My role as research analyst involves a lot thinking about and studying what matters most to networking professionals, and how the changing technology and business landscape affects them. This regularly includes direct research and dialogue with practitioners to investigate what is causing the greatest challenges day to day, and how they are coping.
One of the most exciting parts of research is finding best practices that can be shared with the networking community to help everyone. Such was the case with a recent project I had the pleasure of supporting, when TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group conducted the research and analysis process for the “2024/25 State of the Network Study” on behalf of Viavi Solutions. If you’d like to get into the specifics, you can check out the full study results, but following here are a few of what I found to be the most compelling insights.
First, the study examined the growing trend of using observability for monitoring and operating IT infrastructures. Applying observability principles to network monitoring, also known as network observability, turns out to be pretty valuable. Organizations that adopted a comprehensive observability strategy, rather than an ad hoc approach within each functional area, were surprised by the benefits. For instance, the number of participants who saw a significant drop in mean time to detect incidents over the past 12 months was 3.5 times higher for those who adopted observability as a strategic initiative. There was also widespread recognition that adopting observability as a strategy improved collaboration between network and security teams, improved compliance, and even accelerated product development cycles.
One of the bigger challenges for teams implementing an observability strategy is managing an often-bloated monitoring tools stack. Study participants reported using an average of 10 tools for various aspects of network monitoring, with some using over 20. Consolidation is essential, and there was nearly universal consensus (93% affirmative) of participants intending to reduce tool counts. We found compelling evidence of consolidation’s positive impact. For those shops using more than 10 tools, the average reported mean time to repair (MTTR) was 13.7 hours, while those using 10 or fewer reported an average MTTR of 5.7 hours—a 58% reduction. The takeaway is that fewer tools means lower MTTR, so go forth and consolidate whenever and wherever you can.
The study also explored how teams were dealing with hybrid environments. While cloud service providers and cloud-focused architects and engineers bear the primary responsibility for monitoring and managing application performance in the cloud, networking teams are also involved, even if they aren’t taking point—their perspective remains highly valuable. Nearly everyone (97%) agreed that for cloud environments, packet capture remains important, and over three-quarters valued flow-level data such as NetFlow, sFlow, IPFIX, and various flow logs. The bottom line here is that traditional network monitoring techniques still make sense in cloud and hybrid environments.
Finally, we checked in on the ongoing close relationship between networking and security. As cybersecurity threats continue to grow, collaboration between networking and security teams becomes increasingly important. As it turns out, observability helps drive this too. We found that teams embracing observability as a strategy were 15%-35% more active across various types of NetOps/SecOps collaboration, including improved collaborative workflows, tools alignment, goals alignment, collaboration frequency, and creating hybrid roles. This need for collaboration, along with the benefits of observability, is laying the groundwork for advanced security practices, such as continuous threat exposure management (CTEM). CTEM emerged as one of the top methods for addressing threat exposure among study participants’ organizations—particularly for dynamic and complex infrastructures, such as hybrid cloud.
The key takeaway here is that observability strategies are worth the effort. They benefit everything from networking engineering and operations to network-security collaboration through a range of improved viewpoints and outcomes. Teams should continue consolidating tools and applying traditional monitoring approaches across their hybrid environments, while embracing observability across the board. The payoff? Better efficiency, less downtime, and a stronger security posture.
