Observability is just Contextualized Monitoring. Change my mind.

The term “observability” is everywhere, packaged as the next game-changer for infrastructure. But beneath the hype, it’s little more than contextualized monitoring—and the infrastructure industry has co-opted it badly. This talk takes a critical look at the tool-centric approach to observability that’s dominating the market and offers an alternative: an approach to observability based on strategy, not the latest tool. We’ll explore the origins of observability as a software engineering practice, where things went wrong as it moved into infrastructure, and how tool-driven marketing misses the point. From understanding why we’re monitoring to identifying what actually matters to our organizations, this session challenges infrastructure teams to rethink observability and ask essential questions that can transform monitoring into a true asset. Finally, we’ll dig into powerful F/L/OSS tools that already do the job well, without the hype or the hefty price tag, and consider how infrastructure teams can use and contribute to open-source observability practices that support genuine insight. Join me in side-stepping the hype, and discover how real observability could mean thinking like a hacker—using practical, adaptable, and community-driven solutions that prioritize understanding over just another flashy dashboard.