Organizations with a formal observability strategy are 3.5x more likely to detect disruptive incidents quickly compared to those without such a strategy, according to the 2024/25 State of the Network Study from in partnership with TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group™ (ESG).

This approach not only shortens incident detection times but also brings additional benefits, such as enhanced security, faster product/service advancements, and improved compliance (78%).

Source: VIAVI Solutions

Network observability provides deep insights into network behavior, performance, and health by collecting, analyzing, and presenting data, enabling administrators to understand and manage the network in real time. True network observability embraces and leverages all network data sets, including flow data, packet data, and metrics. Unlike traditional monitoring, which primarily focuses on identifying and alerting on predefined issues, observability enables IT teams to proactively detect, understand, and resolve incidents in real-time. By adopting an observability strategy, organizations can proactively manage network performance, improve problem resolution, and maintain higher levels of user satisfaction.

"As discovered by VIAVI and ESG, the state of the network is ever more vital to business success, even as it is continuously stretched, evolved, clouded and threatened," added Jim Frey, Principal Analyst, Networking, ESG. "Organizations are recognizing the challenges posed by sprawl in monitoring tools and increasingly complex hybrid network architectures, and those making the move — strategically or otherwise — to network observability are seeing significant improvements. In parallel with operational advantages, this move empowers organizations to pursue convergence of observability and security and enable important new strategies such as continuous threat exposure management."

The report found that companies use a variety of tools including:

■ Network performance monitoring (NPM) – 82%

■ Infrastructure monitoring - 71%

■ Application performance monitoring (APM) - 69%

■ Digital experience monitoring - 62%

■ Asset/inventory management – 58%

■ Log management – 56%

More than a quarter of companies (27%) use all of the above.

Other key findings include:

Reducing Incident Detection Time

Organizations with a formal observability strategy are 3.5x more likely to report significantly shorter times to detect disruptive incidents.

Minimizing tool sprawl

The report found that the average number of monitoring tools is 10, and 38% of respondents use more than 11 tools.

The report also found that companies with 10 or less monitoring tools experienced a 58% shorter average MTTR compared to companies with 11 or more tools, and companies with 11 or more tools were 64% more likely to struggle with comprehensive or automated analysis, such a machine learning or AIOps.

Enhancing Security

The report underscores the critical need for Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), with 88% of organizations highlighting an urgent need to improve their threat management capabilities, and 83% of companies with observability strategies experiencing enhanced security.

CTEM is an emerging strategy that systematically evaluates and prioritizes risks, allowing organizations to allocate resources more effectively and focus on the most significant threats. By integrating threat exposure management with attack surface management, CTEM helps organizations enhance their security posture and operational resilience, ensuring they can proactively manage and mitigate evolving threats. CTEM programs are now gaining traction, ranking behind patch management and vulnerability assessments only among current methods for managing threat exposure.

Improving Compliance

78% of organizations maintain better compliance with a formal observability strategy.

"Organizations are increasingly recognizing the transformative impact of observability on network management and security," said Chris Labac, VP and GM, Network Performance and Threat Solutions, VIAVI. "This report demonstrates a clear trend toward network observability, not only as a way of enhancing security, achieving compliance objectives, and detecting incidents, but as a key driver of business."

Methodology: The report is based on a survey of 754 respondents from 10 countries.