The shortcomings of unified observability

Enterprise IT architectures are complex and getting more so with every year thanks to hybrid cloud environments, virtualization and other technology trends. While unified observability helps restore visibility in these complex architectures, it also comes with some challenges that must be addressed.

For the uninitiated, unified observability is an approach to restoring visibility in the face of distributed systems, increased complexity, and a range of performance management tools used to monitor and adjust these systems.

Unified observability works by bringing together all network and application performance data from across an organization and centralizing it for increased visibility and better analysis. Instead of consulting several tools and hunting for insights, unified observability enables network and security engineers to consult a single dashboard and get a holistic view of the full sweep of network and application dynamics.

This unified observability approach replaces siloed data islands created by separate teams using separate tools. Instead of network, infrastructure and application teams each having their own set of data and only marginally pooling this data, unified observability brings all data across the stack together into a single dashboard for increased visibility and insight.

Unified observability comes with challenges

While unified observability sounds good in theory, implementing it within an organization presents several challenges.

1. Data overload

Counterintuitively, generating actionable information from unified observability often can be a challenge. With so much data being collected from different sources, separating the signal from the noise becomes harder. Teams can get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data, leading to missed alerts or delayed responses to issues.

The way to overcome this shortcoming is with artificial intelligence and machine learning built into the system that proactively makes sense of the data and aggregates it into easily understood dynamics. At the same time, though, this aggregated view of companywide performance data should allow for the drill-downs necessary for active performance and security management.

2. Data applicability

One advantage of unified observability is that it takes a holistic approach and captures the full sweep of network, application, infrastructure and security dynamics. While this holistic approach enables a greater understanding of overall dynamics and how they interrelate, it also can create a situation where data is not presented in the way that a given team needs. The priorities and needs of a network performance engineer are not identical to those of a security specialist or an infrastructure engineer.

The way around this unified observability shortcoming is through varied and customizable presentation of unified data. While all data might flow through a centralized monitoring solution, it can be presented in different ways for different teams and highlight only the visibility that a given team needs while still enabling complete data drill-down as required.

3. Integration issues

Having all network, application and security data in one place is good in theory, but in practice it can be hard to actually collect all the data for a complete, unified view.

This is because proprietary tools and public cloud services often limit access to third-party monitoring and management tools. These proprietary solutions come with their own monitoring tools, but this data is siloed and doesn’t easily lend itself to unified observability.

The workaround for enabling unified observability despite these roadblocks is using a network monitoring and performance management solution that can easily ingest third-party data and integrate it with its native monitoring capabilities. This way, the data silos that come from the enforced use of narrow monitoring tools can nonetheless integrate with an organization’s wider network and performance management solution for true unified observability.

4. Compliance concerns

Bringing together the full scope of data within an organization for unified observability raises a compliance challenge. While unified observability helps with the diagnosis of performance and security concerns, it can potentially breach privacy and compliance regulations by monitoring all data within an organization and exposing that data inappropriately.

This issue with unified observability can be overcome through data aggregation and metadata analysis. Instead of capturing the full contents of network and application traffic, monitoring solutions that bring unified visibility can capture only the metadata from traffic that is necessary for visibility and analysis without actually peering into or copying the actual data crossing the network.

Overcome the challenges of unified observability with Accedian Skylight

These shortcomings from unified observability can all be overcome with Accedian Skylight.

Skylight is a network and application performance monitoring solution that monitors network traffic-end-to-end with lightweight virtual sensors that capture traffic metadata both north-south and east-west. Skylight then analyzes the metadata and feeds it into an easily understood dashboard for a complete, real-time picture of an organization’s network dynamics.

Skylight also enables businesses to feed in third-party data sources into this dashboard, correlating traffic data with the third-party tools and data sources for an even more complete picture of network and performance dynamics. Through the use of Skylight Interceptor, it also enables performance and security teams to take different views of the data while working from the same unified source.

So if your organization is ready to move beyond siloed visibility and toward unified observability, schedule a custom demo of Skylight today.