A new SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report 2026 has found that 77% of IT teams lack complete visibility across on-premises and cloud environments, highlighting the growing challenges organizations face as hybrid IT architectures become more complex. The report, based on a survey of more than 750 IT professionals, shows that fragmented tools, siloed teams, and expanding infrastructure are making it harder for enterprises to maintain performance and reliability.
According to the study, modern IT environments now span legacy systems, cloud platforms, and distributed applications, but monitoring and observability tools have not evolved at the same pace. As a result, 75% of respondents said lack of coordination between teams such as network, infrastructure, application, and database groups limits effective observability, while 55% reported using too many monitoring tools, leading to operational inefficiencies and alert fatigue.
SolarWinds noted that unified observability is becoming essential as IT systems grow more business-critical. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said having a single view across the entire IT stack is very important for maintaining performance, reducing risk, and preventing outages in hybrid environments.
The report also highlights the increasing role of artificial intelligence in observability, with 90% of IT professionals expressing confidence that AI can improve monitoring operations. Organizations are already using AI to automate incident prioritization, accelerate root-cause analysis, predict capacity issues, and reduce alert noise, helping teams respond faster and improve system reliability.
However, adoption challenges remain. Respondents cited security concerns, skills shortages, technology complexity, employee resistance, and budget constraints as key barriers to fully implementing AI-driven observability. The report recommends that organizations focus on clear governance, targeted AI use cases, and workforce upskilling to successfully integrate AI into monitoring workflows.
SolarWinds said the future of observability lies in unified platforms that combine visibility, automation, and AI-driven insights, enabling IT teams to move from reactive troubleshooting to proactive and resilient operations across increasingly distributed environments.