Observability is expanding: Transforming complexity into business opportunity

Observability is no longer just for IT Ops. It’s transforming entire organizations. From developers optimizing application performance to AI-driven automation at scale, Dynatrace is leading the way in turning complexity into opportunity. Learn how observability is evolving and why it’s critical for the future of innovation.

Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Tiernan Ray for The Technology Letter (subscribers can read here), where we discussed how observability is transforming and how Dynatrace is navigating industry changes. I wanted to take a moment to expand on the key themes we touched on in our conversation.

Observability is no longer just for IT Ops

Observability is no longer just about monitoring IT systems. It’s about understanding and automating the entire digital ecosystem. From developers leveraging platform engineering tools to optimize application performance, to Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) ensuring resilience, and executives gaining critical business insights, observability increases the velocity of innovation across every level of an organization.

Today, observability is integral to the entire software development lifecycle. It’s not just for IT Ops but a critical capability for platform engineering, SREs, developers, as well as business and IT executives. In fact, Observability for Developers was a major focus for us at Perform 2025, and will continue to be an area of investment and value to our customers. Developers are increasingly embedding observability directly into their applications, allowing them to analyze performance in real-time and optimize accordingly. This shift is driving increased adoption of the Dynatrace platform, as our customers leverage our unified observability solution—powered by Grail, our hyperscale data lakehouse, designed to store, process, and query massive volumes of observability, security, and business data with high efficiency and speed.

At Perform 2025, we showcased how real-time observability empowers developers to shift from reactive troubleshooting to proactive performance optimization. By embedding observability into their applications, developers can improve performance, reduce downtime, and enhance user experience—all before issues impact customers.

Customers win with consolidation

The observability space has seen significant consolidation in recent years. While market shifts can create uncertainty, they also provide customers with the opportunity to simplify toolsets, reduce operational complexity, and increase visibility across teams.

In today’s AI-powered world, business can no longer afford siloed visibility. A unified observability platform analyzes every transaction, automates responses at the speed of AI, and enables innovation without limits–helping teams move from reactive remediation to proactive optimization.

Leveraging a single source of truth for IT, security, and business insights allows teams to shift focus from managing multiple integrations to performance optimization and driving the business forward.

This consolidation also drives innovation in the observability market, as fewer, stronger providers invest heavily in enhancing capabilities, automation, and AI-powered insights. Customers benefit from platforms that are more robust, interoperable, and capable of delivering end-to-end visibility across their environments.

AI and intelligent automation

Looking ahead, we are laser-focused on AI-driven operations and cloud automation. As organizations accelerate AI adoption, they need reliable ways to monitor and optimize AI workloads. One of our customers, Northwestern Mutual, recently shared that using Dynatrace helped them accelerate AI workload performance by 60%, which is a testament to how observability is enabling the future of IT.

A final thought

The world of observability is evolving rapidly, and we are excited about the road ahead. As market dynamics shift, Dynatrace is uniquely positioned to help organizations drive efficiency, automation, and performance at scale.

A big thank you to Tiernan Ray for the insightful conversation and for covering our journey at Dynatrace.