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Overcoming Observability Obstacles With Instana

Aug 4, 2022 | Episode

Observability goes beyond monitoring, providing full-stack visibility into logs, traces, and metrics to understand application performance in real-time. In this SMC Journal, we discuss overcoming obstacles that hinder many companies today.

This conversation features Josh Lee, a developer advocate at Instana, an IBM company.

The Growing Importance of Observability

Scott Moore opened the discussion by highlighting the increasing interest in observability among software professionals. He referenced prior episodes that explored the Gartner Magic Quadrant for observability platforms, where Instana has emerged as a key player. This set the stage for Josh Lee to share his journey—from a back-end engineer frustrated by limited monitoring tools to an advocate for robust solutions.

Lee explained how the rise of Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures has accelerated the shift from traditional Application Performance Monitoring (APM) to comprehensive observability platforms. While some vendors are simply rebranding their APM tools, others are genuinely delivering on the promise of observability, enabling teams to gain deeper insights into their systems.

From Monitoring

Transitioning to is not without its challenges. According to Lee, organizations often face two key hurdles:

  • Organizational Challenges: Deciding which teams own and manage observability across complex technology stacks.
  • Technical Challenges: Managing the immense volume of data generated by modern systems, including logs, metrics, and traces.

Cost management emerged as a critical theme during this segment. Lee emphasized that while platforms like Instana handle data storage efficiently, cloud egress costs can quickly escalate. He recommended implementing filters and fine-tuning systems to control these expenses effectively.

Lee suggested tracking metrics like Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR) as indicators of success. Additionally, he introduced a forward-looking metric—Mean Time to Prevention (MTTP)—which reflects how proactive automation can prevent issues before they escalate.

Automation and AI: The Future of Observability

One of the standout differentiators for Instana, according to Lee, is its focus on automation and intelligence. He described how the platform simplifies agent installation by automatically discovering all running processes and deploying necessary plugins—eliminating the need for manual configuration. This automation extends to alerting systems, where machine learning models analyze application behavior to detect anomalies without overwhelming teams with unnecessary alerts.

Moore and Lee agreed that in today’s complex enterprise environments, AI is no longer optional—it’s essential. While some developers may worry about AI-driven automation making unintended changes, Lee reassured viewers that Instana’s AI functions more as a “competent junior,” offering actionable insights rather than taking autonomous actions.

The Road Ahead

Looking toward the future, Lee shared details about an upcoming webinar on August 24th featuring Lightrun. This collaboration aims to combine Instana’s capabilities with Lightrun’s production debugging tools, enabling what they call “full cycle observability.” This approach bridges production and pre-production environments, giving developers unparalleled visibility into their applications throughout their lifecycle.

Key Takeaways

This episode of the SMC Journal Show provided a comprehensive look at how organizations can navigate the evolving landscape of this space. Key insights included:

  • The industry-wide shift from APM to true full-stack observability.
  • Practical advice for managing organizational and technical challenges.
  • The critical role of automation and AI in simplifying adoption.
  • The promise of “full cycle observability” for end-to-end system insights.

If your organization is looking to reduce downtime, improve system understanding, and proactively prevent issues, embracing observability might just be the breakthrough you need.

Show Notes

What are some of the biggest hurdles to overcome when implementing true full-stack Observability, or transitioning from APM to Observability. Josh Lee shares his view from the field, and why Instana is unique for helping organizations make the leap.

https://www.instana.com/webinars/full-cycle-observability-from-the-ide-to-instana/

Check out this other show about Observability as code.

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