AI-powered observability boosts UK business productivity & ROI

A new global study has found that AI-powered observability is enhancing troubleshooting, root cause analysis and security for ITOps and engineering professionals, with UK businesses reporting strong productivity and efficiency gains.

The Splunk State of Observability 2025: The rise of a business catalyst report, released by Cisco, draws on responses from 1,855 ITOps and engineering professionals worldwide, including the United Kingdom. The research highlights a shift in observability from a largely technical function to a strategic enabler supporting secure, resilient, AI-powered operations in business.

Key findings

According to the report, 74% of global respondents say observability has had a positive impact on employee productivity, and 65% report benefits to revenue. A similar proportion-64%-noted that observability practices have influenced their product roadmaps, suggesting that these practices are directly informing business and innovation strategies.

Within the UK sample, three in four businesses stated that observability practices had improved employee efficiency. However, challenges persist, with more than half (52%) of UK respondents indicating they struggle with false alerts, and 15% acknowledging that such alerts are sometimes ignored altogether.

Observability's impact stretches beyond productivity and revenue. The findings reveal that 74% of respondents consider observability crucial for monitoring critical business processes, and 65% believe it is essential for understanding user journeys. Adoption of open-source standards is also growing, with 26% of UK security teams now regularly using OpenTelemetry. Among practitioners who use it at least sometimes, 76% say it has led to improved brand perception.

AI integration

The report found that organisations are increasingly applying AI to observability tasks. About 76% of professionals surveyed say they use AI-powered observability in their daily workflows, with 78% reporting that AI has enabled them to focus more on innovation rather than routine maintenance. Furthermore, 60% said AI improves troubleshooting and root cause analysis, while 58% noticed improvement in the detection of security vulnerabilities.

Despite these benefits, AI is also adding complexity to many practitioners' roles. Nearly half (47%) reported that monitoring AI workloads has made their jobs more challenging, while 40% pointed to a lack of expertise as a barrier to achieving AI readiness. The report suggests an opportunity to upskill practitioners to better manage AI workloads in observability frameworks.

Patrick Lin, SVP, GM of Observability at Splunk, a Cisco company, commented on the significance of these findings:

Observability practitioners are becoming critical stakeholders to key business decisions in customer engagement strategies, product roadmaps and more. And this year's State of Observability report findings make that clear: the full life cycle and workflow of observability - from data collection and analysis to deriving actionable insights and implementing improvements - provides not just better context, but also support for the achievement of better results, whether in customer satisfaction, product innovation or the safeguarding of AI systems at scale.

OpenTelemetry adoption

Adoption of OpenTelemetry, the CNCF open-source project for collecting traces, metrics, logs and profiles, is highlighted as a strategic shift in observability. Organisations using OpenTelemetry report benefits extending beyond observability, including a 72% positive impact on revenue growth and 71% noting improved operating margins and brand perception. The report notes that so-called 'power users'-those who frequently use OpenTelemetry-see three times higher gains in employee productivity compared to others, as well as stronger resilience when responding to customer incidents.

Further, 57% of frequent OpenTelemetry users employ observability-as-code, a DevOps approach to standardise and scale observability configurations, compared with just 10% of those categorised as laggards in adoption of OpenTelemetry.

Observability leaders' ROI

The analysis defines 'observability leaders' as organisations delivering stronger business outcomes and return on investment compared with peers. Leaders are found to be substantially more likely to use advanced practices such as code profiling and to foster collaboration between observability and security teams. These organisations generated an annual 125% ROI from their observability investments, with benefits measured in reduced downtime, lower employee turnover, enhanced customer experience and faster detection and resolution of incidents.

Code profiling, in particular, is cited as an enabler for more precise root cause analysis. According to the report, 78% of observability leaders dramatically accelerate root cause analysis by identifying problematic code directly rather than isolating issues at a service level. Additionally, 59% of leaders report improved sharing and re-use of data across teams, with 44% strongly agreeing that cross-functional teams solve issues collaboratively.

Shannon Kalvar, Research Director at IDC, emphasised the broader role of observability in business:

For a modern business, built on digital experiences, observability is not just about error resolution; it is a foundational discipline required for making business-shaping decisions at speed and scale.

Survey methodology

The survey encompassed ITOps and engineering professionals from a range of industries and seniority levels and covered nine countries, including Australia, France, Germany, India, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. Respondents included practitioners, developers, executives and technology officers from sectors as varied as financial services, healthcare, telecom, manufacturing, government and consumer goods.