State of Observability 2025: Inputs from 1,240 IT professionals worldwide

As part of understanding the shift happening in organizations' observability adoption style, needs, tool expectations, and challenges, we at ManageEngine conducted a survey, from December 2024 to January 2025, of 1,240 observability solution users worldwide, including C-suite executives, IT managers, administrators, and developers.

We've turned their inputs into a detailed report to help you understand the state of observability in terms of organizations' observability maturity, ROI, challenges, vendor concerns, and roadmap.

Here's the State of Observability 2025 report, and ahead are five key findings and their corresponding takeaways.

1. Only 15% of organizations have reached a mature observability stage

First, what's a mature observability stage?

We determined this based on the observability outcomes organizations achieved after adoption: visibility into their IT environments, operational efficiency, an MTTR reduction, an improved security posture, an enhanced end-user experience, and the ability to achieve their IT goals using observability tools.

In that sense, we discovered that only 15% of organizations have reached a mature observability stage. These leaders stand apart not just in outcomes but also in returns, as they should: Nine in 10 mature organizations are seeing at least a 100% ROI, with some of them gaining up to a 200% ROI.

If we look at how they differ from the rest, it starts with prioritization: Mature adopters are 6.5 times more likely to prioritize observability as part of their IT strategy. What does that mean in practice?

They are using observability tools for more than just infrastructure monitoring; their use cases extend to monitoring application performance, security layers, the user experience, DevOps pipelines, and IoT devices. Plus, these organizations have more plans to maximize the value they get from their observability investments.

Takeaway: Drive observability with business intent

Observability, like any aspect of IT management, works best when done with business intent. Instead of just using observability tools in your ITOps, aligning their deployment with your IT goals is how you set the stage for observability progress, which in turn becomes organizational progress.

If you're looking to move toward maturity, start by clarifying what success looks like for your observability efforts, whether it's improved system resilience, a stronger security posture, or an enhanced end-user experience. Then, assess whether your current observability setup spans your full environment: infrastructure, applications, APIs, CI/CD, and the digital experience.

The shift from reactive monitoring to proactive, goal-oriented observability is where real business impacts begin.

2. Security is the primary driver of observability adoption

Observability, which started as an availability and performance monitoring discipline, is now evolving to incorporate security monitoring. Today, 66% of organizations say they’re using observability to strengthen their IT security posture, making security observability the second most common use case after infrastructure monitoring.

This shift isn’t incidental. As organizations move toward hybrid and distributed IT environments, the traditional boundaries of security monitoring have blurred. The attack surface is no longer just firewalls and endpoints. It’s also APIs, workloads, and CI/CD pipelines. Even user journeys need a security watch. With observability tools ingesting, correlating, and revealing real-time telemetry across the stack, IT teams have no reason not to leverage them for the security visibility they need.

Takeaway: Turn operational signals into security insights

As systems grow more complex and threats more dynamic, the same signals that help power uptime can also reveal threats—if leaders enable the shift. Latency spikes, failed logins, and usage anomalies—these are operational signals, but they’re also early signs of potential compromise.

What this demands from leaders is a shift in how observability is implemented. Like ITOps and DevOps teams, SecOps teams should be given access to telemetry data and the training to interpret it in a security context. That means investing in platforms that unify telemetry across infrastructure, applications, and networks and support integrations with security tools like SIEM solutions and threat engines.

3. The tool cost is the top adoption barrier

Among all the barriers to observability adoption, the cost stands out. Over half of the respondents cited tool costs as a major roadblock, with 44% expressing frustration with paying for bundles they don’t need just to use a few of the modules. Whether they're paying per metric, log, or span, many teams struggle to estimate costs, let alone justify them to the finance team.

This isn’t just a budgeting issue. When teams don’t have clarity on what they’ll be billed for, they hesitate to collect the telemetry they need. As a result, visibility suffers, and the value of observability itself is compromised. If teams try to avoid this by going all in on choosing the modules and collecting the data, in a rather mindless approach, they end up overpaying for and underutilizing the tool.

Takeaway: Prioritize fit over feature when investing in tools

Effective observability starts with clear priorities. Before investing in a platform, define what matters the most to your organization, whether it’s system performance, security visibility, or the digital experience. These priorities should guide both the telemetry you collect and the modules you invest in.

Then comes the vendor decision. Look for pricing models that support predictability and scaling. Infrastructure-based licensing, such as per device or per host, can help eliminate the uncertainty that often comes with data-volume-based pricing.

4. Skill gaps are a roadblock, and upskilling is the top value-boosting plan

One of the top reasons teams fail to realize the full value of observability is simple: They don’t know how. Nearly half of the respondents in our survey pointed to a lack of in-house skills as a major roadblock to effective observability adoption.

Fixing this means ensuring your teams are equipped to work with modern observability tools. That includes knowing which metrics matter, how to interpret telemetry, how to set up meaningful alerts, and how to correlate performance data with real business impacts.

The good news? Most organizations recognize these gaps. When they were asked what actions they’re taking to maximize the value of observability, the top response was upskilling their teams.

Takeaway: Upskill teams with practical, context-driven learning

• Diagnose skill gaps first: Map current capabilities against your observability stack before defining learning paths. This helps you avoid generic training and focus on areas that move the needle.
• Anchor learning in real-world contexts: Use past incidents and performance challenges as a training ground to develop reliable skills.
• Meet teams where they are: Deliver learning in formats that fit each team’s working style: bite-sized videos, internal playbooks, shadowing sessions, or simulations.
• Develop internal champions: Identify power users and give them space to become enablers, driving peer learning and setting best practices.

5. Achieving full-stack visibility is leading the roadmap

Visibility into the IT stack is one of the least improved observability KPIs, and achieving full-stack visibility is the top priority in the year ahead. Why is visibility—something foundational—still such a hard-won outcome?

Visibility today is about seeing the right things fast across too many moving parts. Modern IT stacks are hybrid, dynamic, and interconnected. With cloud-native services, ephemeral workloads, remote endpoints, and microservices, the stack no longer has a fixed shape. It's like spotting moving targets with tools that work in silos.

Moreover, the implications are no longer limited to performance inefficiencies. In a world where observability data is increasingly used to detect vulnerabilities and enforce policies, visibility gaps are fast becoming security gaps.

Takeaway: Align tools, teams, and telemetry for true visibility

To achieve functional visibility now means establishing smarter alignment across tools, teams, and telemetry.

Move toward a unified observability architecture where security and performance are treated as dual facets of operational health. This shift doesn’t mean chasing an all-in-one platform blindly. It means consolidating tools, integrating observability into the systems that drive value (like CI/CD, incident response, and threat intelligence), and building a telemetry strategy focused on signals over noise.

It also means investing in the human side, like upskilling teams to interpret and act on observability insights and reworking organizational structures so ITOps, DevOps, and SecOps teams aren’t solving the same visibility puzzle in parallel.

Gain a deep understanding of the 2025 observability landscape

These are just the top findings that we've curated to offer a quick glimpse of the observability landscape. To understand the industry-specific trends, the adoption barriers in SMBs and enterprises, and how mature adopters differ in their practices, we recommend reading the full State of Observability 2025 report.