LogicMonitor launched its SaaS-based unified observability platform LM Envision this week. Observability of an IT system is a term within the industry that often gets confused with monitoring an IT system. While monitoring plays a significant role in the observability of a system, it is much more than monitoring a system to see its status. In today's day and age, observability is one of the most important properties of an IT system, especially considering we have more environments, applications, and infrastructure than ever before.
Observability platforms, like LM Envision, enable enterprise IT teams to look within the IT stack and proactively evaluate, assess and take action on the system's performance. This proactiveness ensures the IT stack is well maintained and issues are taken care of before meeting the business and end-user, causing serious problems. I want to highlight some of the tech trends that have influenced and trickled into the observability space, making it one of the liveliest topics within enterprise IT, and then dive into what makes LM Envision disruptive within the observability space.
Observability is essential
The need for observability has become very apparent in our post-COVID era with the increase in digitally transformed businesses—nay industries. Data is being created on such a vast scale that it is becoming more difficult to keep up and siphon value out of that data. Bigger and better solutions are driving the digital transformation of businesses. However, there is an increase in risk the more complex these solutions become. IT stacks are built on many microservices from the application level and end-user experience to the core infrastructure.
While much of this data creates value from an analytical standpoint, it can also reveal a lot about the IT system. As the risk becomes greater within an IT stack, more needs to be done than simply monitoring an IT system. The riskier the IT stack becomes, there needs to be a higher level of observability.
On top of this need for observability on every level of the IT system, the data coming in that is used to monitor the observability of a system comes from multiple diversified sources, needing to be aggregated onto one observability platform. Observability relies on three primary inputs known as the three pillars of observability: Logs or events, Metrics, and traces. Although these pillars are separately defined, they work together to maintain the system's integrity just as pillars work together separately to uphold a building. The aggregation of events, metrics, and traces, which are inherent to an IT stack, into an observability platform ensures the integrity and resiliency of a system.
LM Envision excels in three key observability areas
The qualities of a great observability platform fall on what the platform does with the data it is given, its breadth within the IT stack, and how well it responds to issues within the IT stack. A great observability platform focuses on integrations, monitoring, and remediation.
I believe LM Envision delivers impressively with its integrations featuring over 2,000 integrations. The reason integrations are so critical to an observability platform is because the more integrations you have throughout an IT stack, the more data you have across the breadth of the IT stack and the more information that can be monitored. LM Envision has the most integrations that I have seen on an observability platform. While there is a plethora of data coming out of a system, if that data is not available to be aggregated, the data coming out is wasted, and the IT system is left with blind spots. It should integrate seamlessly with cloud platforms, but it should also integrate with microservices in the IT stack.
LM Envision excels with infrastructure, database, and application performance monitoring (APM). I believe it is important to see everything happening within the system, from the application level to the infrastructure level. APM allows ITOps to deliver on customer experiences by identifying application bottlenecks and optimizing performance. It is also important for infrastructure monitoring to be diversified in the types of environments, whether on-prem, cloud, or hybrid environments. LM Envision has expanded coverage for cloud and container visibility and insights for AWS, GCP, Azure, and Kubernetes environments. Monitoring plays a critical role in observability platforms.
One notable integration that LM Envision has it with StackStorm. StackStorm is an open-sourced engine for if-this-then-that (IFTTT) operations. It adds remediation to the LM Envision platform and other actions based on customized LogicMonitor alerts. LM Envision also integrates TerraForm, which automates newly provisioned infrastructure within the existing IT ecosystem. I see TerraForm as a powerful integration that should increase the speed and consistency of existing IT ecosystems. Remediation separates LM Envision from a glorified monitoring system and keeps IT operations (ITOps) proactive within the monitoring of the IT stack.
LM Envision also includes AI operations (AIOps) platform for data forecasting, root cause analysis, and dynamic thresholds so that businesses can see risks before they happen. AI is another digital trend making its way into just about every technology. LM Envision uses AIOps to forecast and predict trends and prevent future issues. AIOps is also able to discover relationships between resources and, using existing data, find the root cause of the issue. AIOps has dynamic thresholding meaning that LogicMonitor alerts are generated for anomalies rather than commonalities. The more clear AIOps can make real and alarming uses, the faster the problem can be resolved.
Wrapping up
Observability should be at the top of all CIO's list of must-have platforms for the IT stack. As the risk becomes larger, the observability of an IT system should be higher. It should be from the application level and user experience level to the core infrastructure of a system. LM Envision has over 2,000 integrations, monitoring on every level of the IT stack, and remediation solutions that take a proactive approach to observability.
Note: Moor Insights & Strategy co-op Jacob Freyman contributed to this article.
