Rootconf Mini 2024

Most orgs have monitoring & observability systems in place … and they are expensive or complex or both. Creating a long-term, cost-effective strategy for observability is not easy:

Observation #1: as of 2024, there are over 100 open source projects in observability !
Observation #2: also, in 2024, Gartner MQ named 17 vendors in observability !
Observation #3: but, observability systems costs are often 30-40% of infra costs !

Choosing a vendor is hard, choosing an open source project is even harder ! Businesses & engineering leaders struggle with: “What do I do ? How do I decide what to do ?”

In this talk, I’ll draw upon 7+yrs of monitoring (pun intended !) the observability space, and present some lessons learnt during this “build + buy + operate” journey. With an eye on history and current + emerging trends, I’ll propose a future-looking observability architecture.

The goal is to help you make sense of multiple trade-offs, and start answering some questions:
“Should I build or buy ? And what should I build or buy ? Will I have to do this all over again in another 2 years ?”