IT and Telecom Industries Embrace Observability to Leverage AI and Cloud: Report

New Relic, the comprehensive observability platform for engineers, has released its "State of Observability for IT and Telecommunications" report. This report provides insights and analysis on how the IT and telecommunications (telco) industries are adopting observability and its business value. Based on insights from 423 technology professionals and developed in conjunction with the 2023 Observability Forecast, the report highlights that organizations are experiencing costly outages and are turning to observability to enhance cross-team collaboration and strategic decision-making.

The report underscores the importance of implementing full-stack observability. The top trends driving its adoption include the development of cloud-native application architectures (48%), adoption of AI technologies (43%), migration to multi-cloud environments (40%), and an increased focus on customer experience management (39%). Additionally, the findings reveal that IT and telecommunications organizations recognize the business value of observability, with 55% of respondents noting improvements in collaboration and decision-making.

"India's 5G market is growing rapidly, with consumer demand for data-heavy digital content at an all-time high. IT and telco organizations are under constant pressure to continue to innovate and grow. To truly thrive, they need to unlock the power of their data. Observability is key – it grants the ability to see, understand, and analyze every aspect of their networks and applications. This will empower Indian companies to leverage AI effectively, build robust and cost-efficient infrastructure, and ultimately, develop innovative services that drive revenue”, said New Relic Senior Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific & Japan, Kris Day.

Observability and AI Drive Industry-Leading Advantages

Nearly half (43%) of IT and telecommunications organizations reported that AI technologies are driving the adoption of observability. By integrating observability with AI, these organizations position themselves at the forefront of technological innovation, effectively managing sprawling data sets and enhancing operational efficiency. Observability is essential for AI success, as it helps teams understand their telemetry data, improves MTTR, and allows developers to quickly fix code-level errors within their integrated development environment (IDE). It also boosts automation for rapid alerts and enhances incident detection and resolution.

Consolidating Tools is Essential for Reducing Outages

The report revealed that IT and telecommunications organizations experience outages more frequently than other industries, with 37% facing outages at least once a week compared to the industry average of 32%. This results in a median annual outage cost of $12.71 million, highlighting the urgent need for enhanced monitoring and rapid issue-resolution capabilities.

IT and telecommunications organizations showed a higher propensity than the average to employ multiple monitoring tools, with over two-thirds (69%) utilizing four or more tools for observability, compared to 63% overall. This suggests that engineering teams invest considerable time and resources in switching between tools to gain insights into various facets of their business and address issues leading to expensive outages and subpar customer experiences.

Furthermore, a predominant majority of respondents expressed a preference for a single, unified platform (56%), while slightly over two-fifths (41%) indicated that their organization is inclined to consolidate tools within the coming year to optimize their observability investment.

Security and Digital Customer Experience (DCX) are Vital Components of Success

System security is essential across all industries, but particularly so for IT and telecommunications organizations, which manage critical infrastructure. The majority (96%) intend to implement security monitoring by mid-2026, underscoring the prioritization of system security maintenance.

Moreover, digital customer experience (DCX) remains a top priority as organizations encounter unprecedented chances to interact with customers in novel ways. IT and telecommunications providers can leverage digital experience monitoring (DEM) to seize these opportunities by monitoring and enhancing performance and reliability, ensuring seamless experiences through real user monitoring (RUM). Nearly half (45%) of IT and telecom respondents anticipate deploying synthetic monitoring within the next one to three years, while 36% anticipate implementing mobile monitoring, and 23% anticipate deploying browser monitoring.

“My teams aren’t disconnected or buried in the complexity of our services, alerts, logs, or data. Our integration platform gives one clear view, so issues can be identified and fixed before they impact our customers. That’s what truly matters,” said Skyscanner Principal Software Engineer Daniel Gomez Blanco.