Catchpoint: SREs Choose Monitoring Tools Over Observability Tools
According to a report recently released by Catchpoint, site reliability engineers (SREs) are choosing monitoring and alerting tools over observability tools. This information comes from the 2020 SRE Report which details the results of a survey conducted by Catchpoint that interviewed over 600 SREs, both working in the office and at home. The survey found that most SREs don’t place focus on observability capabilities and use cases, indicating an observability gap among enterprises.
Catchpoint asked the SREs what tools they use in their daily work to understand what areas enterprise SRE work is dedicated to. 93 percent answered that they used monitoring and alerting tools in their work, while only 53 percent cited that they used observability tools. Network and system observability tools and capabilities are relatively new compared to other solutions, and while they are slowly creeping into widespread use, SREs don’t value observability that highly as of yet.
The survey also revealed the metrics that organizations track and SREs work to improve. While only 36 percent of SREs examined error and performance budgets, 71 percent of SREs cited error rate as a key metric. Catchpoint noted that user experience monitoring is not yet a full priority for enterprises; end user response time is the second most common metric tracked by SREs at 69 percent, but companies still place priority on non-user related performance metrics — which often don’t paint the full story.
In the company’s press release, Catchpoint’s CEO Mehdi Daoudi stated: “Solving complex problems and ensuring reliability in today’s highly distributed world can be very difficult and requires greater monitoring and true observability. Prior to the pandemic, most companies had a handle on end-user/customer experience monitoring for distributed systems. But now with a greater distribution of users comes new challenges and added reliability needs. True observability is the key to ensure reliability and customer experiences for all things distributed.”
Download the 2020 SRE Report here.
Daniel Hein
Dan is a tech writer who writes about Cybersecurity for Solutions Review. He graduated from Fitchburg State University with a Bachelor's in Professional Writing. You can reach him at dhein@solutionsreview.com
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