In this article I would share my experience working in the monitoring industry by providing some insights for the following questions about observability and monitoring:
- Is observability the same as monitoring?
- What is the difference between observation and monitoring?
- What is the right tool for each specific monitoring problem?
I launched Inspector three years ago as a side project, and now it is a bootstrapped company with customers in more than twenty countries. Even today, I talk to developers nearly every day about their monitoring needs, and I continue to learn from other developers at all levels.
If you search for monitoring solutions on Google you'll find tons of tools. Many of them look like (or sold as) application monitoring tools, but they have nothing to do with application monitoring. These similarities can make it difficult to figure out which was the right tool according to your specific needs.
Why Monitoring & Observability Matter
The time many developers feel the need to take their applications under control often coincides with when they first start working on a medium/large project.
The reason is simple: when your software becomes complex, or serves highly valuable customers, software bugs become expensive; doubly so when your customers find them! Customers may rate you as unreliable and search for alternatives.
Monitoring is the way for developers to avoid unexpected incidents and retain customers or contracts as long as possible – which means stable income for your business over time.
Today it may not be so easy to navigate the world of monitoring, probably because so many different data can be used in so many different ways.
Continue to the original article -> https://inspector.dev/observability-vs-monitoring/