Meet the Expert: Ben Sigelman on Observability’s ROI
Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.
It seems like everyone is selling “observability” these days. And companies are buying! But for many software organizations, the cost of observability is growing much more quickly than the benefits it delivers.
Join us for this edition of Meet the Expert with Ben Sigelman. Drawing on his experiences building out the core observability functions at Google, cocreating and shepherding both OpenTelemetry and OpenTracing, and working in the field as Lightstep’s founder and CEO, Ben examines why the current ROI for observability is lacking. You’ll learn the critical distinction between observability and telemetry, explore the fundamental cost structures underlying each, and discover how to reframe observability to make some of the most powerful and transformative benefits accessible to the entire organization—not just the experts.
O'Reilly Meet the Expert explores emerging business and technology topics and ideas through a series of one-hour interactive events. You’ll engage in a live conversation with experts, sharing your questions and ideas while hearing their unique perspectives, insights, fears, and predictions.
What you’ll learn and how you can apply it
By the end of this live show, you’ll better understand:
- The primary cost drivers in observability and how to control them
- The primary benefits of observability and how to amplify them
- Problems with previous models of observability value (particularly the “metrics, logs, and traces” framing)
This live event is for you because...
- You know you “should be doing observability” but are worried it won’t hit the mark at your organization.
- Observability’s costs are growing faster than its benefits within your organization.
Prerequisites
- Come with your questions for Ben Sigelman
- Have a pen and paper handy to capture notes, insights, and inspiration
Recommended follow-up:
- Read Distributed Tracing in Practice (book)
- Read Observability Engineering (book)
- Watch Observability at Google (case study, 28m)
- Read Distributed Systems Observability (report)
- Read Chaos Engineering Observability (report)
- Explore Kubernetes Observability: Basics (interactive scenario)
Schedule
The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.
Tuesday, May 25, 2021, at 9:00am PT / 12:00pm ET
- Introduction and presentation (15 minutes)
- Interactive discussion and Q&A (45 minutes)
Your Guest
Ben Sigelman
Ben Sigelman is the cofounder and CEO of Lightstep. He’s the cocreator of Dapper (Google’s distributed tracing tool that helps developers make sense of their large-scale distributed systems) and the open source OpenTracing API standard (a project within the CNCF).