Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

We consistently roll out helpful updates and fun features in Grafana Cloud, our fully managed observability platform powered by the open source Grafana LGTM Stack: Loki for logs, Grafana for visualization, Tempo for traces, and Mimir for metrics. With GrafanaCON 2025 — and the release of Grafana 12 — earlier this month, there are a ton of Grafana Cloud updates to share.

In the dynamic world of IT operations, a common misconception has emerged: Observability vs Monitoring is often framed as a battle where one replaces the other. At Icinga, where open-source monitoring is our expertise, we aim to clarify this misunderstanding. Observability doesn’t supplant monitoring—it complements and enhances it. The term “Observability” has become a buzzword in the tech industry, often touted as the modern solution to outdated, static monitoring practices.

You shipped your latest release. You tested it on emulators, QA devices, and the latest OS versions. But now it’s live and running on thousands or millions of mobile devices, across a jungle of screen sizes, hardware specs, OS versions, and network conditions. A user reports a crash on an old Samsung device over 3G. Someone else complains the app feels “sluggish” after updating. You dig through logs. Rebuild test cases. Ping the backend team. Try to reproduce. Yet, still no answers.

When was the last time you asked about the architecture behind your observability provider? For most IT professionals whether in development, operations, or security, it’s not a question that naturally comes up. Yet, this architectural detail could be the difference between insight at scale and runaway costs. People are drawn to the features, the shiny things. They promise to unlock insight, drive faster response times, and tighten security.

Synthetic monitoring simulates user interactions with applications to proactively identify performance issues before they impact real users. Modern distributed systems require sophisticated monitoring capabilities to effectively test microservices, APIs, and complex user journeys across diverse environments. This article provides a framework to evaluate synthetic monitoring platforms in 2025.

We’re excited to announce the release of Coroot 1.11! This version comes with powerful new features designed to give you more control over your observability data and make your troubleshooting process faster and more intuitive. Let’s dive into what’s new.