TELEMETRY PIPELINES ELEVATE THE HANDLING OF OPERATIONAL DATA, A COMPANION PIECE TO THE HYPE CYCLE, OUTLINES SIX BENEFITS AND FOUR RISKS FOR ENTERPRISES ADOPTING OBSERVABILITY PIPELINES. LET’S EXPLORE EACH IN TURN AND LEARN HOW CRIBL STREAM’S VENDOR AGNOSTIC APPROACH TO OBSERVABILITY DATA OFFERS THE BEST OPTION FOR TODAY’S TECHNOLOGY LEADERS.
GARTNER’S INNOVATION INSIGHT: TELEMETRY PIPELINES ELEVATE THE HANDLING OF OPERATIONAL DATA
What are the benefits of adopting observability pipelines?
Teams that place an observability pipeline like Cribl Stream at the center of their data strategy see benefits from cost reduction and data governance to faster response times. Here are six benefits our users report.
1. Cost reduction and avoidance
The benefit customers report most often is reducing the cost of ingesting observability data: the metrics, events, logs, and traces used for monitoring and cybersecurity. By removing redundant data, stripping whitespace, dropping unnecessary events, and converting between formats, Cribl Stream users regularly see volume reductions of 30–50%. Customer results include CHRU de Tours cutting SIEM ingestion by 50% (Cribl case study, 2025), and Events DC reducing SIEM volume by 30–35% while onboarding new sources in hours instead of weeks (Cribl case study, 2025).
The impact is twofold. First, immediately: if you are bumping against ingest or budget thresholds, pipeline control eases that pressure quickly. Second, at contract renewal: with more control over your data, future price increases across your monitoring and security tools are smaller. Forward-looking cost avoidance is a benefit customers cite repeatedly.
2. Tackling agent sprawl
After a proof of concept and vendor choice, installing another software agent across your fleet can be a long process, given limited maintenance windows and change controls. An observability pipeline avoids that.
Because Cribl Stream sits between your sources and destinations, it accepts data from the agents you already have and reformats it for whichever destinations you require. If you already run Splunk Universal Forwarders, you can send that data to Exabeam, Dynatrace, Elastic, or other destinations in the right format, without deploying new agents.
3. Normalizing tags and identifiers
Tags and identifiers make metrics useful, but managing that metadata across scattered agents and destinations is cumbersome and error prone. With Cribl Stream as your control tier, you have a single place to add, update, and remove tags across observability data in flight. With GitOps support, every change is tracked and auditable.
4. Lower latency and faster response time
Sometimes the event you receive is not the event you need, because it includes duplicate data, bloated payloads, or the wrong data type. With Cribl Stream as your observability pipeline, you can shape data to fit the moment by converting logs to metrics on the fly, aggregating multiple events into one before forwarding, and suppressing duplicate events to save bandwidth and downstream costs. The result is less noise, lower latency, and faster response to important signals.
5. Optimizing observability storage
Different use cases require different storage types. Some data goes to a monitoring tool, some routes in a different format to your SIEM, and a full-fidelity copy can land in low-cost storage for compliance. Routing to different destination types, including security and monitoring platforms and object storage, is a core pipeline capability. Once Cribl Stream has routed data to an object store, you can replay it from that location for compliance audits or incident response.
6. Centralizing data governance
Observability data often receives less governance than transactional data, which increases the risk of PII appearing in logs. An observability pipeline provides a single place to govern and redact sensitive data, from credit card numbers to passwords, and to encrypt data in flight before it reaches downstream tools.
How do you manage observability pipeline adoption risks?
No technology adoption is risk-free, but the risks are smaller when you choose the right pipeline and vendor. Here is how Cribl addresses the four risks Gartner highlights.
1. Tackling the learning curve
Every new product brings friction: a proprietary language to learn, thin documentation, or costly training.
OBSERVABILITY PIPELINES CAN INTRODUCE A LEARNING CURVE TO OVERWORKED TEAMS. THIS IS WHY TRAINING AND CERTIFICATION AT CRIBL WILL ALWAYS BE FREE. CRIBL UNIVERSITY OFFERS MULTIPLE CERTIFICATIONS DEPENDING ON YOUR TEAM’S NEEDS.
Cribl reduces that friction in two ways. First, training and certification at Cribl are free. Cribl University (https://cribl.io/university/) offers multiple certifications depending on your team's needs, making it easier to ramp up. Second, there is no new language to learn and no agent to deploy. With basic JavaScript and regular expressions, teams can be productive with Cribl Stream in minutes rather than months.
2. Validating results
Because a pipeline sits between sources and destinations, bad data could enter monitoring and security platforms, skewing analysis or increasing costs. Cribl Stream provides a preview capability to test transformations against live data in real time, so what you see on screen matches what arrives at destinations. Paired with GitOps support, you can roll back changes if needed.
3. Managing the observability pipeline
Once deployed, your pipeline becomes core operational data infrastructure, so it requires management and governance.
