In today’s interconnected digital landscape, staying on top of market trends is essential for businesses aiming to thrive in the evolving world of observability and security. Recently, Cribl hosted a webinar to shed light on 2024 industry trends, and opportunities and challenges for both end users and vendors..

One of the notable highlights of the webinar is the convergence of observability and security, reflecting the shared data challenges faced by both IT and security teams. While these fields use similar tools and data, their purposes and platforms may differ, necessitating a holistic approach to address data challenges effectively.

Delving deeper into market dynamics, we highlighted significant trends such as the consolidation of market categories and the proliferation of acquisitions. Noteworthy acquisitions in categories like Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) underscored the shifting tides within the industry, as well as highlighted the short term prospects of companies built on features rather than products

The conversation also touched upon the emerging role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in IT and security operations. While AI presents promising opportunities in automating workflows and enhancing contextual insights, concerns regarding bias, privacy, and data security loom large, urging stakeholders to tread cautiously. It’s still early days for AI, but the hype is already waning as early experiments and products fail to meet expectations. More companies and products will fall away, but that’s the cycle we always see for new technologies – even those as promising as AI.

For end-users navigating the complex observability and security market landscape, here are four strategic recommendations for IT and Security leaders:

1. Reskilling Existing Talent: In the face of talent shortages, reskill existing teams to be the team you need tomorrow. Also, use AI – where appropriate – to augment teams to bridge the skills gap effectively.
2. Ignore The Platform Consolidation Hype: Contrary to the narrative of security platform consolidation from the megavendors, end-users aren’t eliminating vendor tools. Instead, they’re maintaining a best of breed approach, which is still advisable as they prepare for potential vendor disruptions.
3. Build M&A into Architecture: Incorporating observability pipelines into your architecture ensures resilience against vendor disruptions, facilitating seamless data migration and platform transitions. Highlighting this, the same week the webinar was recorded, we saw LogRhythm and Exabeam merge, and Palo Alto Networks buy IBM’s Qradar customers. Stay agile!
4. Modernize Data Management: Recognizing the pivotal role of data management, stakeholders are encouraged to adopt modern practices aligned with cost-efficiency, data tiering strategies, and data governance practices in the face of rapidly changing compliance requirements.

I’d also like to introduce Cribl’s Data Engine for IT and Security, which puts your data at the center of your data management strategy and provides a one-stop shop for analyzing, collecting, processing, and routing it all at any scale.

In summary, this webinar provided invaluable insights into the evolving landscape of observability and security tools and data, and equipped attendees with strategic guidance to navigate the complexities of the 2024 observability and security market map. For more details, click here to listen to the full webinar.

Cribl, the Data Engine for IT and Security, empowers organizations to transform their data strategy. Customers use Cribl’s suite of products to collect, process, route, and analyze all IT and security data, delivering the flexibility, choice, and control required to adapt to their ever-changing needs.

We offer free training, certifications, and a free tier across our products. Our community Slack features Cribl engineers, partners, and customers who can answer your questions as you get started and continue to build and evolve. We also offer a variety of hands-on Sandboxes for those interested in how companies globally leverage our products for their data challenges.