GigaOm Radar for Cloud Observability Solutionsv2.0

Table of Contents

  1. Summary
  2. Market Categories and Deployment Types
  3. Key Criteria Comparison
  4. GigaOm Radar
  5. Vendor Insights
  6. Analyst’s Take
  7. About Ron Williams
  8. About Sue Clarke

1. Summary

Enterprises of every size are moving applications and infrastructure to the cloud. Maintaining operational awareness is difficult enough within a single cloud environment; when multiple cloud vendors are involved, a robust cloud observability solution becomes essential.

Cloud observability encompasses monitoring, performance measurement, reporting, and predictive analytics. As Figure 1 shows, it not only promotes operational awareness, it also contributes to both business awareness and IT awareness. Cloud observability solutions are tuned to the volatile nature of cloud environments, able to respond to environment changes based on application needs, finances, and performance fluctuations. Without a cloud awareness platform, balancing multifaceted requirements in the cloud can be difficult.

Taking control of cloud awareness means evaluating which cloud (or clouds) are in use, what the business expectations are, and the abilities of the operations and DevOps teams.

Figure 1. Operational Awareness

Many buyers are organizations transitioning from on-site development and infrastructure to the cloud. In large organizations, private clouds often exist to satisfy security or governance requirements. Solutions must include public and private cloud observability and insights into any on-site infrastructure. The more platform-oriented solution providers are targets for these organizations.

Another type of buyer is the small-to-medium-sized business (SMB). Here all software often resides in a cloud or multicloud environment. These buyers are less interested in on-site infrastructure and applications development and more focused on cloud operations and DevOps in cloud environments.

Yet another type of buyer includes startups and organizations with 100% of their operations in the cloud. These organizations need observability tools that focus on the specific clouds in use. An observability tool directly from a single cloud provider may be optimal.

This GigaOm Radar report assesses 21 cloud observability solutions, applying evaluations of specific key criteria and evaluation metrics defined in the GigaOm report “Key Criteria for Evaluating Cloud Observability Solutions.”

How to Read this Report

This GigaOm report is one of a series of documents that helps IT organizations assess competing solutions in the context of well-defined features and criteria. For a fuller understanding, consider reviewing the following reports:
Key Criteria report: A detailed market sector analysis that assesses the impact that key product features and criteria have on top-line solution characteristics—such as scalability, performance, and TCO—that drive purchase decisions.
GigaOm Radar report: A forward-looking analysis that plots the relative value and progression of vendor solutions along multiple axes based on strategy and execution. The Radar report includes a breakdown of each vendor’s offering in the sector.
Solution Profile: An in-depth vendor analysis that builds on the framework developed in the Key Criteria and Radar reports to assess a company’s engagement within a technology sector. This analysis includes forward-looking guidance around both strategy and product.