Observability Engineering

Chapter 15. Build Versus Buy and Return on Investment

So far in this book, we’ve examined both the technical fundamentals of observability and the social steps necessary to initiate the practice. In this part of the book, we will examine the considerations necessary when implementing observability at scale. We’ll focus on the functional requirements that are necessary to achieve the observability workflows described in earlier parts.

At a large enough scale, the question many teams will grapple with is whether they should build or buy an observability solution. Observability can seem relatively inexpensive on the surface, especially for smaller deployments. As user traffic grows, so too does the infrastructure footprint and volume of events your application generates. When dealing with substantially more observability data and seeing a much larger bill from a vendor, teams will start to consider whether they can save more by simply building an observability solution themselves.

Alternatively, some organizations consider building an observability solution when they perceive that a vendor’s ability to meet their specific needs is inadequate. Why settle for less than you need when software engineers can build the exact thing you want? As such, we see a variety of considerations play into arguments on whether the right move for any given team is to build a solution or buy one.

This chapter unpacks those considerations for teams determining whether they should build or buy an observability ...