Balancing cost, performance, and security in cloud infrastructure is challenging, but cloud-mature companies are proving it’s possible to optimize without compromise — here’s how they do it.

SolarWinds Day has consistently been one of the most enlightening events of the IT year, offering rich insights into technology, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), and more. This quarter's event, SolarWinds Day: Observability Anywhere. Precision Everywhere, tackled the complexities of IT infrastructure observability. I was delighted to host the panel discussion; here’s my overview of the key talking points.

Network bandwidth is the maximum rate at which data can be transmitted over a network connection in a given time. Essentially, it’s the highway for your data. Bandwidth is often measured in bits per second (bps), but in larger systems, you’ll see measurements like megabits per second (Mbps) or gigabits per second (Gbps). Bandwidth plays a critical role in IT infrastructure because it determines how quickly data can move.

Availability and reliability are crucial for modern software applications and digital services. Meeting service requirements and avoiding downtimes promote customer satisfaction, trust, and credibility. A multi-region deployment strategy can help. Systems that are not reliable or available when needed can cause lost revenue and business, unplanned maintenance, and decreased productivity. Companies can lose up to $9,000 per minute during service downtime.

Vulnerability Management plays a crucial role in the world of cybersecurity addressing both security vulnerabilities and software vulnerabilities to keep digital threats and cyber attacks at bay. What started as simple antivirus programs has transformed into complex, AI-driven solutions built to combat increasingly sophisticated threats. This evolution has shaped Vulnerability Management into a vital part of any modern security strategy.

On October 9, 2024, Gartner released its first-ever Magic Quadrant dedicated to AI applications in IT Service Management (ITSM). As artificial intelligence continues reshaping ITSM, Gartner's recent report takes a close look at how AI is impacting the tools and practices businesses use to deliver support. Artificial intelligence is helping IT IT Service Management (ITSM) shift into a faster, more efficient process that’s set up to handle increasing demands.

We at Icinga / NETWAYS (yes, that’s the order) held an internal event recently. It’s name was Knowledge Days and I got to to talk about how I review code. Now, I will share my knowledge with you! Though, this is specifically how I personally perform reviews. This is by no means the definitive way of doing it! Find your own, I can only share my experience. So without further ado…

As 2024 peeks into 2025, cloud-driven businesses are poised for yet another year of record cloud spending. After exceeding $675B this year, cloud spenders are expected to shell out more than $820B in 2025 (Gartner). But as any good unit economist knows, it’s not just that cloud costs are growing, it’s that they’re growing inefficiently — taking too big a bite out of companies’ profits.

Earlier this year, we introduced relational fields. Relational fields enable you to query spans based on their relationship to one other within a trace, rather than only in isolation. We’ve now expanded this feature and introduced four new prefixes: child., none., any2., and any3.. Previously, you could use root., parent., and any. to query on the root span of your target span’s trace, the parent span of your target span, and any other span in the same trace as your target span.