Why Observability Is the ‘Force’ Empowering Modern IT Systems

01 | Why Observability?

Observability empowers engineers, architects, CTOs and CIOs to keep pace with technological advances, especially in cloud‑native environments. It provides the "force" that enables teams to understand infrastructure, applications, and networks, supporting career growth and organizational efficiency.

02 | How to Understand Observability

Three main perspectives are presented: the classic three‑pillars (metrics, tracing, logging) originally described by Peter Bourgon, Charity Majors' "unknown‑unknown" view that treats observability as a debugging tool for unseen problems, and a white‑box monitoring view derived from control theory, which emphasizes external output, internal state, and finite‑time inference.

03 | How to Evaluate Observability

Three essential criteria are defined: zero‑intrusion (no code instrumentation or traffic mirroring, low overhead), multidimensionality (full‑stack data across API, container, host, network), and real‑time capability (second‑level feedback for minute‑level debugging). Evaluation examples include eBPF for zero‑intrusion and OLAP engines (ClickHouse, InfluxDB) for real‑time analytics.

04 | How to Build Observability

Three construction models are described: SaaS services (e.g., Alibaba Cloud ARMS, AWS‑partner Datadog), open‑source stacks (using DaemonSets, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, SkyWalking, ClickHouse), and integration projects that combine SaaS and open‑source while addressing compliance, budgeting and cross‑team collaboration.

05 | How to Use Observability

Numerous real‑world use cases demonstrate value: rapid root‑cause analysis in an intelligent‑car company, pinpointing database access anomalies in a large bank, diagnosing network loops, DNS misconfigurations, ARP issues, and improving service reliability across finance, telecom, e‑commerce and public‑sector workloads.

Conclusion

Observability empowers technical staff, can be understood through three lenses (three pillars, unknown‑unknown, white‑box), should be evaluated on zero‑intrusion, multidimensionality and real‑time response, and can be built via SaaS, open‑source or integration to drive innovation, compliance and operational excellence.