SolarWinds has released its 2026 State of Monitoring & Observability Report, shedding light on how IT teams are navigating increasingly fragmented hybrid environments and the growing role of AI in shaping modern observability.

Conducted in partnership with UserEvidence, the survey gathered insights from more than 750 IT professionals managing complex, distributed systems characterised by tool sprawl, cross-team silos, and prolonged outages.

The report highlights a clear misalignment between modern IT architectures and the monitoring and observability (M&O) tools designed to provide full-stack visibility.

As organisations juggle legacy infrastructure alongside cloud-native systems, many are finding that their existing M&O tools are struggling to keep pace with evolving requirements. While hybrid architectures offer advantages, they also introduce new complexities to monitoring and observability efforts.

Bridging Visibility Gaps in Complex IT Environments

According to the survey, 77% of IT professionals report limited visibility across on-premises and cloud environments, 75% say poor coordination between teams – spanning network, infrastructure, applications, and database – hinders effective observability, and 55% feel they are using too many monitoring tools.

“As IT environments grow more distributed and business-critical, visibility is no longer optional; it’s foundational,” said Cullen Childress, Chief Product Officer at SolarWinds. “Unified observability shifts teams from reactive firefighting to proactive resilience, enabling them to optimise performance, reduce risk, and keep the business running without disruption.”

AI is emerging as a key enabler for modern observability, with 90% of respondents expressing confidence in its ability to improve monitoring operations.

The survey found that IT teams are already leveraging AI to automate incident prioritisation (47%), accelerate root cause analysis (45%), predict capacity and performance issues (45%), and reduce alert noise and fatigue (45%). Almost two-thirds of respondents (64%) said that unified observability across all layers of the IT stack is very important to their team’s success.

Despite this confidence, organisations still face barriers to fully integrating AI. Security concerns were cited by 47% of respondents, skills gaps by 42%, the complexity of technology by 41%, employee reluctance or resistance by 37%, and budget constraints by 33%.

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The report advises teams to identify where AI can immediately improve M&O tasks, establish strict access protocols for AI tools, and invest in staff training to ensure effective and responsible adoption.

“Every organisation’s path to full visibility looks different,” said Abigail Norman, senior director of product marketing at SolarWinds.

“Our platform cuts through the noise by unifying observability across the stack. AI should do more than reduce alerts – it should sharpen prioritisation, streamline workflows, and give teams the space to focus on strategy instead of scrambling through dashboards.”