Do you remember Back to the Future Day? The day in 2015 when the world celebrated Marty McFly’s trip to a futuristic 2015 in the iconic movie? We laughed at the idea of hoverboards and self-tying shoes while marveling at how much of what was once science fiction was becoming real. Here’s the thing, though: the future never announces its arrival with a neon sign or a ringing bell. It just happens.

The SRE Report is now seven years old. I’ve had the honor and privilege of authoring it for the last five years. This 2025 version included working with some amazing individuals like Kurt Andersen and Denton Chikura. My heartfelt thanks go to them for shouldering the weight of what is both a labor of love and an often daunting, procrastination-inducing marathon of analysis.

Gartner recently published the first ever Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM). This landmark report raises important questions about what DEM is and why we need a new category now. It also prompts discussions about how DEM, Internet Performance Monitoring (IPM), and Application Performance Monitoring (APM) relate to each other and what roles they play in modern monitoring strategies.