By Kyle Wiggers

The need for data observability, or the ability to understand, diagnose and orchestrate data health across various IT tools, continues to grow as organizations adopt more apps and services. (Nearly 10% of businesses now have more than 200 apps to manage, according to a recent Okta study.) In a large-scale survey of IT decision makers published last September, 75% of the respondents said they expected to increase their observability spend in 2022 “significantly” to better plan, deploy and run software.

Observability tools to capture and analyze IT tool data aren’t new — and these days, they’re raising a respectable amount of capital. Monte Carlo, whose platform uses machine learning to infer what data looks like and assess its impact, became a unicorn last May with $135 million in funding. Rival Cribl confirmed its unicorn status with a new round of funding — $150 million — also in May. Other observability vendors with substantial backing behind them include Manta, Observe, Better Stack, Coralogix and Unravel Data.