Observability, the ability to understand, analyse and troubleshoot the internal state and behaviour of software or infrastructure by collecting and analysing data from various sources, helps companies serve their customers efficiently. In an interaction, Ashan Willy, CEO of observability solutions company New Relic, talks about observability tools getting predictive and integrated into existing workflows. He discusses the future of observability and AI’s role in the industry.

Excerpts:

What is observability? Can you explain how you help companies avoid glitches?

We help companies prevent downtime during high-traffic events like Black Friday. A company gets an order on its website every second and any glitch in the system can cost it a lot of money. Our technology helps it to map all its services, find out if their services are healthy and get a real-time view of what is going on in the environment. We can also help retailers to see how the products they release are functioning in real time.

Do you only flag challenges in the networks or do you also give suggestions on what can be done?

We flag issues. We help our clients spot glitches before the customer sees them and suggest ways to fix these. 

What is the scope for innovation in this?

Observability has a lot of room for innovation, predictive AI being one of them. Different industries have different characteristics, so being able to predict problems is very important.

Do you see agentic AI play a role here?

Agentic AI will have a big role in observability. For example, if New Relic is able to detect an issue with a piece of code, it could use agentic AI to tell the clients to automatically roll back the code. 

Does your company use generative AI officially?

New Relic is the first company to introduce generative AI in the world of observability. New Relic allows all employees to use generative AI safely. The company has a filter in place to prevent sensitive information from going out.

How do you ensure security and integrity of the data that you collect from clients?

We take all standard security precautions like hashing, encryption and data masking. We also comply with data localisation laws. We only collect telemetry information, and not personally identifiable information (PII). The company collects context about what is happening in the client’s environment, not the actual content of the data.

How do you see the space of observability evolve in the next two to three years?

The future of observability will be a mix of OpenTelemetry and vendor solutions. We believe that the world is moving towards OpenTelemetry, but the company will continue to provide value to its customers by giving them insights that they can’t get from open-source solutions. The big thing for New Relic is figuring out how to get to predictive and automotive observability. 

How do you think the increasing adoption of observability will impact IT landscape?

We believe that the increasing adoption of observability will help companies get products to market faster. The key to broader adoption of observability will be to figure out how to get observability to places where people work. We want to give people access to observability data within the tools they already use.

Is observability more than suggesting clients that they should add some cloud space to meet the surging traffic?

Observability is much more than that. For example, observability can help companies figure out if their DNS is working properly or if they need to adjust their compression algorithms. The bottom line is that observability helps customers avoid disruptions and service providers avoid losing customers.

You see India exporting software to the world in the future. Could you elaborate on this given the current decline in IT jobs here and the growing apprehension that AI will further diminish the reliance on IT professionals?

Today, India has about a fifth of the world’s developers so the dated notion of Indian tech talent primarily serving back office functions for multi-national organisations is well in the past. Key innovation and decision making is coming out of India and a lot of the global companies that we serve–big brands from Europe and America– have GCCs in India. And it’s not just in the area of development, but Indians are also holding senior positions like heads of technology, senior directors of engineering, vice presidents and group vice presidents in companies. There’s a lot of smart people in India that want to export their ideas and software without being told what to do. There’s no doubt in my mind that India will export software to the world. 

Moreover, we see AI as a complementary tool to increase velocity, not replace jobs. While it’s true that the role of developers in the current AI era is undergoing a profound transformation through the discovery of new-found efficiencies and capabilities that redefine their day-to-day tasks. AI is not a substitute for developers or a replacement for human judgment and creativity. AI is simply a catalyst for increasing velocity in software development.

Published on December 18, 2024