The Need for Observability in Application Development

On this special episode of the Futurum Tech Podcast - Interview Series, host Daniel Newman welcomes Karthik Rau, General Manager of Application Management at Splunk to discuss observability and application monitoring, COVID-19, and how IT departments are dealing with the recent changes brought about by the pandemic.

Karthik and I explored the rapid acceleration of digital initiatives due to COVID-19. Pre-pandemic, we were seeing companies slowly adopt digital transformation initiatives. But almost overnight, this progress was rapidly accelerated as companies were forced to go digital. We’ve seen a rapid adoption of SaaS solutions and other digital initiatives to support a remote workforce. It was a decade of digital transformation in three months. All of these changes have changed the way the IT department operates, and it’s most likely never going back.

The New Role of IT Departments. Karthik shared that as companies invest more in technology to support digital transformation initiatives, IT’s responsibility becomes more about enabling the organization to build the software that they need to drive their digital business forward as quickly as possible. It’s a significant shift to be more agile.

Rapid shifts in every industry. We discussed the impact COVID-19 has had on every industry. From education to healthcare to consumer goods, every organization had to pivot how they operate — most moving to a mobile-first environment. They’ve had to buy the technology and the software to support the changes as well as shift the culture to ensure the change.

Lastly Karthik shared about the impact of observability and the fundamental changes to app development. As companies have moved more towards SaaS, the underlying infrastructure has changed from on-prem to highly elastic public and private clouds. All of which is driving a larger DevOps approach creating massive amounts of data. It’s critical to avoid mistakes in the world of app development so companies need an observability solution that can track and monitor all the data that is created to catch errors and find trends.

If you’re interested in learning more about Splunk and how their offerings can help you, be sure to check out their website. Don’t forget to listen to the full episode below and while you’re at it, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.