In another blog post, we talked about the basics of observability, its main characteristics, how it works and its importance in the universe of distributed systems. As we’ve seen, this practice has so many benefits – not just for DevOps, but for businesses as well – that, in this blog post, we’re going deeper into the advantages of it.
What Is Observability?
Before talking about the main benefits of observability and understanding why its use is so important, let’s consider its meaning. In general terms, observability is a fundamental and extremely powerful practice for dealing with distributed and increasingly dynamic and complex systems. This is because observability is able to provide a 360-degree view of a system and allow you to determine when, why and how an atypical event happened, in addition to enabling the prevention of incidents.
That said, let’s focus on why observability is used.
Let’s Understand “Why”
The question on everyone’s mind is: why use observability? There are countless answers to this question, but here we list a set of four answers that lead us to one of the main reasons for a company to use observability practices: to save effort, time, and money.
So, Why Use Observability?
1. To Have Better Visibility and Safer Monitoring
One of the advantages that observability brings to a system is that it enhances its visibility and makes monitoring safer and more effective. This is because observability allows a 360-degree view of the events and performance that take place in a system or in the environment in which it’s being performed.
In addition, more than identifying problems in real time, observability delivers data that allows the complete observation of the application flow, which can also prevent failures in the future. The general objective of observability is, therefore, to understand the end-to-end process, the behavior and application states through the observation of their outputs, that is, the application data.
From a practical point of view, it’s worth remembering here the benefits that observability brings when it comes to visibility and monitoring. With the application of this practice, it’s possible to:
- Discover and attack “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” – that is, you will get to know about expected events and those you don’t know that exist.
- Track potential threats and stream data to your SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) in real time, while creating automated incident responses with our APIs.
- Prevent issues from occurring by identifying them early, and if something occurs, you have the data to quickly find the root cause.
2. To Have Faster Workflow and DevOps
This answer is closely linked to the benefits we saw in the previous topic. In other words, another advantage that observability brings to systems is that by obtaining all the benefits previously listed, the entire process is optimized, as well as the work of the DevOps team. This optimization happens because the operation ends up having fewer complications and pauses, and the teams, consequently, deliver more results and faster.
And who directly benefits from this? The system and its DevOps. These two elements are key pieces of a distributed microservices architecture, so a happy DevOp with an efficient system is synonymous with high performance and commitment to the company.
3. To Have Better Business Insights
In the current scenario, technology is an essential piece for the operation and success of a company, and it’s in this symbiotic context that observability also acts, going beyond the application in systems because it provides data that can be transformed into business insights.
That is, through the data that observability provides, you get accurate information about your customers, which allows you to make predictions, know who they are, understand what they are doing and, thus, assemble intelligent and competitive strategies that focus on the customer.
With data that observability provides, it’s still possible to:
- Analyze the end-to-end customer journey, from interaction/prospecting to post-sales.
- Have a complete view of customer behavior and preferences.
- Get real-time customer information.
4. To Offer a Better User Experience
Another crucial issue for business concerns the user experience and their satisfaction with the product/service. This is another benefit we can get from observability – it provides granular visibility into how end users perceive your application’s performance. In other words, it provides performance data, which lets you know about the customer’s interaction with your application.
Observability is, then, a great tool to also know about the user experience and content delivery, allowing the identification of the best strategies to keep customers happy.
So, if you didn’t know how to keep your DevOps team and your customers happy, now you know the answer: with Azion’s observability.
Azion’s Observability: Have Full Control of Your System and Keep Customers Happy
Observability saves you effort, time, and money – and with Azion’s Edge Analytics suite of services, you have it all in the palm of your hand.
And how is it possible to operate like this, in such an integrated and effective way? Simple: using our powerful observability tools, which include Data Stream, Edge Pulse, Real-Time Events, and Real-Time Metrics.
Observability Features
Summing up, we list below our observability features and the role of each one:
Data Stream
- Build better and more profitable products for your business, with relevant and real-time data.
- Get end-to-end encryption to meet auditing and compliance requirements.
- Empower DevOps and business teams with real-time insight into your applications on the Azion Platform.
- Use real-time delivery mechanisms with pre-built connectors that allow HTTP/HTTPS Post and tools such as Kafka, S3 (Simple Storage Service), and others.
Edge Pulse
- Get real user monitoring (RUM) data from the accessing of your applications.
- Monitor how resource demands impact the user experience.
- Probe network performance and availability and help to improve the delivery of content to your users.
Real-Time Events
- Troubleshoot your applications using a friendly, intuitive interface.
- Consult data from different sources and monitor your application’s behavior.
- Save complex queries and explore your application data.
- View your application’s events in real time and track its history for up to three days.
Real-Time Metrics
- Real-time insight into what is happening with your content and applications.
- Dozens of metrics to help you optimize your applications and infrastructure.
- Integrate our metrics with your favorite tools and respond to events in real time.
- Arrive at critical decisions faster, based on real-time data.
- Provides your DevOps team with the transparency they need for troubleshooting.
So don’t waste any more time with inefficient solutions and get the best observability service with Azion. Talk to our sales team here.
