Several years ago, a new generation of log aggregation platforms emerged that were capable of storing and searching over vast amounts of log data to uncover trends and insights in operational data. Splunk was the most prominent but by no means the only example of these tools. Because these platforms provide broad operational and security visibility across the entire estate of applications, administrators and developers have grown increasingly dependent on them. This enthusiasm spread as stakeholders discovered that they could use log aggregation for business analytics. However, business needs can quickly outstrip the flexibility and usability of these tools. Logs intended for technical observability are often inadequate to infer deep customer understanding. We prefer either to use tools and metrics designed for customer analytics or to take a more event-driven approach to observability where both business and operational events are collected and stored in a way they can be replayed and processed by more purpose-built tools.
Several years ago, a new generation of log aggregation platforms emerged that were capable of storing and searching over vast amounts of log data to uncover trends and insights in operational data. Splunk was the most prominent but by no means the only example of these tools. Because these platforms provide broad operational and security visibility across the entire estate of applications, administrators and developers have grown increasingly dependent on them. This enthusiasm spread as stakeholders discovered that they could use log aggregation for business analytics. However, business needs can quickly outstrip the flexibility and usability of these tools. Logs intended for technical observability are often inadequate to infer deep customer understanding. We prefer either to use tools and metrics designed for customer analytics or to take a more event-driven approach to observability where both business and operational events are collected and stored in a way they can be replayed and processed by more purpose-built tools.