THERE ARE NO COST SAVINGS GUARANTEES WITH OBSERVABILITY PIPELINES. CRIBL STREAM OFFERS THE MOST EFFECTIVE ADMIN AND GOVERNANCE CAPABILITIES TO HELP YOUR COMPANY MANAGE ITS DATA MOST EFFECTIVELY.
Cribl Stream provides an admin experience for creating role- and permissions-based projects that span data sources, destinations, and processing. Sensitive data stays with designated teams, and one team's work does not overwrite another's. Stream also offers a management API, so you can integrate it with CI/CD or orchestration tooling for automated operations.
4. It’s All About the Metrics
The final risk highlighted by Gartner is that there are no cost savings guarantees with observability pipelines. You have to understand your product’s pricing model to secure the cost benefits. Your chosen product must also provide fine-grained metrics over the data it processes.
For the first point, Cribl’s pricing model is straightforward. Whether running it yourself or taking advantage of Cribl.Cloud, the pricing is easy to understand and track.
Finally, Cribl Stream allows you to see exactly what’s happening to your data at each step. You can understand how much reduction, filtering, or enrichment is impacting your downstream data flows. Like our management capabilities, you can use the built-in dashboards or send your metrics to any destination of your choice.
Conclusion
Observability pipelines have gone from an obscure, niche product to being recognized by the world’s leading industry analyst firm. While there is no silver bullet for the observability challenges enterprises face today, Cribl Stream gives enterprises choice and control over their data. This allows you to take advantage of the benefits Gartner highlights while minimizing the potential for downside risk.
Check out our Buyer’s Guide for more detailed information. If you want to get started today, you can create a free account on Cribl.Cloud. Process up to one terabyte a day for free, forever
How Cribl can help with telemetry and observability pipelines
Observability pipelines have moved from niche to a recognized market category. There is no single solution for all telemetry challenges, but one approach is to center choice, control, and flexibility in your data strategy.
Cribl is built on that principle. Our vendor-agnostic platform is a central hub for IT and security teams to collect, transform, route, and store telemetry across sources, tools, clouds, and SIEMs, with no lock-in and no data loss. Trusted by half of the Fortune 100, Cribl helps enterprises reduce data volume, cut costs, accelerate SIEM migrations, and stay compliant without adding agents or disrupting existing systems.
The suite covers the full data lifecycle: Cribl Stream for real-time processing and routing, Cribl Edge for distributed collection, Cribl Search for federated search across your data wherever it lives, and Cribl Lake for tiered storage. Together, they turn raw telemetry into a strategic asset for practitioners and AI initiatives.
Ready to evaluate? See the Buyer's Guide (https://cribl.io/resources/bg/cribl-observability-pipeline-buyers-guide/) for an evaluation framework, or create a free account on Cribl.Cloud (https://cribl.io/cribl-cloud/) and process up to 1 TB a day, free, forever.
Telemetry and Observability Pipeline FAQ
An observability pipeline (also called a telemetry pipeline) is between the sources and destinations of your telemetry data. It collects, transforms, enriches, and routes logs, metrics, events, and traces before they reach your monitoring, security, or storage tools. This control point lets you shape data for each destination, cut noise, and enforce governance in one place.
How much can an observability pipeline reduce data costs?
Cribl Stream users report ingest volume reductions of 30-50% by removing redundant data, dropping unnecessary events, and converting formats. Example customers include CHRU de Tours, which cut SIEM ingestion by 50%, and Events DC, which reduced SIEM volume by 30-35%. Results vary by data type and use case, so measure at a granular level.
Do observability pipelines require deploying new agents?
No. Cribl Stream works with the agents you already have. If you run a fleet of Splunk Universal Forwarders, Stream can take that data and reformat it for Exabeam, Dynatrace, Elastic, or any other destination. That means no nine-month agent rollout and no rip-and-replace project.
What are the biggest risks when adopting an observability pipeline?
Four main risks are the learning curve for teams, validating that transformed data arrives correctly, managing the pipeline as critical infrastructure, and that cost savings are not guaranteed. Each risk is manageable when you choose a pipeline with free training, live data preview, governance controls, and transparent metrics.
How does Cribl Stream help validate data transformations?
Stream provides a preview that lets you test transformations on live data and shows what will arrive at your destinations. With GitOps support, every change is tracked, auditable, and reversible.
Is training for Cribl Stream really free?
Yes. Cribl University offers multiple certifications at no cost, and because Stream uses basic JavaScript and regular expressions instead of a proprietary language, your team can be productive in minutes, not months.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Disclaimer 4. Metrics and cost validation
There are no guaranteed cost savings with observability pipelines. You need to understand your product's pricing model, and your pipeline must expose metrics on the data it processes. Cribl's pricing model is available at https://cribl.io/pricing/plan/ whether you run it yourself or use Cribl.Cloud. Cribl Stream shows what happens to your data at each step, so you can quantify reduction, filtering, or enrichment with built-in dashboards or any destination you choose.
