!

PROMO CONTENT

Can email newsletters make money?

With the world becoming increasingly digital, this question will be on the minds of millions of people looking for new income streams in 2025.

The answer is—Absolutely!

That’s it for this episode!

Thank you for taking the time to read today’s email! Your support allows me to send out this newsletter for free every day. 

 What do you think for today’s episode? Please provide your feedback in the poll below.

Share the newsletter with your friends and colleagues if you find it valuable.

Disclaimer: The "Tiny Big Spark" newsletter is for informational and educational purposes only, not a substitute for professional advice, including financial, legal, medical, or technical. We strive for accuracy but make no guarantees about the completeness or reliability of the information provided. Any reliance on this information is at your own risk. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect any organization's official position. This newsletter may link to external sites we don't control; we do not endorse their content. We are not liable for any losses or damages from using this information.